Write me a Letter

bought the day before from a specialty bookstore down on Western. It wasn’t going to be much help knowing how to say ”Where is the Stade Dynamo, please” to each other, but it was better than nothing. I’d spent some time in bed last night (my own) after leaving Evonne’s looking up potentially useful phrases, and I tried out one of them then:
    ”Ya vash novei ekskoursevot,’’ I read. He looked blank, so I pointed out the phrase in my book: ”I am your new guide/escort,” at which he nodded several times.
    He went searching through his copy and finally came up with ”Where do we go next?”
    ”Airplane,” I said. Actually, I didn’t say ”airplane,” I pointed to a picture of one in the book, but to save time, from now on I’ll report our conversations, such as they were, as if we said them to each other instead of pointing them out.
    ”Airplane.” He nodded resignedly and picked up his case. I took it from him, dumped my sign in a nearby bin, and led him off toward the Air Cal desks. While we were in line waiting our turn, I asked him if he was hungry.
    ”Not hungry,” he said. ”Not thirsty. Yes tired.”
    ”Me too,” I said, nodding sympathetically.
    ”You baby, big,” he said. ”Me old, small.” Well, maybe I was baby, big, but there was nothing in the works of Karl Marx as far as I knew that said I couldn’t be tired, too. I’d had a busy time after Ruth’s visit the day before. First, I’d talked at some length with my friend Benjamin. Then I’d talked at some length with Sara of the Sorrows. I had a brief word with Mom, at Hilldale, then one with Dr. Don Fishbein, the bearded bundle of compassionate energy who ran the place; the news wasn’t good. I went book hunting. I checked the L.A.-San Francisco flight times with Air Cal . I begged an empty carton from Mr. Nu two doors down and, with a magic marker, made up a sign with Uncle Theo’s name on it, copied from the envelope containing the letter for him. I purchased a map of central California . Then I had to rendezvous with Benny back at my apartment. He was in good shape, he told me, and keeping busy with this and that. After he left me, he was off to the office of a real estate broker he knew to get a temporary license, which cost peanuts. He wanted to sell one of the half-dozen properties he owned, all of them in the Anaheim-Fullerton area, and if he listed the property with a broker, he got to share the commission on the sale without doing any of the work.
    Then it was time to meet Evonne Louise Shirley at her place to wine and dine the eve away. She thanked me for the maple syrup and promised that waffles would soon be in the offing. I thanked her for her present, which was an extremely rare necktie from the forties; it had ”I Luv U” written on it, which, she claimed, you could read only when all the lights were out. I decided to test out this unlikely assertion, so after supper at Mario’s, back at her place, I put the tie on, mixed up two tall, fruity ’n’ frosty nightcaps, then switched off all the lights. Darned if the little minx wasn’t right.
    ”I’ve heard of guys doing it with their boots on,” she said at one stage, ”but a tie?”
    ”Class will tell, snookums,” I said into the back of her neck, which is where my mouth happened to be right then. Later, when we were holding hands and sipping our drinks, I told her I had to go away again for a couple of days. She said an unladylike word and wanted to know where I was off to this another-unladylike-word time, and for how long, and why.
    ”Guy I know called Solomon,” I said vaguely. ”Wants me to deliver something for him near San Francisco , shouldn’t take more than a day or two. Montreal ,” I said, changing the subject as quickly as possible. ”You haven’t asked me one word about Montreal .”
    ”How was Montreal ?” she said sleepily.
    ”Very French,” I said. ”Had a great time. Saw a hockey game, made some money, wrote this poem that’s probably Pulitzer Prize material. Sara didn’t enjoy it much, though, Willing Boy is giving her a hard time, poor old twerp.”
    ”Well, what d’you expect from men, anyway,” she said. ”Especially here-today—gone-tomorrow types like you.”
    ”Yes, dear,” I said.
    When I finally did manage to escape back to the safety of my own bed, I had The Little Russian Phrase Book, by one N. Pogarieloff, to leaf through, and it was after two by then, so there were good reasons why I was