THE CASE OF THE LOADED DREIDLE

by

Eliot Fintushel

 

am's the name.  Dreidle's the game.  I spin hard and I spin true, and when I lay down my gelt, I expect a fair return.  After all, look at the odds.  Half the time you're gonna get something for your effort: hay or gimmel takes care of that.  And the other half of the time, with nun or shin, the worst you can do is drop a penny.  No, the only real losers at dreidle are the shlamazls who don't know when to quit, who lose penny after penny, pot after pot, begging for another turn when their pockets are empty and their faces are as long as Methuselah's sidecurls.

Lila was one of those.

She was a compulsive dreidler.  Her parents and mine were related somehow: third cousins on the father's side, once removed, with a side of fries and a medium cola to go‑-something like that.  We saw each other a few times a year on the holidays.  She wasn't bad to look at.  Freckles.  Pigtails.  You know the type.  She had a smile that could fricassee chicken, and when she walked down the street, boys bumped into things.

Not that I was personally interested, mind you.  I'm immune to that sort of action.  Only one thing interests a kid like me, and it's got four sides and spins. But sometimes life comes knocking on both sides of a fellow's door. It barges right in on you, knocks the dreidle out of your paw, and screams in your face: "Cherchez la femme!"

Which is French for trouble.

 

t all started on a sunny day in August, during that long dry stretch between Shavuot and the High Holidays.  Too hot to breathe.  It was the kind of a day that makes you dream of school.  I was sitting in my office, bored to the skull cap, when I heard a knock at the door.  "Patsy, will you get that?" I shouted.  Patsy's my secretary.  I haven't got a secretary, actually, but I always shout that.

The knocking continued, and it was clear that Patsy wasn't going to budge, so I heaved myself up off the orange crate I use for a chair.  My office is a corner of my father's garage‑-just until I win a few more big dreidle pots, you understand.  "Wait a minute.  Here I come."

The garage door ratcheted up to the ceiling.  I squinted into the sunlit drive‑-and my blood turned to gefilte fish gel.  It was Melvin the Grip, the sorriest imp of a marble‑hustling gonif you ever tripped over, and he was packing heat: I could see the slingshot sticking out the back pocket of his brown corduroys.  Melvin was Big Harry Zots's strong-arm.

"Sammy, we need to talk."

I started to protest, but Melvin's eyes hardened, his lips narrowed, and he fingered the scrap of inner tube trailing out of that back pocket.  I remembered the shiner that Johnny Metzger sported after a certain little chat with Melvin, and Johnny was a seventh-grader with muscles like a braided cholle.  I let Melvin in.

He pushed past me as if he owned the place.  In the looks department, Melvin was about as different from me as a blintz from a chicken.  I've got curly brown hair, a ruddy complexion, and lips the size and color of a beet slice floating in borsht.  Melvin was pale as gefilte fish, with a crewcut and lips like piano wire.  He was four inches shorter than me, but all steel and brick.  It was rumored that Melvin had a sense of humor, but that it was on extended vacation in New Zealand.  His face was as tight as a bunched hanky, and when he talked, he kept his teeth clamped.  If you let your mind wander it was easy to picture your flesh between Melvin's incisors.

"Sure.  Come on in, Mel, my man.  Sit anyplace.  The ping-pong table's okay.  Or the pile of tires over there.  The orange crate?  No sweat.  Good choice.  So, what's on your mind, pal?"

"A certain acquaintance of mine is being inconvenienced, so happens, by a certain acquaintance of yours.  My acquaintance is holding a quantity of your acquaintance's IOUs, which your acquaintance has been, shall we say, loath to honor.  My acquaintance does not like being inconvenienced, if you catch my drift.  And if you don't catch it, Sammy, believe you me, you will in a day or two, unless my acquaintance is reconvenienced."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Darn it, Sammy, what's the point in me memorizing these spiels if you're not going to pay attention?  Now I have to start all over.  A certain acquaintance of mine . . . "

"You mean Harry Zots?"

"Of course I mean Harry Zots.  Who else would I mean, the Queen of Sheba?"

"But who's my 'acquaintance,' the one who owes him money?"

"Your cousin Lila--where was I?  A certain acquaintance . . . "

"She's not my cousin."

