Jim - Twelve

Jim

            I had avoided Hersch like the plague for days. Every time I looked at him, all I could see was that surprisingly large, hard dick. As far as I knew, he had no idea I had seen him, and I intended to keep it that way.

            The problem was that Gabe and Erich had formed some kind of weird partnership (actually Gabe seemed more like a pet than a partner in the situation), so without Hersch I had no one. That meant I started spending a lot more time in the library. So when everyone broke off after dinner on Friday, off I went.

            I didn’t spend a lot of time there that day. I really just wanted to get back to the dorm and sleep. But I didn’t know where Hersch had gone, and I did not want to end up alone in the room with him. I only stayed in the library until I figured it was safe to go back.

            At the door of the dorm, I took a good long listen before going in. I heard someone moving around, but by that point I was so tired I didn’t even care if it was Hersch. So I went in.

            Unlike the last unexpected thing I had walked into in that room, this took me a long moment for me to realize what I was seeing. A girl in a somewhat outdated pleated dark blue dress sat on Hersch’s bunk. She looked up from under her round-brimmed hat with her long-lashed brown eyes and smiled. “Herschel!” she said happily. She furrowed her brow when she realized I wasn’t Hersch. “Who are you?” That seemed like it was my question to ask, but she got there first.

            That accent, those eyes, that face. In a second I knew who this girl was.

            Becky

            Everything occurred to me in just a few seconds, during which all I could do was stare at her with my eyes bugging out of my head. First, I realized she didn’t recognize me, a fact which made my heart sink. But that assured me that she was definitely not there to see me, demanding money or claiming me to be the father of a baby or something. She had been waiting for Hersch, I realized next. This Jewish call girl was here to see Hersch.

            Oh God. Hersch had a hooker.

            I didn’t answer her question, but fumbled for the door handle behind me and managed to garble out “Could you… um… just stay here… for just… excuse me a second!” I was out the door before she could answer.

            I had intended to run away as fast as possible, but Gabe and Erich were coming down the hall, and I had to tell them. “Moretti!” I hissed, dashing over to them, “Amery!”

            “What the hell, Banhart?”

            “Guys,” I wheezed, “Hersch has a girl in there!”            

            Gabe’s jaw dropped end Erich screwed up his face in disbelief. “What do you mean?”

            I didn’t really know how to make it any clearer. “There’s a girl in there from that bar in London. And she’s here to see Abrahamson!”

            “You’re kidding.”

            “I swear!”

            “How do you know she’s a call girl?” Gabe asked.

            I bit the inside of my cheek, not wanting to go into detail. “I just… ran into her during the raid.”

            Gabe believed me, but Erich was smarter about this kind of stuff. “You ran into her, or you ran into her?’ he asked suggestively, raising a pale eyebrow.

            If it was either of the other guys, I would have hit him. “That’s not important, Amery.”

            “Jesus Christ! You screwed her!”

            “No I didn’t!” I insisted through gritted teeth. That was the truth, I guess. “Listen, it was nothing! I’ll tell you guys about that later, but right now we need to do something about the situation in there!” I pointed wildly back towards the dorm.

            “Okay, let’s not panic!” Gabe broke in. “Maybe it’s nothing. What you need to do is go back in there and figure out why she’s here!”

            “Well I’m pretty goddamn sure I know why she’s here!” I hissed sarcastically.

            “Well either way, you have to keep her occupied,” he insisted. “You can’t let her go looking for Hersch. If Knight catches us with a girl on the grounds, he’ll have all of us kicked out of here in a second.”

            “Why can’t you two do it?” There was nothing I wanted less than detain Becky while she waited to f**k Hersch.

            “She knows you,” Erich said. “Maybe you can find out what a girl like her wants with Abrahamson.”

            I cringed at the thought of what she might want from Hersch, but knew they were right. “All right, you two stay right here. If Abrahamson comes, try to keep him away so I can get out before he catches me talking to her.”

