In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (52 page)

Amy Lourie

Terry Kay

M
y history in Arch’s was Amy Lourie.

It was where I discovered her one night, following dinner, two weeks after the regular season had begun in the Inn. I had gone into Arch’s to buy envelopes to mail a letter to Carolyn. Amy was sitting in a booth with Carter. He saw me and motioned me over.

“Bobo,” he said, “this is Amy Lourie. You’re going to be serving her breakfast in the morning. Amy, this is Bobo Murphy, your waiter and my boss, and if you understand anything he says, you’ll be among the few. He’s from Georgia, way down yonder in Dixieland.”

Amy Lourie flicked a smile to me. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

“Hi,” she said.

I nodded a reply and forced a smile.

“Why are you called Bobo?” she asked.

I blushed. “One of my sisters gave it to me. She couldn’t say
brother
. She called me Bobo and it just stuck.”

“You’re really our waiter?”

“I—I don’t know.” I looked at Carter.

“You are,” Carter said. “They always sit in the middle dining room.” He moved in the seat of the booth. “Come on, take a load off.”

I sat beside Carter and looked away from Amy Lourie. I was uncomfortable.

“They just got in,” Carter explained. “Amy comes up every year with her folks. They spend the summer.”

“My parents love it here,” Amy said softly.

“You don’t?” Carter asked.

She moved her hand to touch the milk shake in front of her. Her hand and her fingers were as beautiful as her face. She looked around the store, then said, “I like it, but it can get a little boring.” Her eyes covered me. “Have you ever been here?”

“I’ve never been anywhere, until a few weeks ago,” I said.

I could see the flash of delight in her eyes. She said, “You really are, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“From the South.”

“I told you he was,” Carter interjected. “Come on, Bobo, say ‘y’all’ for Amy.”

I blushed again.

“Leave him alone, Carter,” Amy said. “I love the accent.”

“You better get used to it,” Carter told her. He grinned. “You should see the look on old Mrs. Mendelson’s face when Bobo tries to speak German.”

“Carter, that’s mean,” Amy said. She was still looking at me. “How did you get to be our waiter?”

Carter chuckled. I knew it was a tender matter with him. He had been at the Inn for two years as a busboy, and I had been promoted from dishwasher to waiter in three weeks.

“I’m not sure I know,” I answered.

“Jesus, Bobo,” exclaimed Carter, “don’t be so uptight.” He said to Amy, “Al Martin—maybe you remember him from last year—got fired and Mrs. Dowling gave his busboy job to Bobo. Then Connie Wells found out she was pregnant and her husband didn’t want her to work, and that opened up a waiter’s job. Bobo got it, and that’s fine with me. I don’t mind being his busboy. Jesus, who wants to be a waiter, anyway? People always yelling at you, giving you grief. Jesus. I didn’t even think I was going to be here this summer, but I changed my mind. My car needs a new motor. Anyway, Harry Burger taught him the ropes, and you know Harry. He pulls some weight—most of it in silver dollars.”

“Mr. Burger?” Amy said. “He’s back?”

“Did he ever leave?” Carter said. “He’s like your folks. They couldn’t live without this place.”

Amy smiled patiently, ignoring Carter. She said to me, “I’m glad to meet you, Bobo. Will you keep something warm for me in the morning? Sometimes I sleep late.”

Carter laughed.

“I’m sure we’ll find something,” I said.

“Don’t y’all know it,” Carter drawled, mocking me.

Later, in The Cave, Carter strolled from the bathroom after his shower. A towel was wrapped around his waist and an amused smile was lodged at a crooked angle in his face. He took a cigarette from the night table and lit it, then he sat on the edge of my lower bunk bed and gazed at me through a veil of smoke that steamed from his nose. I closed the writing pad that I had balanced against my knees.

“Bobo,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Who?”

“You know damn well who: Amy.”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” he snorted. “You’re the artist. Artists see things like that. What color, Bobo?”

“Aqua. Violet. Something like that.”

Carter laughed. “Are they the prettiest eyes you’ve ever seen?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “They’re pretty.”

“What color is her hair?”

“Brunette,” I said.

“No, Bobo, black-gold,” whispered Carter. “You’ve never seen hair like that, have you?”

“Sure, I have.”

There was a pause. Carter drew from his cigarette and nudged a smoke ring from his lips. The ring twirled over my head and scrubbed against the mattress of the top bunk.

