The Instructions (124 page)

I barely made the Metra. By the time I got on, the upper level was full, and I had to share a seat on the bottom. The woman I shared with smelled like a cantaloupe and she made it impossible to read. For the duration of the ride, she chewed granola from a bag and, though graciously muffled, her crunching was audible, and oat particles gathered on her lap unswiped.

In Deerbrook Park it was drizzling coldly. Coming up the sidewalk, I saw Flowers by the hoodoo shrub, sweeping dead bugs off the walkway into envelopes. I was half across the drop-off circle when the bus pulled up and honked. Flowers must have heard it, but he kept his eyes on concrete.

The bus wouldn’t leave as long as the driver saw me, so I waved and he shrugged and I continued toward Flowers, saying what I had to say.

I said, I’m sorry I said fiction was lies—I didn’t mean it.

“
That’s
what you’re sorry about?”

And when I said we weren’t friends anymore, I said. I take that back.

“And?”

And nothing, I said.

I revolved and went to the bus.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Flowers said to my back.

That wasn’t up to me, though. Maybe getting slapped had made my voice a little wooden, and the apology’d come out less sincere than it could have, but I’d apologized for exactly as much as I’d felt apologetic, and Flowers gave me nothing, wooden or 1169

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otherwise. I boarded the bus still pissed at him, too.

Three people called my name. The first two were Dingle and Salvador Curtis. I didn’t know the third guy, but Dingle and Salvador were near the back of the bus and this third guy was closer, so I took the seat behind him.

“I’m Ally Kravitz,” he said. He put out his hand and I left it hanging. A blue pelican was embroidered on the tit of his shirt and when he saw I wouldn’t shake he touched it. “Pinker called me last night,” he said, “and so did The Levinson. Pinker called to tell me that you were
the
Gurion, and then The Levinson called to say the same thing, just in case I’d thought Pinker was yanking my banana.” He unzipped his bag and showed me a pennygun. “Show him,” he said to a boy across the aisle. “That’s Googy Segal,” Ally Kravitz said to me. Googy Segal’s face was a tiny, pointy face beneath a big blonde bubble of coarse-looking curls.

I’d noticed him before; he was hard not to notice. Pop-eyed and ruddy-cheeked, even in repose, he always looked startled. In greet-ing me, he hissed out a quiet, lilting sibilant—the high, lipless whistle little kids playing war use to imitate incoming missiles.

“Googy’s shy,” Ally said. “He doesn’t like to speak much. Words cause him trouble if gets too excited—Go on, Goog, show him.

Show him the you-know.” Googy pulled a pennygun from the spy-pocket of his jacket, then put it back in and zipped up fast.

Seeing Israelites with weapons did make my lungs tingle, but for Ally Kravitz I would show no joy.

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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.

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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 1172

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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?”

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

They should have just quit.

“They did, though. They quit.”

They didn’t, I said. They got kicked out.

“I’m telling you they quit—you must not have read the email.

They got kicked out on Wednesday, but yesterday afternoon they held an emergency meeting and they quit, and Berman sent this, like, press release to everyone announcing it last night.”

I said, Tch.

“Tch what?” said Ally.

I said, They’d already been kicked out by then.

“I see your point,” Ally said. “And I’m with you,” he said, 1176

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“and I know it looks weak. It probably even is weak—quitting after you’re fired, it looks like caulk, but still, they’re no longer Shovers, and they
are
Israelites, and since they’re Israelites, it seems like they should be given the benefit of the doubt. At least it seems that way to me. That
I
should give them the benefit of the doubt. Am I wrong, Rabbi? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

He wasn’t wrong. It was the right thing to do.

I told him so. Then Googy nodded vigorously, pointed at me, peek-a-booed, shrugged, choked himself, and shrugged again.

Ally said, “What Googy wants to know is why did you reveal yourself yesterday if it wasn’t to bring us together to attack the Shovers over the scarves?”

The Five were looking for me, I said to Googy.

Googy waved me off like a beggar.

“Googy finds that hard to believe,” Ally said. “So do I. They just happened to be looking for you yesterday? The timing’s too perfect. There has to be some connection between—”

There is, I said, but it’s not through me. Shpritzy got attacked by Shlomo Cohen yesterday—

“It looked more, to us, like he attacked Shlomo. Him and the other four.”

Shlomo attacked Shpritzy first, I said. During Lunch-Recess.

He beat Shpritzy up and some other guys restrained the other four so they couldn’t interfere, and when he was finished beating on Shpritzy, he made it clear it was because of the scarves. He said, ‘Say hi to Berman for me. Tell him, ‘Sharp scarf,’ and—’

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“Tell
Acer
sharp scarf, you mean,” Ally said. “Acer’s the one who started the fishes.”

No, I said,
Berman
, who started the stars.

“I don’t like that,” said Ally. “That’s lousy. I don’t like it. You know, when the Five brought
Ulpan
to Aptakisic, Shlomo was the only Israelite who didn’t get it. I was there. So was Googy. In Pinker’s backyard—Pinker was the one who invited him, Shlomo, but Shlomo didn’t show. There were only twelve of us at Pinker’s.

Everyone else was divided up between the rest of the Five’s backyards. Everyone else but Shlomo, like I said. And anyway, we waited for an hour for him to show, and he didn’t show, and he didn’t even call. And since the way Pinker invited everyone to receive your
Ulpan
was by going up to them in the hall and handing them a list of supplies with his address on it, and saying,