"Regardless, you don't want she should get a free face lift, do you?  Courtesy of Big Harry?  Because when Big Harry lifts 'em, boychik, they lick their foreheads at meal times. A certain . . . "

"But I haven't seen her in months."

"Well, see her.  Put her in the picture.  Tell her Harry means business.  Tell her that if she don't make good on those dreidle debts, there's a mouthful of knuckles in her future‑-and in yours.  And you know how good Harry is with gizmos, Sammy‑-you might find a little surprise in your corn flakes one morning, or you might open your bedroom door and hear a funny little click, the last sound you'll ever hear.  Catch my drift?"

"I catch your drift, Melvin."  It was a nose‑wrinkling drift.  The Grip was not a frequent bather.

"Listen, Sammy . . . "  Melvin the Grip slipped off the orange crate and started toward me.  I shrank back expecting one of his trademark klops.  Instead, he laid his meaty paw on my shoulder.  "Sammy, make sure and tell Lila that I'm only doing this because Big Harry's making me.  And Sammy . . . "

"Yeah?"

"Off the record‑-do you think I stand a chance with Lila, a guy like me?"

"Sure, Melvin, sure.  You're exactly her type."

He smiled so hard the little icicles of his canines poked down over his lower lip, and his face turned cherry red.  "You really think so?"

"Absolutely.  You two go together like salami and eggs."

Melvin allowed himself another flutter or two and then got back to business.  "So you'll tell her about the IOUs."

"Sure.  Yes.  Okay.  Definitely.  I'll do my best."

"One more thing . . . "  He grabbed my collar, and I pictured my family saying Kaddish over my remains.

"Don't tell Big Harry I screwed up the speech, okay?"

"Anything for a pal."

 

 don't owe that shmendrick Harry Zots one red cent."

With freckles like that, how could you not believe her?  Lila had cheeks like candied fruit slices.  And she smelled like Manishewitz.  The scent of sweet wine followed her everywhere, and I am not the poetic sort, believe me.  I had laboriously traced Lila through my network of sensitively placed underworld contacts‑-also, her family was in the phonebook‑-and we had arranged a meeting at the Carter Street Playground.  Now she sat on a swing with a dreidle in one hand and my heart in the other.  I stood in front of her, dodging her Adidas now and then when she pumped.

"That's not the way Big Harry sees it," I said.

I had to squint to see her.  The sun was relentless and bright.  The grass was the kind of green that makes a kid want to roll down hills.  Knee‑biters choked the playground throwing things and screaming.

Lila turned up her nose.  "Did Melvin come to you with that 'my acquaintance, your acquaintance' cockamamie?  I bet Harry wrote that out for him.  Harry makes him do everything.  Harry's a bully.  You know Harry's a bully, don't you, Sammy?"  Lila dug her sneakers into the dirt and stopped the swing an inch in front of me.  We were momentarily enveloped in a cloud of dust, our own little world, just Lila and me.  "Don't you, Sammy?"  She stared straight at me, and I felt my socks start to wilt.

"Tell me what happened."

She jumped off the swing and stalked away.  I followed at her heels.

"There's nothing to tell.  We played a little dreidle.  I beat the pants off him, and now he's angry, that's all.  He's the one who owes me the gelt, two dollars, to be exact.  You don't know him.  He can't stand to lose.  When Harry loses, there's no controlling him.  There's no telling what he'll do to get even.  That's what this is really about, Sammy.  Harry trying to get even."

She stopped suddenly, and I nearly ran into her.  She spun to face me and turned up the thermostat again, fluttering those cherubic lashes of hers, flicking those pigtails with deadly charm.  "Say, Sammy . . . "

"Yeah, doll?"

"You think you might do me a little favor?"

"What exactly did you have in mind?"

She tugged at my collar‑-I kind of liked it; it was the same spot Melvin had tugged, but Melvin was a couple pigtails short charming.  "Do you think you could collect my two dollars from Harry, Sammy?"

"Absolutely."

"And, Sammy . . . "

"Yeah?"

"How about a few spins before you go?"

 

our gimmels in a row.  She was so attached to that prize dreidle of hers, she made me use another one on my spins.  It was her lucky dreidle, she explained.  Lady Luck worked for Lila like the Grip worked for Harry Zots.  She beat me to the tune of thirty‑five cents, and that's not a tune I'm fond of.  But what a way to go!  I thought I felt her palm, the base of her thumb possibly, maybe even a knuckle or two, when I plunked the quarter and dime into Lila's little hand.  She smiled, and I floated off toward the Zots estate to give that bully a talking to.

