The Wisdom of Perversity (22 page)

“Can I turn on the TV?” Jeff asked, moving to the console.

“There's nothing on,” Harriet complained.

“Mets game,” Klein said in Julie's ear. At least, with her father gone, the fat fingers settled down, resting on and below her tummy, near There, but no longer reaching for more.

“THAT'S RIGHT!” Jeff
exclaimed. “I forgot.” He shimmied on his knees to reach the power dial. Brian felt the vibration of the picture tube awakening through the cabinet. Normally he would have changed position to have a better view, but he was transfixed by the spectacle of Richard Klein with Julie in his lap.

Brian watched her troubled eyes shift to the television. A moment ago, he knew exactly what she was feeling. Now he lost her. She appeared to be thoroughly engaged by a Schaefer beer commercial. She looked uncomfortable, but Klein's arms weren't moving. Brian couldn't know exactly what the fingers of his right hand were up to, but he had enough of an angle to determine that the most they could be doing was touching her tummy. Anyway, even if he touched her . . . what? He had no real understanding of female anatomy, or a vocabulary for it, other than words older boys used and whose correct usage he didn't know. While the roomful of faces settled into the slack-jawed poses of spectators, besides not knowing what Klein could touch on Julie, he wondered if there was anything wrong about any of it anyway. Maybe everybody knew about being touched down there. Maybe, like some other activities of adults, it was understood and not talked about.

While Brian watched the Mets take the field, everything seemed likely to return to the boring normal of being with adults. But then Sam Rydel's Converse sneakers appeared beside Brian. “What are we watching?” asked the teenager. “Not the Mets. They never win.” He was carrying a rectangular box, gift-wrapped in blue paper with yellow script that read
Happy Birthday!

“Is that for me?” Jeff asked.

JULIE WAS RELIEVED
the young prince had returned. Sam Rydel had the fair skin, broad shoulders, and narrow waist of Peter Martins, the best male dancer in the world and the man she hoped to marry someday, although her mother smiled slyly every time she said so. Sam was even more beautiful than Martins, she decided on the spot. With those curls and baby-smooth skin, he looked like the illustration of Prince Charming in her favorite volume of fairy tales, which she sometimes still read when she felt sad.

Aunt Harriet also seemed glad to see this handsome lad. She sat up from her layers of pillows, a hand touching her flattened hair, trying to fluff it. “Sam! You're back. I thought you had to go somewhere . . .”

“Dick sent me on an important errand.” Sam showed off the birthday gift.

“That's for later,” Klein said. “After the”—he tightened his arms around Julie's waist and squeezed three times as he said—“you-know-what.” He pushed all the air from her lungs. While she recovered her breath, his fingers, quiescent for a while, came alive. They spread and reached lower, almost There. Maybe a little There? She arched and managed to slide down some, providing just enough clearance from those fat fingers.

She tried to focus on Prince Charming. Jeff was jumping at him like a puppy, hungry for the wrapped gift, touching, retreating, and touching it again. “It's a board game,” Jeff guessed. “Right?” He checked with Klein. “Why can't we play it now?”

“Jeff, cut it out,” Harriet said. “You were so sweet to get it, Samuel. So sweet.”

“Hey.” Klein's breath tickled her neck. “I paid for it.” Klein patted her tummy, fingers snaking lower, middle tip reaching the edge of There.

Sam winked. “That's right, Harriet. Dick paid. For a change.”

Jeff grabbed one end of the gift box, couldn't pull it free from Sam's hands. “Lemme open it,” he whined. Jeff's insistence on his desire inspired Julie to try to sit up from the weenie pressing between her butt. If she jerked against and loosened his arms, she could slide down, out and away.

Klein seemed to read her mind: as soon as she tensed to make a move, his arms turned to iron. And his hands got mean: a nail pinched a tender spot just above There. The shock froze her.

But she didn't cry out. She gave up any attempt to squirm out of his grasp. He had made it clear that she wouldn't be allowed to move an inch unless she were to thrash and fight hard. She would have to “make a scene,” as her mother used to say, and she wasn't supposed to make a scene. Noah made scenes, her father made scenes, and both humiliated her mother. Julie got as still as she could. Sure enough, the fingers relaxed and patted her tummy. “Good girl,” Klein whispered, from right inside her ear, it felt like, and so faintly, too faintly for anyone but her to hear.

