Seeing Israelites with weapons did make my lungs tingle, but for Ally Kravitz I would show no joy.
Your voice sounds familiar, I said to him. The sound of my name on your lips, I said.
Googy sucked loud spit from his mouth-corners.
Ally said, “I’m not gonna lie to you, Rabbi. I made up that rhyme and I’m sorry. I really wasn’t doing it to be mean. People made it mean, but I was just trying to be funny and that’s why it rhymed. I bet I would’ve made it up even if I did know who you were, and we’d have been friends then, and you’d have liked the rhyme, I think. You’d have known it was good-natured, all in fun. See, me and Googy — he’s my cousin — we’re always putting bits together. I do the monologues, or just play the straightman assistant or whatever. Googy’s the star. It’s all about the Googy. He’s a genius of pantomime and clowning, my cousin. Right, Goog? Right? Come on. Admit it.”
Googy looked behind himself, like a parakeet napping, and Ally pulled a ski-cap from the pocket of his parka. “We’ll show you,” said Ally. And when Googy turned back, his eyes were crossed, and his cheeks were roundly inflated. Ally said, “We’ve been massaging this bit for a month. The title’s the working kind: ‘Googy and the Hunger.’” Ally set the ski-cap atop Googy’s curls. Googy lowered the cap so his forehead disappeared. He rolled his crossed eyes up as though his brow puzzled him.
Ally, leaning toward me, said in a stage-whisper, “What do you think? Googy looks like he’s hungry. Do you think he wants a herring and some onions for a sandwich?”
Googy nodded with vigor and twisted in his seat.
Ally raised his voice: “If Googy wants a herring and some onions for a sandwich, we can manage a herring and some onions for a sandwich — my herring and onions guy’s just up the block. But what about the bread, though? Herein lay the problem. My bread guy was murdered. My bread girl, she left me. But wait. Aha! There’s a charming young filly, a friend of a friend’s, lives just around the corner. I’ve heard tell that she has a line on baguettes, that she plays her baguettes very close to the chest, but she’ll give up that bread if you bring her some beer. So we’ll bring her some beer, get us some bread! Just grab me my coat while I reach in the icebox and grab her a — no. Oh no. Here’s a problem. Herein lay the problem. We’re all out of beer. Our drunk uncle drank it, that rowdy, that lout. A bigger problem yet? My beer guy’s in prison. My beer girl’s got mumps, she’s quarantined, deadly. Aw Googy, poor Googy, poor young master Googy, no sandwich of herring and onions for Googy…”
Googy and Ally both swayed right and left, and Googy grabbed Ally’s hand, as if to offer comfort. When he started to pet it, Ally jerked it away, stuck it in his coat.
“If only Googy,” Ally said, “wanted anything else, any food not a sandwich of herring and onions, or any kind of sandwich, or beer— What’s this?” He removed from his coat an unwrapped fortune cookie.
Googy horse-clopped his hands on his thighs eight times.
“Look what we have here! Just have yourself a gander at this elegant contraption, this perfect endeavor on which to embark after gobbling down a plate of hot chop suey, and that’s to say nothing of a bowl of lo-mein! Too bad we don’t have any hot chop suey. Too bad my lo-mein guy winters in Poughkeepsie—”
“Nnnnng!” yelled Googy, reaching for the cookie.
Ally dropped it on the floor and stomped it to crumbs. “Don’t act like an animal,” Ally told Googy. “You gotta ask polite. What happened to your manners? Remember where you come from! Remember your glory! A champion you were! A champion of hopscotch at the school for the maimed! A bronze medalist — twice! not once, but twice! — in their semi-annual boxing round-robin! What happened to you, Googy?”
Googy waved Ally off and reached in his own coat, pulled out five cookies, and started to juggle. After nine or ten passes he juggled one-handed, using his free hand to take off his ski-cap.
“No way!” Ally said. “It’s never been tried.”
Googy closed his eyes and positioned the cap upside-down near his heart, and after he’d caught all the cookies in the cap, he opened his eyes, looked deep into the cap, filled his cheeks up with air and, shuddering violently, turned the cap over, dumping all the cookies, and stomped them to crumbs while performing a sequence of face-slapping raspberries. Only after that did the cousins take a bow.
So?” Ally said. “What do you think?”
Wow, I said. That was pretty good, man. I wasn’t expecting—
“No no,” said Ally, “it’s still rough, we know, but what I’m asking is do you believe me now that we never meant it mean, the rhyme about your bus stop?”
Yeah, I said.
It was true.
“Good,” he said. “So what do we do now?”
What do you mean?
“What do you want us to do with the weapons?”
Protect each other.
“Of course,” said Ally, “but what’s the plan?”
The plan? I said.
“It’s okay,” Ally whispered, “no one can hear us but Goog.”
Googy pinched his lips so they flared.
No one can hear us what? I said.
“Discussing the plan.”
I don’t know what you mean.
“Rabbi, come on. We showed you our weapons. I explained the song. I thought you forgave us.”
I did, I said.
“Then don’t cut us out.”
Ally, I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“The plan,” he whispered, “to deal with the Shovers.”
The Shovers?
“Are we pattering?”
What?
“Are you trying to start a routine with me, Rabbi?”
What? No.
“I’m asking you about the plan for the Shovers. I’m really asking. I’m not joking with you.”
I didn’t say you were, I said. I said, I don’t know what the Shovers have to do with anything.
“The stars and the fish? Isn’t that why you revealed yourself yesterday? Isn’t that why you ripped Acer’s face up with the dumpster? Isn’t that why you instructed the Five to tell everyone to bring their weapons to school?”
I told the Five the pennyguns were meant to be carried, but all the rest of that stuff — who told you all that stuff? Where’d you get all those reasons from?
“No one told me,” Ally said. “I mean, no one in particular. Everyone I talked to told me,” he said, “but no one had to tell me, or anyone else. There’s an understanding. With the timing and everything — there’s an understanding. We all figured, you know, ‘Why would he reveal himself, now? If not because of—’”
Who’s we?
“The Israelites, Rabbi, of Aptakisic.”
Well, I have no plan for the Shovers, I said. That’s a misunderstanding.
“But they’re enemies of the Israelites!”
No, I said. No they’re not. They’re enemies of some Israelites, I said.
“Because they’re Israelites,” said Ally. “Which means they’re enemies of all Israelites.” He was standing up by then. So was Googy.
Sit, I said.
They sat.
The Shovers, I said, are the enemies of those Israelite Shovers who defaced their scarves with stars of David. They’re the enemies of those Israelite Shovers because those Israelite Shovers — who are dickheads, by the way, bigger dickheads even than the Gentile ones — broke Shover rules.
“I always thought they were dickheads, too, Gurion, and so did Googy — they’re all the enemies of comedy, and that’s not up for argument — and the Israelite ones, we thought, were especially big dickheads — not everyone thought that, but some of us did, and me and Goog especially, because they embarrassed us — so you have no disagreement from us that the Israelite Shovers have been dickheads. But then, like you said, they broke Shover rules, and the reason they broke Shover rules was because they wanted to be good Israelites. Or at least because they didn’t want to be bad Israelites.”