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Show Anting Alone Page 268 she'd enjoyed first-hand experience of Czarist life. She sensed Sam's appraisal of her physical condition and, in retaliation, had conceived an unnatural passion against him. She explicitly hated him for no other reason than his extraordinarily goyische hugeness and orangeness. At faculty parties Zeitl always tried to embarrass Sam by addressing him at the top of her dry lungs as Big Husky Boy. One evening, drunk and, as usual, uninvited, Sam had called her a name right back: Short Baggy Douche, he'd called her, or words to that effect. And Dr. A., who'd been at the other end of the room drunkenly pounding a finger into someone's chest and expressing the opinion that William Carlos Williams was a son-of-a-bitch, heard Sam's words and had to leave the room to save his marriage. He loved the foulmouthed boy. Sam now proceeded on up through his imaginary, doomed shtetl to the house of Abraham, building up fantasies of a fond, joyous reception from an older man, a happy reunion of two literati. But the strange surges of dread kept pressing up from between the red edges of his empty spleenhole. Maybe it was just mere cosmic petulance, or maybe arrested adolescent pessimism operating here, or perhaps the general moroseness of Yiddish folktale had rubbed off on him; but Sam had the strongest feeling that something was at work, even at this moment, to destroy this single good relationship that he had ever enjoyed with an older man. He felt grey and pulpy inside like chewed newsprint. Could Abraham be more than just ill? Nah. Elijah is immortal. The sexy old son-of-a-gun is probably just experiencing some prostate trouble. |