JEFF'S BACK TO
normal,
Brian thought, glad to see his friend tugging on his present. Sam didn't let go. Jeff pulled with all his might, face turning red.

“Jeff!” Harriet scolded.

Sam teased him, lifting the box up and away, but not too far away.

Hy appeared, carrying in another folding chair, setting it down between Harriet's bed and the closet.

“Open the present! Open the present!” Noah demanded, bouncing on the bed. He didn't make contact with Harriet, yet she clutched her side and groaned.

While he opened up the chair, Hy scolded, “Stop, Noah. Sit still!”

“I'd better hide this,” Sam said.

“
NO
!” Noah cried, slamming his hands on the bed. Harriet moaned.

“
I'll
put it away,” Hy said, taking the package and leaving. Noah, grief-stricken, buried his head in the covers.

Harriet gestured to the empty folding chairs. “Sit down, Samuel. Tell me all about yourself. You excited about going to college?”

This reminded Brian of another lie he had to keep quiet about—Sam wasn't seventeen and a high school senior; he was fifteen, a junior. How could he explain knowing that? Worse, if he did let it slip, in retaliation his secret—how It acted—would come out.

Sam sat in Hy's empty chair. His legs partially obscured Brian's view of Klein and Julie. Sam looked down at Brian and teased, in the same husky tone Klein used, “Am I in your way?”

“Move here,” Klein told Brian, tapping the empty corner where the drapes gathered when open. “You can see the baseball game better.”

Brian moved on all fours to the indicated spot. Klein wanted him to watch what he was doing to Julie and he wanted to see. Brian leaned one shoulder on the drapes, angling himself to take in both the RCA console and a view of Julie's legs atop Klein's lap. With a slight lift and tilt of his head, he could see up her skirt—if her legs parted. She was keeping them flush.

“So tell me, Sam,” Harriet repeated, pausing to release a heavy sigh, “what are you thinking of majoring in?”

“Hoping to go to law school, I guess,” Sam said.

“You're going to law school?” Hy picked up the conversation as he reentered. He sat in the chair he had placed beside Harriet's bed, facing Sam and, beyond him, the television, putting his back to Klein and Julie.

Sam laughed. Harriet was scornful. “For God's sakes, he's just starting college!”

Hy, bruised from the earlier dentist jokes, was quick to take offense. “I was being polite. He's obviously too young for law school. Matter of fact, you look too young for college. Did you skip a couple grades? That's what they're doing these days, skipping bright kids.”

“He's seventeen,” Klein snapped. “A very bright seventeen.”

Sam answered respectfully, “I was laughing at myself, Mr. Mark. Law school's just my dream. I probably won't have the grades.”

Klein hiked Julie up a little higher on his lap. Her eyes widened.
What is he doing with his hand?
Brian wondered.
Girls only have a hole,
Jeff had claimed. Klein said, “Don't let him talk that way, Hy. Unlike me, you've got an advanced degree. Encourage the boy. Tell him he can be anything he wants. Sam's problem is that he didn't have the benefit of a great father like you, Hy. He needs a man's encouragement.”

Openly discussing Sam's psychological needs was discomforting for Harriet and Hy. She coughed, reached for her tea. Hy smiled warily while stumbling his way through “Uh, yeah . . . Richard's right, Sam, you put your mind to it I'm sure you'd make a fine lawyer.” There was an awkward silence. Brian lost track of the adults for a moment, distracted by the television broadcast of the Mets game when Ed Kranepool hit a home run. “He's gonna have a great year,” Jeff said to no one, and added that Kranepool had gone to James Monroe High School in the Bronx. Brian had heard him say that at least a million times. “Of course being a lawyer is always a good idea,” Hy tried cautiously. “But you have to have the aptitude for it.”

“Oh, Sam's got the aptitude,” Klein said, drawing Brian's gaze back to him and Julie.
Where is his hand?
He could see the left on top of her skirt, at its waistband. The right was underneath, touching her. That was confirmed by clues from Julie. She wasn't moving. Her eyes were glazed, focused inward monitoring Klein's hidden hand. Brian slid down to see what it was up to. “He's a brilliant student. He's going to Columbia. I'm sure he'll graduate Phi Beta and get into any law school he wants—”

“Wow,” Hy said. “Columbia. Why didn't you say so? Sure, sure, he'll get into a good law school, maybe even Columbia's. Theirs is good, very good.”

