Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Nnnnng!” yelled Googy, reaching for the cookie.

Ally dropped it on the floor and stomped it to crumbs. “Don’t act like an animal,” Ally told Googy. “You gotta ask polite. What happened to your manners? Remember where you come from! Remember your glory! A champion you were! A champion of hopscotch at the school for the maimed! A bronze medalist — twice! not once, but twice! — in their semi-annual boxing round-robin! What happened to you, Googy?”

Googy waved Ally off and reached in his own coat, pulled out five cookies, and started to juggle. After nine or ten passes he juggled one-handed, using his free hand to take off his ski-cap.

“No way!” Ally said. “It’s never been tried.”

Googy closed his eyes and positioned the cap upside-down near his heart, and after he’d caught all the cookies in the cap, he opened his eyes, looked deep into the cap, filled his cheeks up with air and, shuddering violently, turned the cap over, dumping all the cookies, and stomped them to crumbs while performing a sequence of face-slapping raspberries. Only after that did the cousins take a bow.

So?” Ally said. “What do you think?”

Wow, I said. That was pretty good, man. I wasn’t expecting—

“No no,” said Ally, “it’s still rough, we know, but what I’m asking is do you believe me now that we never meant it mean, the rhyme about your bus stop?”

Yeah, I said.

It was true.

“Good,” he said. “So what do we do now?”

What do you mean?

“What do you want us to do with the weapons?”

Protect each other.

“Of course,” said Ally, “but what’s the plan?”

The plan? I said.

“It’s okay,” Ally whispered, “no one can hear us but Goog.”

Googy pinched his lips so they flared.

No one can hear us what? I said.

“Discussing the plan.”

I don’t know what you mean.

“Rabbi, come on. We showed you our weapons. I explained the song. I thought you forgave us.”

I did, I said.

“Then don’t cut us out.”

Ally, I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

“The plan,” he whispered, “to deal with the Shovers.”

The Shovers?

“Are we pattering?”

What?

“Are you trying to start a routine with me, Rabbi?”

What? No.

“I’m asking you about the plan for the Shovers. I’m really asking. I’m not joking with you.”

I didn’t say you were, I said. I said, I don’t know what the Shovers have to do with anything.

“The stars and the fish? Isn’t that why you revealed yourself yesterday? Isn’t that why you ripped Acer’s face up with the dumpster? Isn’t that why you instructed the Five to tell everyone to bring their weapons to school?”

I told the Five the pennyguns were meant to be carried, but all the rest of that stuff — who told you all that stuff? Where’d you get all those reasons from?

“No one told me,” Ally said. “I mean, no one in particular. Everyone I talked to told me,” he said, “but no one had to tell me, or anyone else. There’s an understanding. With the timing and everything — there’s an understanding. We all figured, you know, ‘Why would he reveal himself, now? If not because of—’”

Who’s we?

“The Israelites, Rabbi, of Aptakisic.”

Well, I have no plan for the Shovers, I said. That’s a misunderstanding.

“But they’re enemies of the Israelites!”

No, I said. No they’re not. They’re enemies of some Israelites, I said.

“ Because they’re Israelites,” said Ally. “Which means they’re enemies of all Israelites.” He was standing up by then. So was Googy.

Sit, I said.

They sat.

The Shovers, I said, are the enemies of those Israelite Shovers who defaced their scarves with stars of David. They’re the enemies of those Israelite Shovers because those Israelite Shovers — who are dickheads, by the way, bigger dickheads even than the Gentile ones — broke Shover rules.

“I always thought they were dickheads, too, Gurion, and so did Googy — they’re all the enemies of comedy, and that’s not up for argument — and the Israelite ones, we thought, were especially big dickheads — not everyone thought that, but some of us did, and me and Goog especially, because they embarrassed us — so you have no disagreement from us that the Israelite Shovers have been dickheads. But then, like you said, they broke Shover rules, and the reason they broke Shover rules was because they wanted to be good Israelites. Or at least because they didn’t want to be bad Israelites.”

They should have just quit.

“They did, though. They quit.”

They didn’t, I said. They got kicked out.

“I’m telling you they quit — you must not have read the email. They got kicked out on Wednesday, but yesterday afternoon they held an emergency meeting and they quit, and Berman sent this, like, press release to everyone announcing it last night.”

I said, Tch.

“Tch what?” said Ally.

I said, They’d already been kicked out by then.

“I see your point,” Ally said. “And I’m with you,” he said, “and I know it looks weak. It probably even is weak — quitting after you’re fired, it looks like caulk, but still, they’re no longer Shovers, and they are Israelites, and since they’re Israelites, it seems like they should be given the benefit of the doubt. At least it seems that way to me. That I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Am I wrong, Rabbi? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

He wasn’t wrong. It was the right thing to do.

I told him so. Then Googy nodded vigorously, pointed at me, peek-a-booed, shrugged, choked himself, and shrugged again.

Ally said, “What Googy wants to know is why did you reveal yourself yesterday if it wasn’t to bring us together to attack the Shovers over the scarves?”

The Five were looking for me, I said to Googy.

Googy waved me off like a beggar.

“Googy finds that hard to believe,” Ally said. “So do I. They just happened to be looking for you yesterday? The timing’s too perfect. There has to be some connection between—”

There is, I said, but it’s not through me. Shpritzy got attacked by Shlomo Cohen yesterday—

“It looked more, to us, like he attacked Shlomo. Him and the other four.”

Shlomo attacked Shpritzy first, I said. During Lunch-Recess. He beat Shpritzy up and some other guys restrained the other four so they couldn’t interfere, and when he was finished beating on Shpritzy, he made it clear it was because of the scarves. He said, ‘Say hi to Berman for me. Tell him, ‘Sharp scarf,’ and—’

“Tell Acer sharp scarf, you mean,” Ally said. “Acer’s the one who started the fishes.”

No, I said, Berman , who started the stars.

“I don’t like that,” said Ally. “That’s lousy. I don’t like it. You know, when the Five brought Ulpan to Aptakisic, Shlomo was the only Israelite who didn’t get it. I was there. So was Googy. In Pinker’s backyard — Pinker was the one who invited him, Shlomo, but Shlomo didn’t show. There were only twelve of us at Pinker’s. Everyone else was divided up between the rest of the Five’s backyards. Everyone else but Shlomo, like I said. And anyway, we waited for an hour for him to show, and he didn’t show, and he didn’t even call. And since the way Pinker invited everyone to receive your Ulpan was by going up to them in the hall and handing them a list of supplies with his address on it, and saying, ‘Tonight, my place. Secret meeting for Israelites,’ lots of people, that night, said Shlomo was a self-hating Jew. That he didn’t come because he hated Israelites. But I told them no. I defended Shlomo. I thought that was too much, them calling him that name. That’s a bad thing to call someone. It’s one of the worst things to be. And, really, I thought Shlomo probably just didn’t want to hang out with us, but now you tell me what you’re telling me, and I’m thinking you’re saying maybe Shlomo Cohen is, after all, a self-hating Jew. Like, you know, like Noam Chomsky, or Philip Roth or whoever, so, I mean, is that what you’re saying?”