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Show 178 I nodded solemnly. "Five of the bastards paid for that." Like me, Bob Berger spent most of the war on Miami Beach and got more ass, Jewish and shiksa, than all the rest of us put together, but I was as convincing as I used to be telling girls I was shipping out in a suicide squadron of night fighters and Marsha warmed up, came closer, maybe friendship would trij^ph yet. But then when we walked back up 55th Street and north on Drexel past 51st Street, when it became evident to Marsha that Tom had arranged with Sheila to use the neighbor's empty apartment, probably for an orgy, Marsha turned on me, a furious sun rising in her eyes. "So that's what it was all about!" "No! All I want is to be friends." "With you as a friend, what would I need with an enemy? You goyisheh kopl" I didn't know what that meant but I sensed it wasn't flattering. She went home, Tom and Sheila went to the empty apartment to see if all was well there, and I limped home. I had a blister from all that walking. "Vay iz mir!" said the guys in the Co-op. "You told her you shot down five Nazi olanes and still she dumped you? Oh, Aby, what do you expect for a German Catholic goy?" They started calling me The Nebbish Ace. I decided I didn't need a lot of friends, just good ones, and so when the University Players did The Importance of Being Earnest and I did not get the part of Jack to play opposite Amelia's Gwendolen, too short, I hung around anyhow and helped with the sets. Twenty a week was hard to live on though so I decided to look for a job, maybe even save some money, and with two guys from the Co-op I went the rounds of employers and agencies, one afternoon to the Jewish agency. In the elevator I said I wasn't going in, I would wait for them. "My name's too German, I look too German." |