Brian found an angle that allowed him to see her white panties with little yellow birds and sure enough, just above them, the tips of Klein's fingers. They weren't moving. That was good. Brian checked on Julie. She was staring past him. Klein wasn't. He was looking right at Brian, and once the boy's eyes came his way, the grown-up winked.

JULIE FASTENED ON
Sam's profile. She had admired his good looks when they went to Zolly's. Now he was more than merely cute. He's really a prince, she decided, and made a wish, for this beautiful young man to free her.

Miraculously, he did. When her father examined Mr. Klein, that hadn't chased away the discomforts and surprises of sitting in the man's lap, but Sam's being in the observer's seat banished all weirdness. Klein shifted her position in some small way that meant his weenie wasn't pressing against her, and then Klein's hands joined in the discussion over Sam's future, so the restless fingers on her belly also departed. She was still on Mr. Klein's lap, but now it was only a lap.

She listened to her father, Aunt Harriet, and Klein praise Sam's abilities, debating how he could make the best use of them. She wondered, with pity in her heart, about Sam's need for a father. She was impressed by the reports of the teenager's brilliant mind, well suited to the demands of the law, Klein said. “He'll be worth millions someday,” he said. Handsome Sam modestly deflected the compliments with demure shakes of his blond curls, which persuaded Julie he must indeed be a genius.

“CAN I MAKE
the TV louder? I can't hear,” Jeff complained. Brian was glad to hear him complain.
Things really seem to be okay again,
Brian thought,
really normal.

“Jeff,” Harriet said harshly. That was all she said.

“I can't hear it!” Jeff repeated, his whine elongating each word.

Klein pointed to Brian. “Sit with your buddy. You can hear from there.”

So things weren't normal. That was a lie. Brian understood instantly Klein was moving Jeff so he could also see Julie in his lap. Jeff obeyed without protest, which also wasn't normal. Brian twisted to avoid his best friend's Keds whacking him, accidentally improving his view looking up Julie's white legs. He forced himself not to look. For one thing, nothing was going on; for another, now that he understood Klein wanted him to see, he wanted to thwart him.

Nothing happened as two scoreless innings of baseball were played while Harriet, Hy, and Klein talked about civil rights and the war. The world
was
normal: the adults were boring, he and Jeff were being deprived of their rightful entertainment, everything was waiting on the performance of a tedious birthday ritual whose only redeeming feature was they would get to eat cake.

JULIE WAS EVEN
more relieved than Brian that things had become dull and familiar. She leaned away from Klein's voice, keeping her nose out of the cloud of Old Spice, fastening her eyes on Sam's angular face while he answered random questions about his plans. From time to time Sam glanced her way, first lighting on Klein with a serious look, then dropping to offer her a friendlier twinkle of a smile.

Saul returned home from his errand. He entered the bedroom, saying low to Harriet, “Taken care of.”

“Great! The big surprise is safe,” Jeff said. “Now can we go play outside?”

“No!” Harriet fairly shrieked. Jeff moaned, burying his head in his lap.

Sam laughed, twisted in his chair to say something to Jeff and caught Julie's unrestrained look of admiration. He gazed directly at her for a long, long moment. She was overwhelmed by the full glare of his beauty and looked away.

Hy asked him about the duties of a NBC page. Saul settled in a folding chair while Sam described his schedule: five afternoons and evenings a week at NBC, mornings attending college prep courses. When the young man began to describe escorting guests on
The Tonight Show
to the greenroom—the mere mention of these celebrities excited her father; additional details extracted a “Wow!” from Hy—Klein's hand, nestled beneath Julie's skirt's waist, came to life.

The room was crowded. She was surrounded. Cousin Jeff and Brian were two feet away looking right at her in Klein's lap. Sam was angled slightly to the right, but he regularly glanced at her while he talked. Her father and Noah were a few feet behind, the other adults were on the far side of the bed, parallel to her, not able to see her but very near, while Klein's fingers crept under her panties, making funny little taps along the way down as if he were playing Little Piggy with a baby.