"Reb-b-becca…"
"So hot I can't stand it," Rebecca said. "I've never talked this way to anyone in my life."
"You… you ought to be careful," he said, "t-t-talk-ing that way."
"I know, I know," she said, moaning the words. In the silence, she moved again. The stretched uniform made tiny crisp sounds as she adjusted her body to the length of his, moving minutely in against him, her arms tight around his neck, trembling.
"Do you get hot?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"So hot you can't stand it?"
"Yes."
"Are you now?" Her voice so small.
"Yes."
"I can feel you." A whisper.
"Are… you?" he asked.
"Yes, oh yes."
It all happened, it was too, he didn't plan, hands under starched, and her white thighs, she turned, white stockings, and it happened and he, she moved beneath him, silk, all opening, the slip and, in a tangle of, and white garters, hands under, wet, and she said, oh she said, oh she said, wide, and was all, he didn't, held and clawed and, legs spread, and he was, she moaned, wet and garters, wet and, oh she said, oh love she moaned, oh, her head was, she was, he could feel, tossing, it happened, it was happening, he was, baby, he was, honey, lips and wet and hard and hard, I love you, I love you, I love you.
Ahhh me, he thought back with a sigh, it has never been like that again, not the way it was with Rebecca in Boston, two dumb young kids discovering what humping was all about, and going at it with a secret eagerness that, God we couldn't wait to see each other each time. Three, four times a week, sometimes more, going at it with a secret soaring joy that shouted to the world, we knew what it was all about, we had discovered it, we had patented it, we were the only two people humping in Boston — by the river, and in the back seat of the '36 Plymouth I bought, and in a Providence hotel one weekend, and once in Dr. Strauss's Oldsmobile parked behind the hospital, and then day and night in the apartment I took on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, when I entered law school. Day and night, it's a wonder I learned any law at all, the only law I knew was whatever sweetly called to me from between Rebecca's legs. And then, I don't know, I don't know what happens, war happens, I guess. You get put into 1-A when you're in your second year of law school, and I guess you figure you'd better get into the Navy where the beds are always clean, so the legend goes, and there're always three square meals a day, so the legend goes, before they draft you into the infantry and you get your ass blown off invading the fortress of Europe. And besides, by that time Rebecca had met a young captain who was stationed at the Air Corps base on Jeffries Point. It was wartime — I saw him once, he was very tall and blond, he had blue eyes, he looked a little like Terry in Terry and the Pirates which Papa brought home every Sunday when he bought bagels on Rivington Street — it was wartime, so who could blame anyone? Who could blame the captain for succumbing to Rebecca's Law, and who could blame Rebecca, blossoming wild and willful Rebecca, young, sweet Rebecca, for wanting to go to bed with Terry, or even Pat Ryan, for that matter? I'd certainly have done it with the Dragon Lady if she had come along. Or Burma.
My ship was commissioned in Boston, I guess it was 1943, and I called Rebecca Strauss, or at least I called her number in West Newton, and her father got on the phone. Dr. Strauss, and he said, "Hello, there, Sidney, how have you been, fellow?" sounding like a goy, I could visualize him in Bermuda shorts, holding a five iron. I told him I'd been down to fire control school in Fort Lauderdale — "Oh, learning how to put out fires, huh, Sidney?" — (I didn't bother to correct him) — and that I'd been assigned to a destroyer and we were here in Boston before heading down to Gitmo (I used the Navy slang for Guantanamo just to show him how salty I was, and also to imply to him somehow that I had been humping his daughter for three years, put that in your scalpel case, Dr. Strauss) on shakedown cruise and I was wondering if I could talk to Rebecca, say hello and all that. Well, gee, Sidney, Dr. Strauss said, sounding more and more like the president of the local Grange, I'd be very happy to let you talk to Rebecca, but she doesn't live here anymore. You see, Sidney, she was married in October, perhaps you know the fellow (fellow again), perhaps you know him, a very nice fellow from Detroit, Michigan, his name is Lonnie Scott, S-C-O-T-T-. No, I said, I'm sorry, Dr. Strauss, I don't think I ever met any friend of Rebecca's named Lonnie Scott, S-C-O-T-T. Oh, he's a very nice fellow, Dr. Strauss said, very very nice, they're living in California now, he's stationed out there, he's a major in the Air Corps, a very nice fellow, Sidney. Well, Dr. Strauss, I said, if you should have the opportempt to write to Becks (I used this pet name in an attempt once more to inform Dr. Strauss that his daughter Becks and I had been intimate for three years, get it, Dr. Strauss? Intimate. I-N-T-I-M-A-T-E) if you should happen to write to old Becks, why you just tell her Sidney called on his way through Boston to say hello and remind her of old times (in your Oldsmobile behind the hospital, for instance, Dr. Strauss, which I thought but didn't say). Why, sure, Sidney, Dr. Strauss said, sounding more and more like an Ohio preacher every minute, sure, fellow, I'll tell her you called — and say, good luck with that fire fighting, it's a dangerous business especially aboard ship. It sure is, I told him (do you get hot, Sidney, so hot you can't stand it?). Goodbye, Dr. Strauss.
Goodbye, fellow.
The war meant nothing to Sidney. He never saw any action, and the only danger to which he was exposed was that of tedium, even though he was aboard a destroyer. (Once they shot at a floating Japanese mine, and exploded it. Everyone cheered.) He was honorably discharged in September of 1946, and spent the summer with his parents who had moved from Houston Street to Walton Avenue near Yankee Stadium. His mother had one of her "fits" in August, shortly before he left for school again, it had to do with the doctor she had begun visiting, something about his nurse, Sidney couldn't follow it, nor did he try. He simply sat in terrified patience while the raving and ranting ran its course, his father fluttering about her like a broken butterfly, trying to calm her, Sarah's green eyes flashing, brown hair streaked with gray now, back straight and stiff, pacing, pacing (he remembered the soft embraces of Rebecca Strauss, they do sound to me like hysterical symptoms, she may have been raped or something, Rebecca's Law. Only once did they ever exchange harsh words, the time she was ten days late and they were frantic, no, twice actually, because she was also late after that long weekend in Providence, she almost climbed the ceiling that time, Rebecca, Becks, my love).
His mother died in 1953, after he had been practicing law for five years and had already started the partnership with Carl. He was so enormously relieved by her passing that for several weeks afterward he walked around in a gloomy cloud of guilt, questioning his love for her, had he wanted her dead? blaming himself for not having insisted on chest X-rays earlier, and yet delighted, but had it been his fault? had he wished it once too often? and yet deliriously happy that she was dead and finally in the ground where nothing but the worms could tremble if she took a supernatural fit. He began to question, too, his own monumental anger, was it really such? Or had he simply built an elaborate defense against his own fear, constructing an image of a violently dangerous human being (inside every skinny Jew there is a fat Nazi) whom you had better not fool around with, Mama, because he is as equally capable of murderous rage as you are. He didn't know. Even now, he still thought of himself as a person with a low boiling point, a violent man who easily lost his temper — and yet he knew he hardly ever raised his voice to anyone.