Summer Accommodations: A Novel (6 page)

“Mazel tov,”said Sally in a tone that made it sound to me more as though she meant, “that's life” or “go figure.”

The pace of the meal accelerated into the main course. It being Sunday night the choice of supper entrees was somewhat limited. The noon meal on Sunday was the big sirloin steak dinner, a dinner that people anticipated all week long as though meat was still being rationed and was hard to come by in 1956. Steak was in fact quite plentiful, if costly, but being served a steak dinner by a waiter in black tie and on tables spread with white linen did seem to make it taste better and engender a more luxurious experience. For the Braverman family it was a way to send off their guests with the feeling that they had been treated lavishly, feasted and indulged, and it was hoped that the memory of this extravagance would serve to lure them back again the following summer. With that goal set in motion, Sunday night, while the new crowd was still recovering from the trip through the Shawangunks and likely to be too exhausted to be focused on that meal, the usual fare included flanken, or boiled beef, a meal destined in large measure for the sous chef's brown sauce, stuffed chicken breasts, broiled halibut, and garden vegetable dinner. The meals would then work their way towards more elaborate and expensive fare as the week progressed achieving a heightened excitement with prime ribs au jus on Saturday night and climaxing with the sirloin steak for Sunday dinner. It was the convention in the smaller hotels to set up daily menus Sunday to Saturday and to repeat them in rotation without variation. Sunday supper and clean-up ended for me at 9:45.

Back in my room I turned the radio on and climbed up into my bed. I was exhausted. Doris Day was singing “Que Sera, Sera” and I was wondering if what would “sera” for me would be an endless summer of doing all of Sammy's lifting and porting as well as my own cleaning up and bussing. That would lengthen my day at the expense of the little leisure time a busboy had, and I began feeling sorry for myself. Maybe Sammy's regulars would be no more generous than anyone else? Who had worked with Sammy before and why wasn't he eager for the job again? None of the other waiters in the dining room suggested he had worked his way up from that position; no one had said the money's great, hang in. Maybe they all died of exhaustion before the end of the summer season. I was working my way towards teary eyes when Harlan came in and grimaced.

“Would you mind if I changed that music, Mel?”

“That's okay,” I said, happy to have his company. The radio whined and rasped as Harlan steered the dial across a path of weak signals and then halted in the middle of an Elvis Presley song, “Heartbreak Hotel”. “Ugh” I groaned.

“You don't like Elvis? Learn to like him Melvin if you want the girls to like you. They love him. Loo-oove him,” he crooned. Then, positioning his hands on an imaginary guitar held in front of him at hip level, he curled his lips into a sneer, waggled his hips, and said “Bayba.”

“I don't like him and I don't like that music. I like jazz.” I also liked the more conventional sounding ballads and themes: “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Moonglow,” “The Poor People of Paris,” songs that seemed earnest and sincere about love. Elvis was about lust and that was something for darkness and secrecy, I believed, not bright lights and sound stages.

“Jazz is good, but Elvis is better. All the little Miss Prissys melt their circle pins when they hear Elvis. He's the bad boy every good girl would die to give herself to. You can't say that for Count Basie or Stan Kenton, Melvin.”

“There are some girls who wouldn't waste a wink on him. He's a goddamn truck driver.”

“Pretty snotty stuff for a busboy, Mel. You watch, Elvis is going to bring about some big changes. It's going to be motorcycle boots, not white bucks, leather jackets, not tweed sport coats and chesterfield overcoats, and lots of black.” Harlan looked very serious.

“What makes you so sure that's going to sweep the country? I know lots of guys who were wearing motorcycle boots and leather jackets three or four years ago. They didn't start any trend.”

“Those same guys were probably still filling up condoms with water and dropping them out of their bathroom windows.” We both laughed at that image—and its accuracy. “Elvis is the real thing. Elvis is animal magnetism, he's passion, he's a mutineer of the sexual order. Join him, don't fight him. You might just as well fight the changing of the seasons.” Harlan said all of this in the calm and even voice of absolute conviction.