            “Believe me, we’ll be right outside the door,” Erich smirked.

            “F**k off!”

            “Get in there! She’ll go looking for you.”

            Erich gave me a shove and I was galloping back towards the dorm. I took a deep breath and went back into the room

            Becky was still there, of course. She was sitting on the bunk looking around at the room. She narrowed her eyes when she saw I was back. The fierceness in her face assured me that this was the girl I knew. “Who are you?” she asked again, harsher this time.

            “Um… Jim. James,” I told the truth before I could think of a lie. “I was in your… uh… room. The night of the air raid a… a few weeks back. Remember?” Idiot! I heard in my head. A*****e! Don’t remind her!

            But it was too late. A look of realization and horror passed across her face and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh God, not you!” she moaned.

            I was so confused as to why she was there I couldn’t even process the insult. “You’re not here for me, are you?” I already knew she wasn’t, but for some reason I kind of wished she was.

            She laughed humorlessly. “Does it look like I even remembered what your name was?” She removed her hat and set it on the bed, revealing her short, choppy haircut. “I am here to see Herschel.”

            I gave a croaking, unnatural laugh. “I figured.”

             She stood and took a step towards me, making discomfortingly forward eye contact. “James,” she said, more harshly than before, “what the hell are you doing here?”

            I just looked at her, blindsided by her impoliteness. “I live here,” I said angrily. “I go to school here. This is my dorm. What the hell are you doing here?”

            She was clearly surprised that I had answered just as sneeringly as she had. “I told you,” she said, seeming a little hurt, “I am here to see Herschel.”

            I felt bad, even though she had insulted me first. “Sorry,” I muttered, wondering why in the world I was apologizing.

            Becky did not seem to notice my apology. “He lives here too, does he not?”

            “Uh, yes. Him and me and two other roommates,” I said, feeling the need to explain the situation for some reason. I thought it might sound queer if she thought Hersch and I were here alone (though obviously she knew better than anyone that neither of us were fairies). A snicker came from the other side of the wall.  I swiftly kicked the door, but Becky knew.

            “They are out there, I assume?” she asked, annoyed. “The other roommates, the German and the… feminine one.

            Again with the fairy thing! “Um… probably,” I muttered embarrassedly.

            She nodded. “Herschel writes about you boys often. You are the…” she paused, trying to remember, and I wondered what Hersch might have told her about me, “… the funny one, with the long legs.”

            My face fell. Not exactly a flattering image. I wanted to change the subject. “Yeah,” I said uncomfortably, “That’s me. So… is this your first time…” I didn’t know how to say it, “…visiting Hersch?” I hoped she got what I meant. 

            Becky smiled. “Yes. But we have been keeping in contact, of course.”

            That was confusing. Hersch must have been setting this up for a long time. I figured he had seen her dance that night at the bar and had liked what he had seen. “So he saw you the night of the raid?” I asked.

            To my surprise, Becky’s face filled with horror. “What? Herschel was there that night? He saw me?”

            “Oh, no,” I mumbled. I must have been wrong. Obviously he wasn’t supposed to know she was working at the bar. “No, actually he ran off before he could have seen you, I guess.” Hersch must have met her when he first came to London, I thought.

            She seemed relieved. “Thank God,” she sighed, but then suddenly looked agitated again. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

            “What? No!” I was glad that, at least, was true. “I… I haven’t told anyone.”

            Becky smiled knowingly. “I suppose it was embarrassing for you.”

            I looked down nervously and lit a cigarette. “Yeah,” I coughed.

            She extended a gloved hand. “May I?” Becky asked, reaching for a cigarette. I nodded a little too enthusiastically and handed her a cig and the lighter. I lit the end with a shaky hand. “Ah,” she breathed, inhaling the smoke, “much better.”

            “Yeah,” I said again, still looking down. “So, Hersch must be pretty… fond… of you.”

