Dog Tags by Stephen Becker Page B

dinner. I haven’t.”
    They all laughed and soon enough the old man scampered off.
    â€œFirst name,” Benny said.
    â€œCarol. Don’t be familiar.”
    â€œMy dear Miss Untermeyer. I’m saving everything for the right girl.”
    That night Benny squired Carol to dinner at the Auberge des Bergers. “Romantic,” he said. “Pastoral. Do I wear leather shorts and suspenders?”
    â€œThe boss is named Sid Berger,” she said. She drank vermouth and smoked a cigarette; raked the artificial-candle-lit room with desperate, empty glances, as if seeking a celebrity; rearranged her silver; poked at her straight black hair. Her brows too were black, and thick; her frown was emphatic. She wore dark blue wool and sat tense, ungiving; spoke as if acknowledging his presence. Benny, urbane, kept a distance. She was in her last year at Hunter College. She might go on to graduate school. Genetics. Drosophila. Human genetics might someday require engineering. In her spare hours she had worked as a laboratory technician. Not certified. “Nickel and dime pathology. Daddy was pleased. Why do you order chopped liver here?”
    â€œIf the pâté maison is good,” he said, “you can trust the rest. In an American restaurant chipped beef is the key.”
    She blew smoke disdainfully. “A connoisseur.”
    â€œHorseflesh and women.”
    â€œI knew it,” she said wearily, and looked about her at other couples; she might have been a jaded heiress on a Mediterranean cruise, in the first-class dining room.
    Benny chose silence; he brooded into his whiskey, filched one of her cigarettes and smoked it without pleasure, thought of anaplastic nuclei, of Latin-American songs, of Prpl who would charm even this neurotic. She kept her upper arms close to her flanks, and gestured from the elbow. Recalled to a sense of duty, he groped for small talk. Politics: what could be smaller?
    What the hell. Menstruating, doubtless. “Smile,” he said.
    â€œBuy me another drink. Comfort me with flagons.”
    â€œOh.” His quick concern was real; her gaze softened. “I’m sorry. You’re on the rebound.”
    She showed grief, and nodded.
    â€œI’ll be respectful and sympathetic,” he said. “And it’s stay me with flagons. Comfort me with apples. Shall I order an apple?”
    She did smile. “I’ve spoiled your evening.”
    â€œNo. Nothing could.”
    â€œHow gallant.”
    â€œIt’s a stroke of luck,” he said. “You might have been engaged, or somebody’s mistress. Another medical student?”
    â€œNo,” she said, and then wailed, “it was a god damn basketball player from New Jersey.”
    Now her eyes were moist. In pity, but more in embarrassment, Benny stared at the bottom of his glass. Calf-love had passed him by; a boy of the streets, a fornicator at fifteen, he had been denied the more sublime agonies of the youthful heart; blasted incessantly by lightnings of lust, he had suffered for sex and mocked romance. He risked a glance, and caught his breath at the childish vulnerability on the wan face, in the dark blue eyes. And yet how trivial! Or was misery an absolute? For an instant 57359, in a striped prison suit, stood beside Miss Carol Untermeyer, who surely wore furs in winter. Her eyes were wide, her nose straight, a warm, lovely face, the features generous; and she had been hurt. By a sweating, indifferent athlete, crew-cut surely, boisterous, who would kiss his teammates in moments of glory. For the moment that pain defined her. What pains had Benny, all unknowing, inflicted?
    He yielded uncertainly to a new and perplexing emotion.
    â€œHow’s the pâté?” Carol asked him.
    â€œGood. Want some?”
    â€œNo. Doesn’t go with pike. Or whatever this is. Where’d you learn French?”
    Benny was offended: “I am careful not to speak French with