Big Harry's mother answered the door.  It shocked me that he had a mother.  It's a regular lesson in compassion, is what that is.  I mean, if even a meshuggener like Harry Zots could have an actual female mother, someone who loves him, tucks his shirt in, washes behind his ears, the whole nine yards, then there's nobody on earth who isn't a little bit lovable.  Even gym teachers.

"What's all the banging?  You think my door is a chicken to slaughter?  You're being chased by wild dogs and you want shelter?  You have to make maybe a Number Two?"  Mrs. Zots pushed past me onto the front porch and tramped down the steps.  She was a short round woman in a polka-dot dress with a smell of fenugreek.  She carried a purse over one forearm, massive and lethal, with enough hardware on it to furnish a missile silo.

"Well, I gotta go shop," she said without turning around, "I was just leaving.  Harry's inside.  It's him you wanna see, right?  You working on a science project with Harry?  He's always working on science projects."

"Something like that," I said, but she was gone.  I moved into the living room and cased the joint.  In my line of work a fellow can't be too careful.  Hardwood floor: a head could split on that baby if fists should fly.  Two windows: one of them open to the width of my hips‑-possible escape route in case of an altercation.  The other one a huge picture window shut tight.  If worst came to worst I could heave Zots through it onto the lawn.  If I was strong enough to heave him.  If he let me.  If he promised not to hit me back.  And if I didn't have to clean up the glass, which I hate.

On second thought, forget the picture window.

I was just about to inspect the moldings when I heard a pounding in the hall, then a gravelly voice: "Melvin, izzat you?"

"No such luck, Zots," I said.

Big Harry entered the room and froze.  He just stood there, all five foot two of him, most of it shoulders and biceps, looking down at me with those snake eyes of his.  I thought I heard something start to hiss and rattle, but it could have been a teapot.  My life flashed before me.

At moments like this a pro dreidler such as myself has to keep his wits about him.  It's all too easy to give way to panic.  Dreidling brings a person into the society of all kinds of unsavory individuals, especially when it isn't confined to Chanukah.  You never know what sort of brutal situation you may end up in when pennies change hands and tempers flare.  You never know when that big dreidle in the sky, the one with your name on it, is going to come up shin.

I felt my smile start to sag at the edges, and my forehead started to sweat.  As subtly as possible I checked my shoelaces‑-tied and double-knotted‑-and made a rough estimate of the distance to the door behind me.  I recalled taking five steps in, but that was walking; at a clip, I could likely make it in two.  I hoped that Big Harry wasn't that fast.

"What's this all about, Sam?"

"Let's just say it's about a certain acquaintance, shall we?"

"You bring me the gelt from Lila?"

"Try again, big man."

"Melvin talked to you, right?"

"I don't scare easy, Harry.  You better know that about me right from the start."  I was shivering down to my Fruit of the Looms.  "I don't scare and I don't bargain.  Not with deadbeats and thugs."

"Wait a minute.  Did Melvin threaten you?"

"You could say that.  You could also say that King Kong was a monkey."

"That nudnik!  I told him . . .  Listen, why don't you come in and have a ginger‑ale, Sammy?  We can talk this out, you and me."

"Sure.  Why not?"  He gestured for me to go first down the little hallway into the kitchenette.  "Nothing doing.  You first."  He shrugged and led the way.

He sat me down at the table, pulled a bottle of clear liquid from the fridge, and set out two plastic tumblers.  Mine was a Mickey Mouse.  His was a Simpsons.  He filled both of them with the bubbling stuff, returned the bottle to the fridge, and sat down opposite me at the table, all just as casual as could be.  I watched him like a hawk.

"Say, Big Harry, you mind if we trade tumblers?  So happens I'm partial to the Simpsons."

"Whatever you say, Sammy."

We switched.  Even so, I waited until Harry took the first sip, and when nothing happened, I took a pull off mine.  Tasted like ginger ale, all right.  It went down smooth and easy, and I started to relax a little.

