Summer Accommodations: A Novel (12 page)

“Wait! The miracle is coming.” I loved this story and was not about to abbreviate it for anyone. “They called an ambulance and took me to a nearby hospital. I had broken both the bones below the knee in my right leg in two places. I was kept in the hospital for a week and then sent home for two more weeks of bed rest. My leg was in a cast from the sole of my foot to my groin. Everyone was concerned that I'd become a record breaking fat boy, too big even for the clothes at Barney's Huskytown, BUT!” I shouted, to hold Ron's attention, “and here is where the miracle comes in, when I finally gave up the bed for crutches and could stand up, I had grown four inches and slimmed down. The kids who came to visit me were shocked by my transformation. Some of them thought it wasn't me but some new kid my folks had traded me for at the hospital. And this change didn't stop there. On June 14th, the day I broke my leg, I was five foot three inches tall, short and tubby. On September the 8th I arrived at my co-ed high school, a lean and lanky five foot ten and still growing. Was that or was that not a miracle, you tell me.”

“Sounds miraculous to me, Jack.” Harlan had been listening in the whole time.

“Almost as much of a miracle as spelling Melvin J-A-C-K,” Ron said sarcastically. “So you grew seven inches in that summer, is that what you're saying?” I nodded. “Impossible.”

“Oh yeah, then it truly was a miracle because I have the photographs to prove it.” I smiled, complacent with the evidence in my possession and the truth on my side.

“Well, I don't know that you can get another miracle. In fact, I'm positive that you've used up your quota of miracles, one to a customer one time. That's it. Get ready for NYU Melvin,” Ron gloated.

“I don't know anything about a quota on miracles, Jack. Keep your hopes up and don't let Ron discourage you.”

“Oh, Mr. Miracle himself is talking now. You know what I think? I think it would really be a miracle if you were actually a student at Harvard, that's what I think.”

“Call them up and ask.” Harlan said, extending his hand towards Ron as if offering him a telephone.

“I already have,” Ron said. I was stunned.

“And?”

“They ‘decline', I love the gentility of that word,” Ron said with contempt, “they decline to give out information about their enrollees. That is to say they would neither admit nor deny that you have ever so much as broken a book's bindings, or a pencil, or bread or wind on their campus in Cambridge.”

Harlan chuckled. “It's the summer and they don't know where any of us are, that's all it is, take my word for it.”

“We'll see about that,” Ron said, unwilling to admit defeat. He grabbed his towel and left for the basketball courts in a bad temper. The drama of my miracle, dramatic to me at least, had been totally eclipsed by their exchange. I didn't know if Ron was being honest about calling Harvard or if he was just bluffing, but I did know that, were I to ask, he would not tell me the truth.

“Well, at least Ron's mistrust is out in the open now. You know, Jack, he says that it's Harvard that he doesn't buy but I think it's me and everything about me that he doesn't believe.” Harlan lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke through his nose in two even columns. “What do we have, six weeks left ‘til we're finished up here? Why does he care so much about me, about who I am?”

“I think it's about Heidi.”

“Heidi! What does Heidi have to do with anything?” He seemed more angry than surprised. It was the first time I had seen him show anger. “Goddamn it! Why does that asshole want to meddle in my life! I loath people who meddle.” He crushed his cigarette under the heel of his shoe, then picked up the misshapen butt, laid it in his palm and closed his fingers around it in a fist. “I have to get some air. See you later,” he said.

“Wait. I don't really know that it's about her. It's just that he always seems so upset when you're out that you might be with her. That Saturday night when you caught us in the shed he joked about Heidi seeing his ass and finding him appealing.” I knew that I was going too far but I wouldn't stop myself. I was choosing to ingratiate myself with Harlan at Ron's expense. But then who were all these people anyway but strangers I had been thrown together with in the course of working my way towards the good life. Considerations of taste and temperament were never a factor in the assignment of roommates. I was always aware that ours would be short-lived friendships at best—summer accommodations if you will—and that if either attachment were to survive Labor Day I hoped it would be with Harlan. Ron was just the kind of person that I was trying to grow away from. For him there would be the traditional end of summer mountain goodbye, a firm handshake and the emphatic farewell: “Have a good life!”