“You’re lying,” Carter said easily. “You’ve never seen eyes or hair or lips or arms or hands or fingers or legs or feet, or anything else like Amy Lourie. Wait until you catch her in a bathing suit. You’re going to faint, Bobo. Arch will have to get you up off your little Rebel ass with a gallon of smelling salts. All you’ll want to do is put your face between those babies, and she’s got them, Bobo. She makes Elizabeth Taylor look like she’s deformed. And you tell me you’ve seen women like her? Not on the best day of your life, Bobo. You’re from Georgia, for Christ’s sake. All you’ve ever seen are field hands.”

“So?” I said. “Some of them are pretty.”

“Maybe,” Carter replied. He leaned close to me. “But I’m talking beautiful,” he whispered conspiratorially. “There’s a difference.”

“She’s very pretty,” I admitted.

Carter flicked ash on the floor. He bobbed his head in thought. “I can see it now. In a couple of weeks, you’ll be trying to get her to strip naked and pose for you.”

“My God, Carter.”

“If you do, I want to buy whatever you draw,” Carter replied. “You can have the whole damn summer’s take on my tips.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because, Bobo, you are going to fall in love with her, and I guarantee that. You’re going to cream in your jeans over her. When you close your bloodshot eyes at night, you’re going to see her looking at you.” He sighed and inhaled slowly. “Yeah, yeah, you will. You’re going to be staring at those little aqua-violet sunspots and you’re going to want to lick them off her face. You’re going to be in love, Bobo. I’m an expert at this sort of stuff, and I watched you tonight. I know the signs. I ought to. Last year, I went through the same thing you’re going to go through. But I’m a politician at heart, and I know when to cut and run. You’re an artist. You’ll never have any sense. But I like you, Bobo. Damned if I know why, but I do, and I’ve got to warn you: she’s got a boyfriend back home, in the big city. Adam. That’s his name. He’ll probably be up before the summer’s over. He was last year. Comes from more money than you’ll ever see, and I don’t care if you take a tour of the U.S. Mint. But you know what the real pisser is? He looks like a goddamn movie star. When I saw him last year, I folded the tent, and Amy and I became friends. I figured if I couldn’t have it one way, I’d settle for the next best thing—just being around her.”

“So?” I said.

“So, I just wanted you to know. Don’t come around whining, saying I didn’t warn you. You’re going to be surprised at how right I am.” He stood and stretched. “What are you doing, anyway?”

I opened the cover of the writing pad. “Writing Carolyn.”

Carter laughed and pulled himself up to the bunk above me. He smoked and giggled and talked aloud about Amy Lourie, talked of her beauty, of the sound of her voice, of the way she touched a napkin to her lips in the dining room. And every time he said her name, I could see her face.

“Yep,” he sighed, “that’s the kind of woman that scares a man to death. Too damn pretty. Take one look at her and you know you don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell with her. Not her.”

In my letter to Carolyn, I wrote:

Above me, a snowflake of cigarette ash drifted down and landed on my writing pad. Carter said, “Yeah, Bobo, that’s the kind of woman that scares a man to death.”

The next morning, Nora Dowling led Amy and her parents, Joel and Evelyn Lourie, into my dining room and seated them at a circular table in the middle row. She motioned me to the table and introduced me, as she did with all new guests, telling them—or maybe warning them—that I was from the South, from Georgia.

“Oh, yes, we’ve heard,” Joel Lourie said pleasantly, extending his hand to me. “Our Amy tells us you’re quite charming, a gentleman. You must be, or she wouldn’t be here for breakfast. She does like to sleep late on vacation.”

Amy did not blush. She gazed at me confidently from her aqua-violet eyes and smiled. He black-gold hair hugged her face. And I knew Carter had been right in his assertion: Amy Lourie scared me to death.

At dinner, I sat with Sammy and Lila. The stockbroker and the judge’s wife were not in the dining room. “Room service,” Lila said with an exaggerated sigh when I asked if they had left. The other two couples were there, seated at a table near the lobby door. Both couples were older, both recently retired and traveling together, according to Sammy. “Taking the cut-rate, senior-citizens’ tour of America that they’ve been saving for since God was a baby,” he said. “They’re worse than the Japanese. They take pictures of everything that moves. Talk about bored. Can you imagine their families when they get home?”