            Becky nodded with a smile. “I suppose he is. We are very close.”

            I choked on smoke and tried to block out the image of them being “close.” My voice sounded strained and high pitched, talking way too fast. “I guess he hasn’t seen you since he left for school, huh?”

            She nodded again and looked down. “He will be glad to see me, I know. I suppose I am the only one who understands his feelings, most of the time. He needed me so badly when he first arrived here. I thought he might never leave London.”

            I nodded back and bit my lip as I took the plunge, tired of tiptoeing around the real subject. “So I guess you’re supposed to be… you know… exclusively his?” Why else would she not want to know she was taking other customers?

            If Becky looked shocked when she realized who I was and horrified when she thought Hersch had seen her in the bar, she looked traumatized when I finished stumbling through the uncomfortable question. “WHAT?”

            I tried to justify the question, thinking maybe her English wasn’t good enough to understand. Her accent was thicker than I remembered. “Well, you’re a call girl. And you’re here to see…”

            “Oh God!” she cried. “You don’t know who I am?” This was quickly headed downhill. Who the hell was she, then?

            I never got the chance to ask her, because there was suddenly a commotion outside. There was scuffling and a muffled argument. Then I heard Hersch yell: “What the hell? Get out of my way!”

            I whipped my head back towards Becky, who was suddenly just an inch away from me. I braced myself to be strangled again. After all, that was how our encounter ended last time. “Listen to me, James. If you say a word to Herschel about the bar and I swear I will personally rip off your balls and feed them to wild dogs!”

            The door opened behind me and I had to spin back around before I could react to Becky’s threat of castration. Hersch stood there in the doorway, more imposing than usual. He looked angry, and I knew he must have had to fight through Gabe and Erich to get there. “Jim, what the… Rebecca?”

            Becky gave the first sincere smile I had ever seen on her face and threw herself at Hersch. “Herschel!” He wrapped her up in a warm, but completely unromantic, hug.

            Hersch seemed stunned. He took her by the shoulders. “Rebecca! What are you doing here?”

            She laughed happily and turned back to me with uncharacteristic sincerity. “Well, just now I have been speaking with your roommate. He is such a lovely boy, yes?”

            Hersch looked at me disbelievingly. “Jim? Are you kidding?” She shrugged and he put an arm around her shoulder. “Jim, this is Rebecca, my sister.”

            “Sister!” Gabe and Erich tumbled through the door and we all exclaimed the word incredulously. What the hell? This was Hersch’s sister?

            Hersch did not seem to notice, but was ridiculously happy to see her. “Rebecca, these are my roommates.”

            Becky’s smile was sly again. “Oh, we have met.”

…

            When I found out Becky had every intention of staying at Wellington’s, I weighed my options carefully. The way I saw it, I could do one of three things: murder her, run away, or commit suicide. Frankly, at the time any of the choices sounded better than enduring the torture of having her around.

            I thought about it carefully. Unless I wanted to go back to Wisconsin, running away wasn’t really an option. Since the only weapon within fifty miles was my switchblade, killing her would most likely involve penetrating her body with an oblong object, an activity which I intended to avoid at all costs. And suicide, well I just liked myself too much to go through with that. So my only choice was to endure her being there and hope she would just go away.

Luckily for me, she kept to herself. Hersch had somehow talked Knight into letting her stay in the guest room, and she stayed up there most of the day. Hersch usually visited her after class, so I also no longer had to worry about avoiding him. I still felt like vomiting when I saw him stick his tongue out in concentration (how had I never noticed how annoying that habit was?), but Becky’s presence seriously limited the amount of time I had to spend alone with Hersch, so I was able to gradually start getting over it.

Sometimes still I saw her, though; usually she was parading herself past the window or sitting under the oak tree after school hours. And, believe me, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Really, I mean, she’s hanging around in a place where guys haven’t seen anyone naked besides their roommates for months. I swear she wore her skirt and inch too short on purpose, just to make me crazy. Sometimes I woke up with sticky sheets, dreaming about the night I first saw her.