“So Ron has a girlfriend, Viveca or Veronica …”

“Vivian.”

“and he's screwing Martha, and he's hungry for Heidi too, and he's concerned about my integrity?” He raised his eyebrows and sighed. “I sincerely doubt that Heidi could ever be interested in Ron.” He shook his head and drew another cigarette from his pack of Lucky Strikes. Still on the lookout for that perfect smoke I asked if I could have one and he tossed it to me.

“I'm surprised Ron has any women interested in him at all. He seems to be so gruff and critical with everyone.”

“Martha seems crazy about him. I don't know anything about Vivian, but Martha really likes him and he's not gruff with her.” At that moment I realized that this conversation could open up the opportunity to talk with Harlan about his style and his effect upon women. The way he behaved with them was very different from the way the rest of us did and women loved him for it. “Of course he's not at all as smooth as you are, you're really something to see. So tell me, how do you do it?” I asked him, “How do you get all of those girls and women to act that way?” And then, with my head lowered so that I was practically speaking into my shirt pocket, I added, “and can you teach me how to do that.” He seemed surprised by my question and he stared at me for a full minute before answering.

“Just be yourself Jack, that's the secret. Don't try too hard, don't try to be something that you're not. Be natural, that's the best advice I can give you. Just be yourself.” That disappointed me. I was hoping he'd help me to be like him, not like myself. Being myself had accomplished almost nothing for me with girls. “What's wrong? Did I say something wrong?”

“No. Well … I don't know, it's just that you have some moves that really seem to get women interested.”

Harlan emptied his laundry bag and began rolling his socks into little balls which he then lined up in neat rows in one of his drawers. He put the last pair down, came and sat down next to me on Ron's bunk, put his arm over my shoulder and exhaled loudly through his nose.

“I don't understand why you can't get this. Believe me, there are no tricks, no moves, no lines. That kind of deceit is a trap and you re the one most likely to get caught in it. Once you're caught in that trap the word gets out and no one will ever trust you again. Why can't you just relax and be yourself?” I was positive that he wasn't telling me everything. I'd watched him with different women and girls and he was not the same with each one of them. Harlan watched me as I thought this through, and though his face had been completely impassive I could feel him studying me, his eyes so piercing I felt as though I was being psychologically biopsied.

“I understand what your problem is,” he said. “You're so focused on what you're going to say and how you're coming across that you are unable to pay attention to the girl you're with. Your own fears and desires are throbbing away in your mind like Gene Krupa on a hot drum solo and the girl only exists there like a living centerfold. I'll tell you the secret, Jack, it's simple. Listen.”

I waited, listening for him to reveal the secret, but he said nothing else. “Is this a Zen trick?” I asked, “Is this the sound of one hand clapping?” I teased, exhausting my repertoire of Zen related information. Harlan squeezed my shoulder, laughed, and stood up.

“God you're wonderful in your egocentrism, Jack. I meant listen to the girl and hear what she feels, what she needs and desires. In typical Melvin fashion you thought I meant that you should listen to me and then I'd give up my secrets. My God do you have a lot to learn.” I felt chastened and embarrassed, but also impressed that Harlan was teaching me something even my brothers had never spoken of. “Listening means using your eyes, your nose, your intuition. Your ears are the least of what you need when you listen well. Consider the human animal, Jack, an ape in velvet, a creature down from the trees only recently. Yes, he uses words, sentences, whole paragraphs, but these are communicative fine tuning, the least of what conveys meaning.” He lunged forward suddenly, his jaw set, his face only inches from mine sending a fright through me and causing me to squirm away in retreat. “I didn't say anything did I? No, but you were frightened of me instantly; you who are fascinated by me, admiring of me, you who knows I would never harm you, but instinctively, reflexively, you recoiled from me. Not one word but the message was totally clear. Now there are other messages you must learn if you wish to please women and, in turn, have them please you.” This was a different Harlan, one that I had not seen before. He was expansive and intense, excited by what he was telling me, like a great teacher, I thought, and it was his excitement, the pure joy of such intellectual display that convinced me Harlan must indeed be a Harvard product. “First you learn to watch. You saw me come at you and without having to think about it you moved away from me. Most gestures are more subtle. Does she smile when you approach? Does she cock her head quizzically? Saucily? With her jaw jutting out at you? Or does she bow her head slightly and avert her eyes, and then wear just the suggestion of a smile.”