“I suppose they really love him at Harvard.” I was fishing. I hadn't seen anything with the Harvard name or colors among Harlan's personal things so this made me a little suspicious of his attendance there. Had it been me, at the least I'd have worn a t-shirt with the school name or logo showing.

“Depends on who you talk to. Some of the Cliffees are wild for him. Some of the Wellsley girls too I can assure you of that,” and he winked at me, a single, brisk wink without a leer or an elbow in my side to emphasize his point.

“You really go to Harvard Harlan?”

“You sound like you don't believe I do.”

This was unexpected and disarming. I had imagined if he did attend Harvard he gladly would have acknowledged that, and if he didn't he might have become defensive, maybe even a little aggressive. That was how it worked where I grew up. “It's not that I don't believe you, it's … well, how come you don't have any sweat shirts or t-shirts that say Harvard on them?”

“That would really help my income, wouldn't it. Do you think people would feel more or less generous tipping a waiter who happens to attend Harvard? You might be impressed, but many more would feel jealous or resentful. Somehow in their minds it's the same as being rich, or privileged.”

“Then what do you tell them when they ask you about school?”

“I tell them I go to a little school outside of Boston and change the subject. Cambridge is outside of Boston so I'm not lying, and I deflect their attention with other ploys.”

“Oh.”

“Of course I've also considered saying I don't go to college because I can't afford it. That I'm here to save up the tuition for at least two years of school before I apply, but that may sound a bit too pathetic. I have to give it more thought.”

“I would be so excited I would boast about it all the time,” I confessed. “You know, I'm trying to get into Columbia and I would tell everybody except I'm afraid that if I don't get in I'll look like a fool, you know, not good enough.”

“It's never wrong to try, to reach for something, to take a chance, and the people who would laugh at you for making that stretch don't deserve to have your attention. Learn that one early, kiddo.” The radio was now playing “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”. I decided to repay Harlan for his advice on the spot, cued by the lyrics of love. “Harlan, you're dating Heidi Braverman, right?” He nodded and a smirk appeared on his face. “What?”

“Dating is not exactly the way I'd put it, but go on.”

“The day I arrived here Sammy made a point of telling Ron to try to get you to stop seeing her. I thought you should know about it.”

“Thanks. Ron hasn't tried to do that yet but I know that he would if he thought it his business.” He frowned then and narrowed his eyes. “Ron doesn't like me, that's obvious. I don't really know why, he doesn't come right out with it, but it's very clear how he feels. Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn. What's between Heidi and me is between Heidi and me. She's a big girl. Do you have a girl Melvin?”

“Nobody special if that's what you mean.”

“Well then, maybe I can get Heidi to fix you up with one of the camp counselors.” Ron entered just as Harlan suggested that and he picked up immediately.

“Looking for a girl Melvin? There are a few regulars up here that I can put you on to.” He looked at the radio and frowned. “Mind if I turn that off?” he asked, turning the radio off before either of us could answer. “I feel like reading.” He flopped onto his bunk and pulled a paperback out from under his pillow. “Rosie's always ready and willing, and then there's Diana. She's quite a number.” He broke the spine of the book, flexing the pages back and forth a few times, and then fell silent. Harlan looked at me and shrugged. I raised my eyebrows and smiled sardonically. Neither of us was prepared to take Ron on.

“Tell me about Diana,” I ventured.

“You can't get to Diana unless you start with Rosie. Those are the house rules.” He had kept the book in front of him when he spoke so I couldn't tell if he was serious.

“Okay, then tell me about Rosie.”

Exasperated, Ron pulled the book away from his face and rested it on end against his chest. “There's very little to tell. Rosie was put on earth to give virgins like you their first fuck. She has big tits and small brains. Her brassiere size is bigger than her I.Q. She's probably nineteen years old now but she's been doing the deed since she was twelve and is happy to oblige. Buy her a flower and she'll blow you too. Anything else?”

