“Am I what?”
“Involved in sneaking Nazis out of Germany to Argentina?”
“Jesus, Rachel!”
“I thought so. Tony is ordinarily very good at what he does, and so far as that business is concerned, he’s passionate. I guess he feels that if he can stop it, that will be even better for his Jewish masculine ego than . . .”
“Stupping the shiksas?”
She laughed.
“If you suddenly start spouting Yiddish, people will wonder who’s teaching you.”
“Then I will spout it only to you, my shiksa.”
She laughed and turned to him.
“I’m not your shiksa, mein Trottel goy. I’m your khaverte.”
“Is that what you think, Rachel, that I’m a fool of a Christian?”
“That’s right, you do speak German, don’t you? And Yiddish is really bastard German.”
“My mother is a Strasburgerin. I got my German from her.”
“I was just about to say, ‘That was said lovingly,’ but we have to be careful about using that word, don’t we? Or even thinking about it?”
“Can you have a lover, be lovers, without love?”
“We’re going to have to try to, aren’t we? Or at least without saying it, or even thinking it?”
When he didn’t reply, Rachel said, “Oh, my God, Jimmy. You’re not thinking that what happened between us . . . That was lust, Jimmy. Lust. Not love.”
He smiled.
“What’s funny? This is not funny!”
“When I was in the eighth grade, thirteen, fourteen years old . . .”
“As old as Anton Junior. So?”
“Our teacher, Miss Schenck, introduced us to classical music. Started out easy. We were all ranch kids in West Texas. She set up her phonograph and said she was going to play a Viennese operetta for us. She said it was called Die Lustige Witwe and that meant ‘The Merry Widow.’ So I put up my hand and said, ‘Excuse me, Miss Schenck, but lustige doesn’t mean ‘merry.’ It means ‘lusty.’ And she said, ‘What are you talking about?’ So I told her, ‘Lustige means “horny.” You know, like a bull is when you turn him loose in the pasture with the cows.’”
“Oh, Jimmy, you didn’t!”
“Miss Schenk snapped, ‘James Cronley, you go straight to the principal’s office! This instant!’”
Rachel laughed.
“So my mother was called in, heard what happened, and told me I was just going to have to learn (a) I should never correct my teachers, and (b) I should never try to explain what lust means to any female.”
“And here you are discussing lust with me.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we leave . . . what we have . . . to that, Jimmy?”
“The only other alternative that comes to mind is chastity, and as I stand here ‘staring hungrily’ at your breasts, that doesn’t have much appeal.”