Jerry's Vegan Women. Ben Shaberman

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СКАЧАТЬ anyway. Little did they know, they were actually two of Feifer’s favorite classmates. Unlike virtually all the other kids, Gail befriended him. And unlike the many other kids who were unrelentingly cruel, Jerry treated him with indifference. For Feifer, neutrality made you an ally.

      For Feifer, this appeared to be just another ordinary day — another day to play soldier. As he approached the pair, he raised his palm up as if swearing on the Bible, forced a smiled, and said, “Howdy folks,” with the accent of the guy who runs the general store in Western movies. They both waved back. Gail said, “Hey Kev,” and everyone continued on their way.

      The next day, Jerry’s father, a salesman for three top women’s clothing lines, announced that he had gotten a more lucrative territory in Southeast Florida, and that when school ended next month, the family would be moving there. “Better money, better weather,” he said. “Hell, Jerry, you can go fishing every day if you want.”

      For Jerry, there wasn’t much anticipation for the move. Obviously, he’d be leaving his friends and the neighborhood, but he hadn’t imagined how difficult starting over might be. It really didn’t hit him that his life was being turned upside down until the family started packing up boxes, and the long blue and white moving truck pulled up in their driveway. Suddenly, the house was empty, and the family was heading south on the freeway through the rolling hills and farmland of Ohio.

      School had ended that year much like it always had with the students getting more and more out of control during the last two weeks. And while the sixth graders would be starting junior high next school year, they weren’t thinking that far ahead — not with little league baseball, overnight camp, and afternoons at the community swimming pool in their immediate future.

      Jerry never said much to anyone about the impending move. He didn’t mention it to Gail until a few days before classes ended. It didn’t give either of them much time to think about it. Except for their ventures to Irv’s, they were just school buddies, so they hadn’t planned to see each other over the summer anyway. There was no dramatic goodbye. During their last conversation, Gail said that Arthur Treacher’s had closed, and given that Irv’s was nowhere near the junior high, she didn’t know where she’d go after school. Jerry realized that that information didn’t matter to him anymore. Wherever Gail decided to go, it wouldn’t be with him.

      Sarah

      The first time Jerry saw Sarah, he was futzing with his walkie talkie while standing under the window at the end of the fourth-floor hallway of the freshmen women’s dorm. Her room and Rosie’s were also at the end of the hall, directly across from each other. He had met Rosie just two weeks earlier at the freshmen orientation party, and she had oriented him well. He lost his virginity to her less than two hours after asking her to share a joint with him in back of the Student Union. As luck would have it, Rosie lived smack dab in the middle of his patrol area. The radio reception wasn’t good in her room, so while he was on duty, he had to hang out in the hall where the signal was strong.

      Being a student marshal was already the perfect part-time job for a freshman — all he had to do was wear a yellow vest and call in suspicious activity, mainly students who’d passed out from excessive drinking — but patrolling a women’s dorm, especially the one where his new girlfriend lived, made it sublime. In his dorm, he was known as Sergeant Sensimilla, because of the irony that he had a campus security job, but with a bushy head of hair and scraggily beard, looked like the consummate stoner. He also quickly gained notoriety on his hall for making a connection to a local pot dealer, a guy he’d met in a small jazz club a few blocks outside of the French Quarter.

      When Jerry saw Sarah, she had just come out of her room wearing nothing but a large white t-shirt that fell just above her knees. She was startled and embarrassed to see Jerry just standing there, so she hurried to the bathroom. About halfway down the hall, she turned and glanced back to see him mesmerized by her jiggling breasts and rear end. Sarah was petite, and not as generously proportioned as Rosie, but with no bra and panties on, it didn’t matter. There was plenty for Jerry to admire. She looked part Asian, perhaps half Chinese or Japanese, with long, dark brown hair, a small turned-up nose, and tiny feet.

      A few seconds after she disappeared into the bathroom, Rosie came out with partially burnt pizza bagels. “Sorry, I keep fucking these up,” she said. “I’m still figuring out the toaster oven.”

      “It’s cool,” he said. “I am so hungry. I kinda like’m crunchy anyway.” But he cringed as he bit into it, the hot cheese having singed the roof of his mouth.

      Before they finished the bagels, Sarah came out of the lavatory and scooted back to her room. Jerry tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help but catch another glimpse of the scantily clad girl. Rosie acknowledged Sarah with a quick smile. After she shut the door, Jerry asked in a low voice, “Who was that?”

      “Oh, that’s Sarah,” Rosie replied quietly, rolling her eyes, twirling her finger in a circular motion near her head in demonstration of the universal sign for “crazy.” “She brought two cats from home. Can you believe that? And in the freshmen handbook, she listed vegan as her hobby. Weird.”

      Jerry nodded as he ate the bagel. She might be wacky — though he wasn’t sure what a vegan was, some kind of witch? — but she looked quite delectable in nothing but a t-shirt.

      Jerry’s first two weeks at Tulane had been pure hedonism. Daily pot smoking. Daily sex. Daily deliveries of pizza and po boys to his room. And, he was getting paid to hang out in the residence of young women who were away from home for the first time and eager to sow their sexual oats.

      His only mistake was committing to Rosie so quickly. He should have played the field. Gone to more parties. Slept around. Experimented, whatever that might have entailed. The first case of AIDS in the U.S. would not be reported for another two years, so the risks of promiscuity were still manageable.

      But alas, Jerry was already operating like a married man, spending most of his nights with Rosie, a free spirit from old Jewish money in Connecticut. With far more sexual experience than most freshmen girls, she didn’t have the need to lose or prove anything. The fraternity party circuit didn’t interest her at all; she had Jerry and his reefer and that was basically all she needed.

      Though Rosie did find Sarah a bit strange at first, over time, they became friends, because they lived so close to each other, and Sarah didn’t socialize much with other girls on the hall. Being around the dorm so much, Jerry inevitably became part of their little clique.

      On the weekends, the three occasionally took the streetcar down to the French Quarter for some beignets and coffee at Café du Monde or uptown to the Camellia Grill for their famously humungous omelets. But usually, they hung at The Boot, a divey bar and grill just off campus. Rosie and Sarah would watch Jerry play pool. He often controlled the table for an hour or two, not only because he could shoot well, but also, unlike most of his competition, he wasn’t drunk.

      Sarah mystified Jerry and Rosie. She didn’t smoke. She didn’t drink. She didn’t eat meat. She ordered her Boot Burgers without the burger, but with extra tomato and pickles. She was often quiet in public, but sometimes got testy. One time when she was ordering, the bartender thought he misheard her. “You want a burger without the meat?” he asked in disbelief. “I don’t eat animals, asshole!” she yelled back. “Gotta problem with that?”

      Many men found Sarah attractive — she had an exotic, Protestant-Asian kind of look — but she always got irritated when they flirted with her. It only took a few minutes of conversation with them before she looked disdainful, as if she had eaten a rotten piece of fruit. Jerry and Rosie figured she was just prude.

      But she did need someone to confide in, and Rosie was her СКАЧАТЬ