“Where is she?” I was both excited and disgusted by Ron's offering. I desperately wanted to lose my virginity but I didn't want it to be in a degrading way. It sounded like if Rosie was indeed real there would he no way to accomplish that goal. But on the other hand, I was determined to have the initiating sexual liaison and quickly. It would be like having my tonsils out, just something to get through and be done with, a once in a lifetime experience this being de-virginalized. “Where do I find Rosie?”

“Melvin.” Harlan said in reproach.

“Stay out of this Harlan. You really want Rosie? Seriously? I'll introduce you to her, but don't ever say that I didn't warn you.”

“Warn me about what?”

“About the possibility of venereal diseases, the clap, the syph, who knows what else she might be carrying, and the most miserable affliction of them all—the afters.”

“What are the afters?” I knew about gonorrhea and syphilis but I had never heard of “the afters.” Ron had made it sound like something terribly ominous.

“I can't tell you that. You'll have to find out for yourself.”

I turned to Harlan but he just shrugged.

3.

When I arrived in the Catskills that summer I had one clear goal: to earn about fifteen hundred dollars to pay my college tuition and to provide pocket money. My other aspirations were clouded by uncertainty because I truly believed I had no control over them. I'll call them the prizes. First and foremost was whether I'd be accepted to the freshman class at Columbia but a very close second was whether I'd lose my virginity, or in the language of the time, perhaps of all times, score; get in; get laid. My anxieties about these two intentions brought me into the Catskill mountains with a discomfiting sense of powerlessness. It was a mystery to me if I'd get either prize.

So, while there were these two mysteries—would my brain and my body both be rewarded that summer—it had taken almost no time at all for there to be yet another mystery waiting for me in the Catskills, Harlan Hawthorne. What the hell was he doing there? I have already described him briefly to you but you must understand the effect his demeanor and carriage had on me was profound. His was a very different style, one that relied on a withholding of his opinions and a general quality of self-containment and restraint. This was in stark contrast to the relentless babbling of opinions and gibes that characterized the generic mountain rat. Morning until night, from the showers to the dance floor, a snide recitative droned all around me but Harlan, wearing a bemused smile, hummed quietly to himself. The target of many taunts and jeers he'd simply cock an eyebrow, smile tolerantly, and shake his head gently from side to side in a gesture of muted disbelief. He was somewhere else.

While he was an enigma to many of us working in the dining room, Sammy had an especially difficult time understanding Harlan's style.

“Who does he think he is? What does he want here? What is he looking for?” These questions were posed rhetorically, Sammy's way of thinking out loud. No one believed that Harlan was working as a waiter because he needed the money, not the Jewish boys from the city, not the basketball players from the south, and certainly not Sammy. Abe was mute on the subject. The puzzle so frustrated Sammy it made his usually artful jibes cruel and clumsy.

“Harlan, come to my room later so I can circumcise you. I can't stand the idea of a putz working in my dining room.” Seeing his perplexity Abe explained to Harlan that while a “shmuck” was the entire male member, a “putz” was just the foreskin.

“What is it Harlan, you're schmekele is cold? It needs to wear a turtleneck? Do you think a Jewish girl wants to have to deal with that? She'd probably faint when she sees it.” Harlan countenanced this barrage with composure and equanimity saying nothing. Girls didn't seem at all put off by him, quite the contrary, whether or not they had seen his anatomical anomaly, the foreskin being anomalous only among Jews. Indeed, mothers and daughters could sometimes be seen elbowing one another out of the way to get in front of him, the mother's being more seductive than their pouting daughters had ever imagined possible. It was something amazing to observe.

“They don't really know what to make of me, do they?” he asked me as we lay in our bunks staring at the ceiling one afternoon after lunch in mid-July.

“You are very different, Harlan. They can't understand why a Harvard man is waiting tables here. At the Concord or at Grossinger's there might be an Ivy but at Braverman's?” I was hanging “they” as a curtain in front of my own curiosity.

“I didn't have enough experience to work in those hotels. They're more demanding in their hiring practices than the Bravermans. I'm here for the same reasons all of the rest of you are, to make money.”