Romance:From Fat To Fatale(22)

local Hershkowitzes. Larry's dad ran the town's kosher deli and butcher's shop and was the cantor at the town's synagogue. An over-protected child, Larry had never been exposed to the perils and potential calamities of the community swimming pool so he'd been obliged to wait until he went to college before taking the plunge and signing up, like me, for adult swimming classes.

He was obviously entering his first serious rebellious phase since his mid-teens and he didn't look as if he was enjoying the experience, flailing around in the shallow end with eyes screwed shut to keep out the water, mouth sealed to eliminate all risk of swallowing a droplet of the pool's contaminated water, turning in circles like an apprentice dervish and then slapping me on the back of my head with his skinny arm as I dog-paddled serenely past his very convincing impersonation of a drowning circus chimp. He paused in mid-flail to gasp and apologise for his clumsiness. I ceased my doggie-paddle and dropped anchor with both feet to appraise my assailant, considering the merits of breaking off the offending skinny arm and sticking its bony end up his bony skinny ass to teach him some manners - old country ways never too far below the surface.

He blinked at me with uncertainty and a squint of dread as my leviathan body emerged slowly from the deep. Or, to be more accurate, from the chlorinated shallows. His eyebrows shot up as he confronted the scale of his unintended victim and he instinctively raised both hands protectively in front of his scrawny chest. You're not mad at me? He stammered. He looked kind of vulnerable

and defenceless as he stood there shivering in front of my looming bulk. Just the way I like skinny guys to look before I snap off their arm and shove it up their ass. It was an accident, he whimpered. I shook my head as I took up station within boarding distance of his bony frame.

You're the accident, I hailed across the chop, as I pointed an admonishing finger at his freckled nose, and if you ever smack me on the head with your matchstick arm again, you moron, you'll have a sudden fatal accident that will leave the county coroner asking how you managed to get your arm so far up your dumb ass, you could brush your teeth from inside your throat. He stared at me, the imagery filtering through his head - cartoon pictures of an arm moving up his rear end, the hand at the back of his throat, the little toothbrush working his teeth from the back instead of the front.

And he coughed to disguise his laugh. Then he laughed a little louder. You're funny, he said. I mean - what you just said, just now, about my arm and the toothbrush - that was funny. Were you in the army or something?

Sounds like something a really mean Drill Instructor would say to the new recruits. He was smiling now. Something had touched his funny bone which, fortunately for him, was not at this precise moment wedged firmly up his skinny ass. We live in our own little worlds, don't we, my friend? Completely oblivious to so many things that are going on right beneath our noses and that was when I noticed his eyes. Larry Hershkowitz - Lawrence, (his father had thought the name sounded so classy, so British) - had the most beautiful, greyest eyes I'd ever seen. Like early morning light on a northern sea. His eyes caught me like the steel strands of an impossible spider's mesh and held me fast for a full minute.

Now don't get me wrong here. This was not - repeat not - like some slushy dime store novel where the heroine (that's supposed to be me, by the way, in case you'd forgotten!) falls hopelessly in love at first sight with the rugged captain of the guard after one smouldering glance across the candlelit ballroom floor.

That absolutely and certainly never, ever happened to me. Not ever. All those repeated teenage episodes of unrequited love as I yearned for various members of the high school football team had been conducted strictly in private, safely conducted in the confines of my bedroom and my imagination. Each and every one of those fevered bobby-socked crushes had never ever involved being remotely close to the guys in question. And not one of them had ever even noticed my existence on the planet. It was just innocent lust at a distance.

So Larry Hershkowitz's fabulous eyes held my attention for a few seconds and I couldn't help noticing how beautiful they were but then he sneezed so forcefully that I ended up with a face spattered with mucus and chlorinated water and the spell was broken. I'm really sorry, he stammered. It's the water. It irritates my sinuses. I felt like irritating his sphincters with the soggy end of his wrenched-off arm again but I dipped my face in the water and the moment passed without mortal harm being inflicted on my new acquaintance. I should get you a coke or a coffee or something to say sorry, he said. And that's how we ended up at the poolside cafeteria, a coke for Larry and a vegetable juice for me.

And we just talked and talked. For about three hours.





Chapter 15:


Affairs of the heart





Larry Hershkowitz. That's not what he's known as today, of course. And you know I don't like to namedrop! But what a character. Back then he was a complete basketful of surprises. Let me tell you something about him. Larry's childhood expectations had taken a u-turn when he was about fifteen. Oldest of three with two brothers, he was outstandingly bright, tall for his age, skinny and studious. Like everything he turned his mind to, he totally excelled at his Hebrew lessons so, with nods of encouragement from the wiser members of the community, there was an unspoken understanding in the neighbourhood that the Hershkowitzes had received God's personal blessing and produced a great rabbi-in-the-making.