The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer (23 page)

He took my ten-spot and folded it quicker than a beer
vendor at Fenway, stuffing it into the slot. We were standing in the
tiny galley kitchen of the trailer, whose cracked and crumbly
linoleum counters were littered with banana peels, orange rinds,
yogurt cartons, sprouts, granola, chocolate bars, and thick dark
breads. All around us hung bags and baskets of dried fruit. On the
tiny icebox was a photo of Albert Einstein. Underneath was a clipped
headline message that said SMARTY PANTS. I grabbed a handful of dried
apricots and followed Moe through a bead curtain, past the minuscule
bathroom, and through his bedroom.

"Is someone in there?"

"Uh-huh. My friend is taking ga shower in there.
Come on out back."

Whoever his friend was, he was a shrimp; the tiny
shoes Moe kicked aside showed that. We went through a rear door of
the Airstream, which connected it to the addition Moe had built to
double the size of his dwelling, leaving it tiny rather than
microscopic. The addition was a single room, twenty feet square.
Three of its walls were bookshelves, broken only by windows,
paintings, and stereo equipment. The fourth was glass and screens
that slid open. The view was of the woods and goat corral. A wood
stove provided heat; its big black box crinkled and tinked, and the
air above it danced. The tiny color television was on; Moe was
listening to Dr. Mortimer Adler discussing ethics. Another of Moe's
aphorisms is that the amount of contentment and happiness you get out
of life is directly and inversely proportional to the amount of time
you spend worrying about yourself or trying to make yourself happy.
Seek happiness, he says, and you'll never find it. Seek the welfare
and happiness of others and you'll have more happiness than you'll
know what to do with.

He is probably right about this. I say he's probably
right because I have never known him to be wrong about anything. I
suppose the idea is rather akin to that of Zen. Happiness, says Zen,
is not seeking or expecting it. So these Zen Buddhist monks sit
around in orange robes and shaved heads, keeping terrible hours and a
starvation diet, whopping each other with bamboo stakes. Hey, c'mon
and get happy . . .

"Wanna play?" Moe growled, hauling out the
chessboard from beneath a photograph. The photograph was taken in
1967 and shows Moe with his then wife, standing in front of their big
house in Lexington. A Mercedes and a Jag are visible in the picture
off to one side. Moe is clean-shaven besuited, and trying his best to
hide his strained smile. This is Moe Abramson in his former life—
Moe the Big-shot Psychiatrist. The material success was supposed to
make him happy but it didn't. Underneath this portrait was another
clipped-out headline: WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING?

Moe and his wife split and he underwent a startling
metamorphosis, a reincarnation of the personalities in part of Jesus,
Buddha, Gandhi, Thoreau, St. Francis, and Florence Nightin gale. The
only trouble with Moe is that he's the world's biggest soft touch.
Moe's such a sap he'd buy tickets to the Arsonist's Ball, bless his
heart.

As he set up the wooden pieces I heard a soft patter
of feet behind me and turned to see Moe's friend. Her long hair
flowed over her shoulders and almost covered her breasts. But not
quite.
As for her bottom half, it remained in
full view as she swung into the room, making no attempt to cover
herself.

"Doc, this is Loretta Popp. Lolly, this is my
friend Doc. Lolly honey, I think you better put something on, okay?"

She stopped, dumfounded, as if the thought hadn't
occurred and there was no need for it.

"Oh yeah . . . sorry, Moe, it's just that I'm
used to . . .you know . . ." ,

"I understand. You go put something on now."

She turned and sashayed out of the room, swinging a
luscious tail section and gorgeous legs. My knees quivered and I had
the cold sweats. Soon the fantods would set in.

"What was that?"

"Mmmm. One of my charity cases. Lolly's been
hooking these past two years. Started when she was sixteen, can you
imagine?"

"Lolly Popp?
Lolly Popp
,
for Chrissake?"

"Loretta. Then they nicknamed her Lolly. It was
her, uh,
nom de guerre
.
It seems to have stuck."

"Well she certainly is tasty-looking. She part
black?"