Harry made little circles on the table with the base of his wet tumbler.  "Look, I'm sorry about Melvin, Sammy.  He gets a little carried away sometimes."

"Oh yes?  According to a certain informant of mine, you're the one who wrote out that little speech for him."

"Speech?  I don't know what you're talking about."

"You can cut the baloney, Harry, I talked to Lila myself."

"And?"

"She spilled her guts to me, Harry.  She sang like a canary.  She told me about the two bucks you owe her--and about you writing Melvin's little standup routine."

"Now wait a minute, Sammy."  I could see he was starting to sweat as bad as the tumblers.  I had a sweet little fantasy of making circles on the table with him.  "I didn't mean for Melvin to really scare you.  I just asked him for a little intercession, is all . . . "

"Intercession, huh?"

"Yeah, intercession.  Is there an echo in here or something?  I knew he and you lived on the same block, and I knew you were Lila's cousin or something.  So I thought he could, you know, enlist your aid in getting the dough she owes me.  Owes me, Sammy, not the other way around."

"So why the megillah?  'Your acquaintance, my acquaintance . . . !'  And why was he threatening me, if you didn't tell him to?"

"You'll have to ask Melvin that."

"I will, Big Harry.  Count on it.  And I still don't buy your story about the dreidle debt.  You got Lila's IOU to prove it?"

"Of course not, Sammy.  I'm not saying that I won.  Lila won.  Won and won.  That's the whole point."

"Look, maybe I'm a little shikker here, maybe there's something in this soda pop besides bubbles and sugar water, but isn't it the custom for the loser to pay the winner?"

"Not if the winner cheats."

I narrowed my eyes.  I gritted my teeth.  I fisted my hands under the table.  "What are you saying?"

"That dreidle, the one she tucks under her pillow at night and keeps with her from Chanukah to Chanukah‑-Sammy, that dreidle is loaded."

 

 had to admit, it made a lot of sense.  On the way to Melvin the Grip's place, I thought about the run of gimmels by means of which Lila had fleeced me at the Carter Street playground an hour before.  You don't get that kind of action from an evenly weighted dreidle.  Had she cheated me the way Harry said she had cheated him?  Cheated and lied?

Dames.

I was in a spot now, a heck of a spot, having pledged each side that I'd collect from the other.  Whoever won, Yours Truly would lose.  But what about the Grip?  Why had the messenger boy upped the ante without his boss's say‑so‑-that is, if Big Harry hadn't lied to me about that.  What was Melvin's angle?

The Grip was playing catch in his backyard with the only kid on the block who could stand his aroma‑-namely, himself.  He stood in the petunias staring at the sky and holding aloft his catcher's mitt.  The way he hefted that hardball, you'd have thought it would reach escape velocity and go into orbit.  But it kept coming back down all right, a regular meteorite: whump!  Melvin's folks should have declared that backyard a hard hat area and taken out extra insurance.

Only thing was, Melvin's father was vice president of the local garden club; if he knew Melvin was tramping on his petunias he would grind the Grip's kishkes and use them for fertilizer.  I threaded between beds of Gloriosa Lilies and Royal Poincianas, pausing to enjoy the fragrance of a Chinese Hibiscus before braving the Grip's bouquet.  I edged past the daffodils and tiptoed through the tulips, till I was standing a few feet behind Melvin.  He still hadn't seen me.

I decided to use the element of surprise.  "Nice day for it, ey, Grip?"

He turned suddenly, the ball hit him square on the noggin, and he fell like a loaded dreidle‑-only he wasn't coming up gimmel.  "Ouch!  Sammy, what's the big idea?  I coulda got my brains ventilated."

"That isn't all that'll be ventilated if you don't come clean, Melvin.  So happens I've just been chitchatting with a certain acquaintance of yours, and guess what?  He doesn't recall telling you to deliver any threats."

"Darn it, Sammy!"  Melvin the Grip rubbed his head and laboriously stood up, uprooting a clump of prize gladioli.  He was surrounded by divots the size of a foxhole, and a hanging basket of some kind of chrysanthemums was shards and roughage now.  "Darn it, I asked you not to tell Big Harry about the speech, didn't I?"

"You asked me not to tell him you screwed up.  I didn't.  But I saw no reason to clam up on the whole business.  What's the idea turning up the heat on Lila, if Big Harry didn't ask you to?"