“What if she scowls?” Harlan turned, cocked his left eyebrow and tightened his mouth. “Sorry,” I said, advancing rapidly in my understanding of non-verbal communication.

“Is she wearing perfume? Is she wearing the more alluring scent of the body's nervous tension, the gamy smell of the body in a state of anticipation? Has she just eaten strawberries, drank champagne, consumed chocolate? Look for the traces at the corners of her mouth and with a soft smile and a gentle hand, wipe the residue away with a clean handkerchief, not like this,” he said, pulling a white cloth from his back pocket and unfurling it with a flourish, “but like this.” And after refolding the handkerchief, he opened it only in part, refolded it into a small square, and dabbed at the corner of my mouth while smiling solicitously. “Watch her hands, her gestures, her very fingers. Do they tremble? Are her nails bitten off and jagged, or are they like talons, leaning over the edges of her fingertips? Are they polished, and is the polish clear, or red or pink? Do her hands look soft, or are they worn with work and detergent, rough and tired. Feel sympathetic to her if they are work worn, don't be repelled. She is repelled by them, but if you seem tender about the very thing that makes her most self-conscious she will adore you.” He paced the room as he dilated on the process of observation, his arms flying through the air as if cutting swaths through the empty space. “What is her posture like? Does she stand straight, presenting her breasts with pride, or does she hunch her shoulders and stoop a little because her breasts are too big and embarrassing, or too small and embarrassing. Let me tell you, Jack, if you think men are self-conscious about the size of their penis, you've seen nothing until you've watched a room full of naked women studying each other's breasts.” I was stunned. Had Harlan actually done that? Had he seen a room filled with naked women? I almost fainted at the thought. While others might have envied Superman or Batman, Plastic Man was the superhero of my dreams. Many times I had envisioned myself as an inconspicuous curtain hanging at the window in a room filled with naked women, and Harlan was telling me that he had actually done better than that. He looked over at me, narrowed his eyes and frowned. “Enough. I can't expect you to absorb all of this in one sitting. Besides, there is more than I could ever impart to you or anyone else in just one sitting. Anyway, is it clearer to you when I say there are no moves, is it Jack?”

“Thanks, Harlan. Yes, it's definitely much clearer. Can I ask you something?” I hesitated, concerned that I might be going too far but then, as he opened the door to leave I asked anyway. “Did you really see a room full of naked women?”

3.

It was a Friday night and husbands were arriving for the weekend. Sammy never joked about his guests but many of the rest of us in the dining room enjoyed a laugh at the expense of a buffoon, a sad sack or a mystery guest. A mystery guest was usually a husband who had deposited his family on the previous Sunday and left without joining them for dinner. Ron always speculated they left hastily because they were screwing around in the city, Ivan thought they were racing back to a poker game, and I, the naïf, thought they were eager to get a jump on the coming work week so they could get ahead and leave earlier on the coming Friday to stay with their families for their final week of vacation. So, when Milly Goldfine told me her husband would be arriving that night and she wanted me to know a few things about him I figured this was my weekly mystery guest. She said her husband, Stan, was a war veteran who had been badly injured at Normandy. She didn't wish to go into the details but he'd had a fusion of the bones in his neck because of an explosion that nearly tore his head off. He didn't have many special needs but he did require being seated on her left side because the fusion permitted him to turn his head only to the right. Did I have any questions?

Mrs. Goldfine recounted all this in matter-of-fact conversational tones that must have evolved over years of the multiple tellings of the story. She stared at me through expressionless eyes awaiting my questions.