"
Half Jamaican, which explains the tawny skin
and aqua eyes. She looks great now— a beautiful girl. But seven
months ago she was a sick kid: hepatitis and V.D. Got her all squared
away now. She's en route to a foster home."

"But I'm not going," said the lovely
creature as she glided back into the room. She curled up on the sofa
next to Moe and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. Then she
pouted and let her head fall against his. She was wearing a big
floppy Celtics sweat shirt. It became her. But then, an ox yoke would
become her. She could glorify a slag pit. Moe rubbed her back. Then I
saw his hand fall down behind her. Almost instantly he withdrew it,
clucking his tongue like a scolding mother hen.

"Loretta. Loretta dear, I said get dressed?

She rose, still pouting, and began to return to the
old trailer portion of Moe's dwelling. As she walked past, the sweat
shirt rode up a bit and I saw the cause of Moe's rebuke. It seemed
that lovely Loretta had neglected to put on pants. She turned and
paused, and a faint smile of apology played about her full lips.

"Sorry, Moe. I'm just used to. . . you know . .
."

"Of course," said Moe, watching her
disappear.

"Kiljoy," I said.

"So what's wit' you? You've just moved your
bishop like a knight."

Lolly came back in a flash. In the truest sense,
since she was still bottomless. But old Lolly Popp had a sense of
humor all right. I have to hand it to her. She scowled at Moe, one
hand on hip, and held a pair of black underpants up, as if for
inspection, in her other hand. That is, I think they were black. So
much light was coming through them it was hard to tell. I wouldn't
exactly call them flimsy, but if she held them at shoulder height and
dropped them, they'd take five minutes to reach
the
floor. "An extremely gratifying choice of undergarments, Lolly,"
I said. "Bravo."

She smiled at me—my God, she was gorgeous!—and
dutifully held the panties out in a little rectangle and stepped into
them, pulling them up. Then I discovered that a girl looks just as
sexy squiggling into a pair of slinky panties as she does wriggling
out of them. Why is that? And also, though you'd eventually tire of
viewing the Taj Mahal by moonlight, or the sunset over Morro Bay, a
beautiful woman slipping in or out of her drawers is a sight that
never ceases to enthrall. Why is that?

Lolly Popp smiled at me and then gave an exaggerated
blush, realizing that I was watching her pivot back and forth as she
drew up the lacy pants. Gee, they were snug. She grinned, turning
around.

"Here's the good part," said Moe intensely.

"
You're not kidding," I answered as I
stared at the sumptuous globes of tan flesh that jounced and jiggled
as they fought their way into the slinky nyloncasing. Lolly made a
final adjustment, then smoothed out the fabric— if one could call
it that— with her hands. The pants were nearly transparent except
for a tiny if pie-shaped wedge of darker material at the crotch.
Perhaps this was for reinforcement, but I know better. Like the seams
in nylons, it was designed by some kinky frog in Paris at the turn of
the century to make the wearer yet more seductive. Bless him (or
her), whoever he was. He should be canonized.

"
Ah, this is terrific!" said Moe. Then I
realized that he wasn't referring to his friend; he was engrossed in
Dr. Mortimer Adler. He leaned over and turned up the volume. The good
doctor said: ". . . and so by the term goodness, we could be
referring to the classic Judeo-Christian concept of purity . . . or
perhaps in a more modern sense the Sartrian view, so well expressed
by Gabriel Marcel, of goodness as a behavior template— an active as
opposed to passive concept, if you will— which leads to the
individuals own responsibility to immerse himself in the upward march
of humanity . . ."

Lolly stared at the tube and sighed. She turned to
me.

"Moe's so smart, isn't he? Isn't he terrific?"

"Yes he is."

She sank silently onto the couch between us. Our
sides were touching. Above the dark wedge of material on the front of
her pants the top of her bush peeked out through the thin material.
It looked cute. They tend to.

"Pay attention, Doc; here's the essence of
life," said Moe, leaning forward. "The real essence?