Melvin stood there for most of a minute, ruminating on his shoe leather.  Then he heaved a sigh and looked up.  "You know I'm a goner for your cousin, Sammy."

"She's not my cousin, pal, but say I do.  So what?"

"We had the same teacher last year, me and Lila.  Well, ever since Valentine's Day, when she sent me that little card‑-'Be mine,' it said, with a bunch of little hearts, the cutest reddest little hearts you ever laid eyes on, Sammy, so you knew they had to be sincere . . . "

"She must have given those things to everybody.  You had Mrs. Tarbottom, right?  She makes you give them to everybody."

"Mine was different, Sammy."

"Did it say 'Hallmark' on the back, by any chance?  Was there a price sticker for fifteen cents?"

"Stop it.  Mine was different, I tell you.  Well, ever since then, I knew that me and Lila were meant for each other."

"Nu?"

"But then there was the Harry thing."

"What Harry thing?"

Melvin looked like he was about to say something important.  Take it from an old dreidler, take it from a fellow who knows human nature like a shochet knows chickens, the bum was about to confess‑-something.  Then, suddenly, he clammed.  I could see the little marbles rolling around in his eye sockets, and when he finally talked, it was only to say: "Let's go see her, Harry.  Let's go see Lila, you and me, together.  Then you can ask her for yourself."

It was a tough call.  Should I accompany the Grip to Lila's place or dump him and go by myself?  He was holding back something‑-but what?  I was starting to think that the whole thing was a setup, that Melvin was somehow in cahoots with Lila, and that nothing was what it seemed.  "Why?" I asked myself.  "Why?  Why?  Why?"

In my line of work a fellow learns one thing pretty quick: you can sing The Four Questions till you're blue in the face, but the answer will still be Hebrew.  I helped Melvin repot the chrysanthemums, and we headed for Lila's together.

 

ila blocked the porch door.  "It's not a good time, boys."

I wasn't in a mood for this sort of guff.  The heat of the day was upon us now.  Mosquitoes were playing knick-knack on my knee, and the sun was so bright you'd have thought the whole world was an interrogation room, and the sky was an angry DA.  "Make it a good time," I said.  "We've got a few things need talking over.  Get the picture?"

"Sure, sure, I get the picture.  Come on in, then.  Cookies and milk?"  She opened the screen door, and we pushed through.  "Let's sit in the living room, okay?  The kitchen's being redecorated."

"Anything you say, doll."

They were chocolate chip cookies--semisweet, like everything about Lila.  I immediately sat down opposite her and shoveled two big ones into my mouth.  The milk was cold and good and all milk, a real kid's drink, none of this 2% stuff.

Sammy remained on his feet.  He kept fidgeting with the rubber on his slingshot.  For the second time that day, I had the feeling that the Grip was holding something back.

At last, he broke out: "Ask her.  Go ahead, Sammy.  Ask her."

"OK, Grip."  I turned to Lila.  "A certain acquaintance of mine . . . "

Lila cut in, "You mean Melvin?"

"I am not at liberty to say."

She shot an angry look in the Grip's direction.  "Melvin, you are such a nudnik.  Why can't you speak up for yourself?"

Melvin blushed and said nothing.  He considered his shoe leather again.  I don't know what it was about that shoe leather.

"Ahem," I ahemmed. "As I was saying, Lila, this individual was describing to me a little Valentine's Day action he received vis à vis yourself.  And in that context, my acquaintance made mention of some mysterious thing going on with you, Lila‑-a 'Harry thing,' he called it.  My acquaintance has requested that I ask you about this matter in person.  So I'm asking you, Lila, what is this 'Harry thing,' huh?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't know what I'm talking about.  Harry doesn't know what I'm talking about.  Nobody knows what I'm talking about today.  What, am I speaking Hebrew or something?  Aramaic?  Swahili?  Lila, what is the 'Harry thing?'"

She stood up, nearly knocking her chair over behind her.  "You two'll have to go now."

Why the sudden nervosity?  I eyed the closed kitchen door.  Redecorating, huh?  "You wanna spin some dreidle, Lila?  Why don't we just step into the kitchen and throw a few before we sashay out of here?"  It seemed to be a day for kitchens.  Noshing and kitchens.  Could be worse.

"I told you we're redecorating."

