The only thing that would tip you that he was a Jew was his nose, it hooked down on the end, kind of flattened like.The only thing that would tip you that he was a Jew was his nose, it hooked down on the end, kind of flattened like. It wasn't a honker or anything, but that was definitely not a wasp nose. Not that there's any Wasps in New Jersey of course. God I can almost feel and smell and hear the kid now. It's no goddamn wonder he was getting beat up all the time. We were supposed to "get to know each other". His old lady though figured I was a free babysitter, like the bitch wasn't loaded enough to pay for a sitter for christ sake, so she took off, told us to have fun, she'd be back for dinner. I asked the kid what he wanted to do, figuring maybe he'd want to horse around outside, run around or something. He kicked the table leg, shrugged. Great. "Well, you wanna toss a ball around 'r something?" I asked him, wolfing down another handful of pretzels and helping myself to another coke. We didn't get soda at my house. The kid shrugged, kinda squeaked. He came back with a junior size football. I wasn't into football much, those guys were all rank assholes, big stupid muscleheads, and our town sucked thoroughly anyway at all the big sports: football, basketball, baseball. So we ran around his backyard, it had a huge privacy fence, big old trees, poplars I think? I didn't *always* live in the city, I moved here as soon as I could. Trees bore me. We tossed the ball around; it's not as if I was ever even any good with a football, but the kid was a spaz, and we just started mostly horsing around, running and trying to tackle each other. I think this kid probably never PLAYED with another guy in his life, he hardly knew what to do. ... It's not like I planned to. If I'd got caught, my life would've ended that afternoon. |