"I know," I said, staring at Lolly's sport
section. My head refused to budge. Hydraulic levers couldn't move it.
I heard Mortimer Adler continue: "And so we ask— literally for
goodness' sake— what we each can do, every day, to contribute to
the general welfare. Now this daily game plan, mundane as it may
seem— a sort of Boy Scout ethos, if you will— remains a salutary
mode of living. lt is reflected in the New Testament . . ."

Lolly sighed again and shifted her bottom. She leaned
over, and in a cloud of delicious scent whispered to me.

"I'm finally able to show Moe how grateful I am.
Do you know he's paying for my junior college?"

"A wonderful guy . . ." ·

"
I don't have any home now but this; I hope
he'll let me stay."

I was about to offer her alternative residence, but
some vague voice in the old gray matter told me it was unwise.

"Loretta, dear, those pants are inappropriate.
Why don't you put your gym shorts on over them, okay?"

She stalked off toward the bedroom, giving me a last
fleeting glimpse. I could've killed Moe.

"What kind of cockamamy chess game is dis?"
He scowled. "Your king gand queen are switched and you just
moved your pawn like a rook!"

I set the chessboard aside. "I can't play chess
with her around, Moe."

"Why not?"

The cowbell rang. We heard Lolly answer it. A second
later she hobbled around the corner, yanking on a pair of faded
cotton shorts. They became her. But then— oh, skip it.

"Doctor Adams?" she inquired, but the
visitor had come on in anyway and now stood behind her, gaping. It
was Joe. "There's a john here to see you— oops! I mean, a man
. . ."

"Thanks, Lolly. Hiya, Joe."

"Doc. I gotta see you."

"Sure. You remember Moe. Moe, Joe. Joe, Moe."

"What is dis, the mojo song?" said Moe
irritably as he put away the chessboard and pieces. "Joe, want
some food? Dried pears? Tofu? Celery? Wheatgerm muffins? Bean sprou—"

"No thanks," said Joe, his mouth curled in
revulsion, "that stuff will kill you. Doc, I have to talk with
you privately a minute. Got to. Sorry, Moe."

I rose to go and looked at Lolly, who winked at me.
It was not a teasy wink; it was a good-luck wink. She looked terrific
in the shorts. The more clothes she put on, the better she looked,
because I knew what she had on underneath the shorts. But I couldn't
see those slinky panties. And I knew what was underneath those, but I
couldn't see. That would be the ultimate striptease, I thought as I
drew on my jacket, to have a girl come on the stage naked and get
dressed, piece by piece.

"Nice meeting you, Lolly," I said as we
left through the airplane-style doorway. "You've made my day."

"
You're in enough trouble at home," Joe
reminded me, pausing on the doorstep. He was looking at two old
photographs that hung side by side on the kitchen wall above the tiny
sink. "Who the hell are those guys?"

"Two of the greatest chess masters who ever
lived," said Moe, who was showing us out. "Great but
tragic. On the left is the American Paul Morphy, the first true chess
genius. On the right is Akiba Rubinstein, a rabbinical student from
Lodz. Both of these men had their careers terminated by mental
illness. Specifically, it was schizophrenia. Both died in asylums."

"I might as well get to the point, since you're
leading up to it so brilliantly," I said, reaching for a taped
oatmeal carton with a slot on top. It was heavy in my hand as I held
it out to my brother-in-law. I rattled it under his nose.

"Give to mental-health research, Joe," I
said. When he dropped two quarters in I asked for more. He claimed he
had no more change.

"
It'll take folding green, Brindelli. Give!"
I said.

"All I got's tens. I can't give a ten."

"Ten bucks for leaving," Moe announced,
blocking the door. We skinned Joe for a tenner and then he and I
left. Joe paused outside the old trailer, still in shock. Through the
thin walls of the domicile we could hear Lolly cooing at Moe.

"Not now dear. Not now; I just have to see this
second tape."

And then came the voice of Mortimer Adler: "—
and so to leave Reinhold Niebuhr for the moment and explore the
existence of a Supreme Being as expressed by the systems philosopher
Alfred North Whitehead—"