Melvin exploded like a shook soda.  "Harry's no good, Lila.  He's a big bully.  He threatened you.  He threatened Sammy."

"You did that," she said.

"Harry made me.  It was all Harry.  He doesn't even really like you."

"Wait a minute," I said, "what's going on here?"  The air was burning between Lila and Melvin.  They paid about as much attention to Yours Truly as a dinosaur to a gnat.

"Don't say that, Melvin."  A softness crept into Lila's voice.  Now she was the one taking in shoe leather.

"I'm the one who likes you, Lila.  Not Harry‑-me."  A sigh, then dead silence.

I ate another cookie.  I watched the kitchen door.

"So the truth comes out," I said.  "It seems the messenger boy doctored the message.  You wanted to make Big Harry look bad, didn't you, Melvin?"

"Shut up."  Now I was the shoe leather: Melvin looked at me as if he was about to give me a shine.

"You wanted to put the kibosh on the 'Harry thing,' isn't that right Melvin?  On the 'Harry and Lila sitting in a tree' thing, to be exact."

"Shut up, Sammy."  Lila joined the chorus.  She glared at me.  Nobody seemed to appreciate the sound of my voice that day.  Maybe I should take singing lessons, was my thought.

Before Lila realized what I was up to, I trotted past her to the kitchen door.

"Don't, Sammy, please!"  Suddenly Lila was all scented hankies and flowers between the teeth.  "You don't know what you're doing."

"Sure I do, sweetheart," I said.  "I'm gonna turn the handle and shove."

And that's what I did, all right.  Just as I had suspected, Big Harry Zots was standing inside.  In his hand was Lila's dreidle.  There was no mistaking that dreidle, a big plastic job with barber stripes on the handle.

You could have knocked Big Harry over with a feather.  He just stood there blushing.  For the moment, I had the advantage, but I knew that if I didn't move quickly, I'd lose it.  Big Harry would make a little calculation, and Little Sammy would receive an unsolicited facial: spell that k‑l‑o‑p.

Sometimes I surprise myself.  I grabbed the big dreidle right out of Harry's paw.  "OK, Harry‑-talk."  He just stood there looking back and forth between Melvin and Lila and me.  He couldn't‑-or wouldn't‑-say a word.

"Everybody down on the floor," I said.  And for some crazy reason they did it.  I have tried to reproduce this effect numerous times since that day, but I have not been able to do it.  When I order people around, they tend to do one of three things: ignore me, punch me, or laugh.  This must have been one of my golden moments.  Big Harry, Melvin the Grip, and Lila plunked themselves down in a neat little circle on the kitchen floor, and I squeezed in among them.

"Ante up," I said.  Lila and Harry were too embarrassed to think, much less protest.  The Grip was simply too stupid.  They each threw two pennies into the middle‑-our accustomed ante.  "I'll go first."  I spun.

Gimmel.

No one said a word.  I raked in the gelt, we anted up again, and the Grip reached for the dreidle.

I grabbed his wrist.  "Wait a minute.  So happens Big Harry here has a theory about this dreidle of Lila's‑-don't you, Harry?"  Silence.  Shoe leather.  "Anybody mind if I test it out?"

Once, twice, three times, I spun Lila's dreidle.

Gimmel.  Gimmel.  Gimmel.  I collected the pennies.

I nodded slowly‑-something I saw John Travolta do in a movie once, and it made cornmeal mush out of Uma Thurman.  I nodded and nodded.  No cornmeal mush.  I nodded anyway.  "Seems like I'm having a run of luck here.  What do you think, Lila?  Shall I spin it again?"

She barely whispered, "It wasn't me, Sammy.  I didn't load that dreidle."

Big Harry stood up in a huff.  "I can't take it anymore.  I'm the one who fixed Lila's dreidle.  Yeah, I did it.  Me, Harry Zots.  And I'd do it again."  He pulled a little gizmo out of his pocket, and I hit the deck, figuring I was dead meat.  But instead of shooting the thing, he plunked it down in front of me and ran out of the room.

It looked like a remote control, the kind of gadget you run toy trucks and airplanes with.  I picked it up.  I fingered the little lever.

Lila blurted, "Don't . . . !"

