in front of him and tying the score. His team won in that inning and the patients gathered round him on the field. "You clobber their ass, baby," said the Greek boy with genuine sincerity, reaching up from the wheelchair to pat Stern's back. The tall boy, with gentleness in his lips, the ticking in him fading, said, "No fooling, you get around good. I mean, for a guy with a can like yours." The Puerto Rican[Pg 142] girl, still lying on the bench with gaping skirt, said, "We're all goin' dancin' tonight. Either alfresco or in my place. The group has much charm." Only Feldner had misgivings. "You signed your death warrant out there," he said, and for a moment Stern felt a bubble tremble outward inside him; he was certain he was going to have to pay for his indiscretion by starting from scratch with a brand new ulcer, slightly larger and a fraction more formidable than his first. But the bubble fluttered and withered, like a wave breaking, and the patients kept congratulating him. He had struck a blow for sickness. As a reward he got to carry Rooney back to the porch for evening "milk and cookie." [Pg 142] Late that night, the tall, blond boy and the wheelchaired Greek came for Stern as he sat alone on the porch. The others had gone to bed and the tall boy said, "We're meeting the kid with the boobs on the outside tonight. I figure we get a few beers and, later, diddle her boobs." "I take her upstairs and do some jazzing," said the boy in the wheelchair. Stern, flattered at being selected by the two, and not really sure how to say no, got up from his chair, giddy and dangerous in the night. The trio started down the corridor and then heard Lennie rasping and clattering after them, a man with a machine shop going full blast below his waist. "There is to be no disobedience of the nighttime rules," he said, and, as the boys turned to face him, Stern wondered which side he would be on in a fight. He imagined Lennie standing against the wall, looking patiently at Stern, while the tall boy bent his contraptions and tore out his clamps and gears and the Greek boy hit him many times on the head to no avail. Stern pictured him[Pg 143]self watching this, frozen to the side, asking Lennie, "Do you need any help?" And then Lennie, his machinery mangled, finally turning from Stern with great calm and slowly rising up, trunklike and great-armed, to hug the breath out of the two boys, subduing them for the night. [Pg 143] As it was, the
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