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COMEDY. He set me to the task of shadowing her, to finding out where she lived. So I went to work
with him one day, he pointed her out to me, and I came back when his shift was ended, and followed
her. On the bus. I don't remember where it was now, this many years later, but it was one of the
suburban tract house areas. I trailed her for a week till I was pretty sure I knew her habits, and
then I asked Al what he wanted to do about it.
"I don't know."
"Well, why don't you just go up to her and ask her for a date?"
"I can't. I'm afraid."
"Oh, Al, for Christ's sake!"
"I can't. I need you to make an introduction for me."
"Me?!?"
"Sure. I'll send her a gift, and you'll be my John Smith."
"Oh, Gawd! Miles Standish was an asshole. Al. No wonder Patricia Mullen flipped for John Smith. Do
it yourself."
"No, no. I've made up my mind. I'll send her a special gift and you'll carry it for me and you'll
tell her all about me. She'll like you."
Seers, sarvants and soothsayers will perceive what came next.
So will dummies.
I came waltzing up to this girl's house one evening, carrying Al's "special gift." All set to make
the big pitch for the Martian. Now, you may ask, what special gift did Al Wilson, who thought like
none of us, maybe not like anyone else who'd ever lived on the Earth, select for the girl of his
sex dreams? A brooch, an amethyst necklace, flowers, a five pound box of cherry-filled chocolates,
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an ermine cape, a complete set of the works of the Bronté sisters, a gift certificate for a year's
worth of McDonald hamburgers, a diamond ring ...?
Al Wilson had bought her an eleven lb. steak, had it wrapped in plastic, and had mounted it on an
expensive Swedish serving tray.
Don't ask and I won't have to talk about it.
"Al," I said, "what the hell kind of a gift is that to make an introduction?"
He insisted that was what he wanted her to have. Today, that might he a wild gift, the cost of
meat being what it is, but this was in the early Fifties and a slab of meat was just plain crazy.
But I took it. I was working for him.
Up to the door of the house, rang the bell, waited. She came to the door, opened it, and looked at
me. Did I bother to tell you she was a sensational-looking girl?
"I was wondering how long it would take you to say hello," she said. "I've been watching you
follow me home for a week."
Then she invited me in. She introduced me to her Mother. "Oh, you're the one," her mother said.
"We were going to call the police about you." I guess I giggled nervously.
"What's with the steak?" the girl said.
"Ah-hmm. I am a messenger for Mr. Al Wilson, who works with you at the plant. Mr. Wilson, who is a
very shy man, hut a very nice man, would like to come calling. He has sent me and this small token
of his respect and admiration as a calling card."
They looked at the steak, then they looked at me, then they looked at each other.
"I think we should call the cops," her Mother said.
"No, no!" I said, my voice rising. "This is strictly legit. Al is just, well, you know, really
quiet and bashful about women, and he's seen you every day at the plant and he didn't know how to
strike up an acquaintance."
"You related to him?" the girl asked.
"I work for him."
"Doing what?"
How the hell do you tell two total strangers that you are a hired gun. I mean, for chrissakes, I
had zits ... I didn't look a thing like Dick Powell or Bogart or even, God help me, Audie Murphy.
I was just a kid with a dumb steak in my hands.
"I run errands for him. He has money."
That seemed to brighten both of them. "We'll cook it for dinner," the Mother said. "Why don't you
stay?" said the girl. So I stayed. The night.
We talked through most of the night, the girl and I. It is not by chance that I keep calling her
"the girl." After twenty-five years, I can't recall her name. What I do recall is that she tried
to get me to take her to bed, and I was a virgin, a scared virgin, and most of that night was
spent in consummate horror of being deflowered. You must grasp that I was seventeen, had never
even kissed a girl, and the idea of that lush creature and myself in a bed filled me with nameless
terrors H. P. Lovecraft never imagined.
I fled the next day, in company with the girl, with whom I rode the bus back into Cleveland. When
she got off at Fisher Body, I kept going and would gladly have motored right out of the state if
it hadn't been for having to report back to Al.
He wasn't home when I got there, so I guess I went off to school. But at the end of the academic
day I took the streetcar out to his apartment on St. Clair Avenue. and waited for him. When he
showed, I thought the first thing he'd ask me was what had happened on his love-mission. But he
didn't. He told me he had a vital errand for me to run, that he'd been out getting me plane
tickets, and I was going to Cincinnati.
"Don't you want to know what happened with the girl and the steak?"
"Oh, sure. What happened ... but be brief."
So I told him she seemed like a nice girl (I didn't mention that she wasn't terribly bright, as
far as I could tell) and that she seemed responsive to his overtures (I didn't mention that she
had spent the better part of the night trying to reap the dubious benefits of my post-puberty
tumescence) and that he should call her.
I wish I could tell you they got married and had nine kids, or that she spurned him in a
flamboyant scene, or that he killed her, or she killed him ... but the truth of the matter is that
I never heard another word from Al about The Great Love Affair of the Century.
Instead, I readied myself to go to Cincinnati.
(An Author's Note: after the first section of this reminiscence was published, I received a call
from an old friend of twenty years' standing, Roy Lavender, formerly of Ohio, now living in Long
Beach. Roy remembered Al, remembered the period I had been working for Al. Remembered, in fact,
things I'd forgotten. You can perceive with what joy I took the call after the long essays I have
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