But I pushed the lever home.  Two feet away, the top of the dreidle popped off, and out sprang a styrofoam ball with these words scrawled on it in fat red letters:

 

                                                             Lila--

                                                          I you.

                                                         --Harry

 

"Sammy, you fathead, you've spoiled everything."  Lila shook like bullet-riddled glass, and her freckles danced the hanky panky.  She showed me her teeth‑-a nice set, though I wasn't in the mood to admire it.

I eyed her coolly‑-Travolta couldn't have done it better.  "You knew about the dingus."

"I knew there was something.  Of course I did.  It started last Chanukah.  My dreidle went missing while the Zotses were visiting.  For half an hour or so, I couldn't find it‑-or Harry‑-anywhere.  Then the dreidle turns up exactly where it's supposed to be, and there's Harry, wearing this silly grin.

"Ever since then, I can only get gimmels.  I figure something must be up, but I can't quite figure it out.  Who would suspect such a thing?  I just thought my luck had changed."

"And then?"

"Then came the looks."

"Looks?"

"Yeah.  Looks from Harry.  Between classes at school.  Or when he walked by my house and I was on the porch‑-you know.  Looks.  Like Melvin's doing to me now."

I shot a glance at the Grip.  He was staring at Lila.  His face had turned to marmalade.  His lip quivered.  His eyes were oozing out of their sockets with a love light that can only be described as‑-yuchy.

"Okiedokie," I said.  "All this I buy.  The dreidle was loaded, but it was nobody's fault.  The weight of the servo-mechanism that Big Harry stuck inside it happened to be just opposite the gimmel side.  But why didn't Big Harry pop the love note on Chanukah, when he loaded it there, instead of twiddling his thumbs for most of a year, and then letting me do it?"

"He was shy, you shmendrick.  For most of a year, poor Harry beat around the bush.  He acted funny.  He couldn't get up the chutzpah.  He was about to do it just now, but you had to spoil everything, bigshot detective, with your tough talk and your big nose."

"Big Harry shy?"

"Yes.  He couldn't talk to me.  He just kind of stammered and expected me to get the picture."

"The 'I heart you' picture, you mean."

"Exactly.  Then he found another way of communicating."

"Let me guess.  He picked a fight."

"Yes."

"I get it now.  Tough guys in love: first they mumble, then throw spitballs."

"That's it.  That's when the accusations began."

"He said you owed him money."

"Yes, and I said he owed me.  That's when I started wondering about the dreidle.  I held it up to the light.  I really did win two dollars, you know.  I didn't know till then that my dreidle was loaded."

"I believe you, Lila.  So all the monkeyshines, the debts, the threats, the messages, me running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and Melvin here memorizing his two‑bit monologues with the ten‑dollar words, what it all boils down to is this: we were caught in the crossfire of a lovers' quarrel."

Lila blushed and smiled.  "I guess you could say that."

 

 gave Patsy the day off and went over to Melvin the Grip's place to help him mend his broken heart.  What are friends for, after all?  I found him in the petunias, pulling weeds.  I kneeled down beside him and started clawing up crabgrass.

"I suppose it's all for the best," he said.

"What do you mean, Grip?"

"If you hadn't gotten involved in this, if I'd taken matters any further . . . "

"Matters of the heart, you mean."

"Yes.  If I'd pushed it, Sammy, I might have been sprouting petunias instead of weeding them."

"Hey, Big Harry's not such a mean guy.  I don't take him for the jealous type, either.  He wouldn't have hurt you, Grip, my man."

"Harry?  Who's talking about Harry?  Lila has the fastest left jab in the sixth grade."

"Anyway, there's plenty of fish in the sea.  What about Miriam?  Wasn't she in your class too?"

"The spelling champion, you mean, that Miriam?  What makes you think she might like me?"

"She sent you a Valentine's card, didn't she?"

He stopped weeding and looked at me.  His mouth dropped open.  He stayed like that for a minute, catching flies, and then he broke out into the silliest grin I have yet witnessed on a human mug.  "She did, didn't she?"  He sighed.  "Miriam!"

It put me in mind of dreidleing again, of how you can hardly lose.  I mean, it's only pennies, and the odds are pretty good.  Look at Melvin.  His dreidle had come up shin, so to speak.  All that effort with Lila had gone to waste, yet here he was, anteing up all over again.  Miriam.  It gives a fellow pause.