It didn’t take long for me to realize why Becky never came out of her room. In fact, she never even came back to the dorm after that first night. When it occurred to me, I had been unable to hide the grin that spread across my face (which was unfortunate, since we were in first period and the guys had looked at me like I was an idiot). Becky was avoiding me. I knew her secret, and I had the power to tell Hersch. She had threatened me, but, though the image of wild dogs feasting on my balls was not completely gone from my mind, I could still sell her out.

I wouldn’t, though. Not yet, anyway. Not only did I like having something to hold over her head, but spilling her secret would also involve telling Hersch that his little sister had sucked my prick. And, like I said, I really didn’t feel like dying.

I had ended up telling Gabe and Erich everything. The day after Becky showed up, they cornered me in the library (by which I mean Erich cornered me and Gabe stood behind him) and demanded I tell them what the hell the story was. Okay, I didn’t tell them everything. In my version, I stayed awake for the whole thing and never got strangled. Of course, they were impressed. It turned out Erich had gotten girls to do that kind of thing before, but Gabe obviously hadn’t. I made them swear not to tell, and since Erich definitely likes me more than he likes Hersch, and Gabe hardly opens his mouth, I figured the secret was safe.

Anyway, by the next week Becky was staying in her room so much she was almost completely off my radar. We had bigger things to worry about, as it was. The West Block Wankers hadn’t given us trouble in ages, and Hersch and Erich both agreed that was a bad sign. Back in the dorm on Wednesday, they talked military strategy.

“I’m saying we shouldn’t just sit around and wait around for them to try and pull something,” Erich said angrily.

“And I think we just have to wait,” Hersch argued. Typical that they should agree that there was a problem, but fight to the death about what to do about it. “We study them, figure out what their next move is, and try to outsmart them.”

Erich snorted. “To hell with that! You’re starting to sound like Banhart, like we’re playing chess or something.”

“Hey!”

Neither of them heard me. “So your plan is to just walk up to them and start punching? That ought to get you far,” Hersch sneered sarcastically.

“If they’re making plans, we should be too. They’ll run us off the campus before we know what hit us. They’ll set fire to the dorm if we give them enough time!”

“I have experience with people like that,” Hersch said darkly.

“And I don’t?”

The conversation had suddenly taken a vicious turn, and I realized they were talking about what they knew from back home. I sunk down in my bed and tried to become invisible.

Hersch took a few deep breaths and began calmly. “Fine, what do you suggest we do?”

Erich’s lip curled. “If they want a fight, we can give them a fight. From my… experience… I would guess they want to take us all out at once.”

“Wrong,” Hersch cut him off, shaking his head. Erich looked angrily at him but Hersch continued. I wondered how Hersch had managed to learn how to face down Erich without shaking with fear. “They want to show us their power and send a message. Odds are they’ll target just one of us, the easy target, someone who doesn’t stand a chance.”

Something occurred to me, and I looked up from the book I was pretending to read. “Hey, where’s Moretti?”

It was late, well after dark, and Gabe hadn’t been back in the dorm since dinner. The three of us looked around, as if he might actually be there, and I felt a unanimous feeling of dread spread across the room.

Erich was out of his chair in a second. “I’m going to find him.” He was already to the door by the time we realized what he was doing.

“Amery, wait!”

“You two stay here,” his growl was so fierce it glued Hersch and me back to our seats. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, they’ve got me.”

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

The best chapter so far. I like the re-introduction of Becky. I like the situation and the very good conversation in this chapter. No weakness in this outstanding chapter. Held my attention till the last word.
Coyote

[Jake Donald Stephens]

It took me just a minute to figure out she was Hersch's sister. Once I did, I was all like, "HOLY F**K!!"
Great storytelling here. I'm in awe, as usual.

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