Characters in Apt Pupil

Todd told the old man that he had been seeing a girl named Angela Farrow off and on. He wasn’t nuts about her, but she was the daughter of one of his mother’s friends.

I’ll do better. Really. That algebra . . . it just threw me to start with. But I went over to Ben Tremaine’s, and after we studied together for a few days, I started to get it. I just . . . I dunno, I sorta choked at first.”

A couple of them had been teachers. And that asshole Bernie Everson had come right out and asked him if he was going fruitcrackers.

He thought about shoving the blued steel barrel right up Betty Trask’s slimy Jewish cooze—just what she needed, a prick that never went soft. How do you like it, Betty? he heard himself asking her.

The only work that fucking wino Bill Mazursky ever had was holding onto a twelve-cent bottle of musky so it wouldn’t fly away.

“Is that so?” For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking about; he had to grope for the meaning of the words. “Say, yeah, Coach Haines mentioned something to me about that at the end of the year. Said he was putting me and Billy DeLyons up.

(“and tell us everything!”) Rachel Tannenbaum’s husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who comes on after Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is always picking his nose and then putting his fingers in his mouth.

Brodin has his mother’s wedding ring taped below his scrotum!

“It comes all at once,” Bugs Anderson had rhapsodized. “You see something for the first time, and right away you know you have found YOUR GREAT INTEREST.

You member me tellin you that, Lieutenant Bozeman?” “I remember.” Several of the winos who hung around the Salvation Army and the soup kitchen a few blocks away had told a similar story about two of the murdered derelicts, Charles “Sonny” Brackett and Peter “Poley” Smith.

… At the awards assembly in June he was named Athlete of the Year and given a plaque by Coach Haines (Coach Haines, who had once taken him aside and told him to keep practicing his curve “because none of these niggers can hit a curve-ball, Bowden, not …

Hap was gone and Dan Bozeman was still trying to figure it out when Richler and Weiskopf came in . . . and it was the sound of their voices as they got coffee in the …

“I don’t mind,” the old man said. “Not at all. My name is Arthur Denker.” “Klingerman. Dave Klingerman.” “I am pleased to meet you, sir. I read in the paper—I could not believe it—that you give dogs away here. Perhaps I misunderstood.

Uh . . .” He looked down at the folder. “Harold. Todd’s uncle.” “Harry and Deborah are in Minnesota now,” Bowden said, quite truthfully. “He has a position there at the University medical school.

“It’s all in how you use it.” “Want to use it tonight?” “The wench grows bold,” Dick Bowden said, and threw the earplug across the room. • • • After, as he was drifting off to sleep: “Dick, he’s having bad dreams, too.”

By then they had put him in a body-cast. Blood and urine samples had been taken. Dr. Kemmelman had peered into his eyes and tapped his knees with a little rubber hammer—but no reflexive twitch of the leg answered the taps.

Morris told her he loved her. Tonight he loved everyone—Lydia, Dr. Timpnell with his Lawn Boy haircut, Mr. Denker, even the young girl who brought in the supper trays as Morris hung up.

The sound of the shot rolled away in the hot and windless quiet of the afternoon. Ed French was flung back against his Saab. His hand groped behind him and tore off a windshield wiper.

“Morris!” she trilled. Trailing her and looking just as tremulously happy was Emma Rogan from next door. Mr. Denker, startled, dropped his fork. He cursed softly under his breath and picked it up off the floor with a wince.

You were off playing golf with that horrible Ernie Jacobs.” “That horrible Ernie Jacobs is going to make me a full partner by 1977, if he doesn’t screw himself to death with that high-yellow secretary of his before then.

You must sit down and tell us all about it. Tell us everything. Omit nothing.” Felice blushed and smiled and said she couldn’t do that. “We’ve still got the rest of the B Wing to do and C Wing after that.

Every fucking cent. I couldn’t believe it. They kept the store open, too. Fiona Castellano got four or five of her friends who were out of work to come in on shifts. When my old man got back, the books balanced out to the cent.”

… Lydia”—although if there was anyone in a class with Lydia’s mother, it was that cigar-chewing putz Frank Haskell). At last they gave Morris a Valium and took Lydia away. Shortly afterward, Morris just drifted away—no worries, no migraines, no nothing.

I remember that a private soldier named Hackermeyer gave me a chocolate bar. I wept. There was no reason to fight on; the war was over, and really had been since February.

We had all known each other for upwards of twenty years. One of our number, Hans Hassler, mentioned in passing that perhaps the Fuehrer had been ill-advised to open a second front against the Russians.

Get out of here! I want to breathe again.” “I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman.” “He died, Hap. It happened yesterday. We’ll all really fucked up over it. So get out and let us mourn in peace.” “I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman!”

“One piece of luck and a lot of hard work,” Todd said. “There’s this friend of mine, Harold Pegler his name is, only all the kids call him Foxy. He plays second base for our team. His dad’s got all these magazines out in his garage.

Uh . . .” He looked down at the folder. “Harold. Todd’s uncle.” “Harry and Deborah are in Minnesota now,” Bowden said, quite truthfully. “He has a position there at the University medical school.

Everything in confidence, of course. The man in charge down there, Harry Ackerman, is a good friend of mine. And I don’t think Todd should go to them with the idea; I think you should.” Rubber Ed smiled widely.

My newest colleague, Hepburn, has a hundred and fifteen. At this age, in our society, all children need help.” “Of course.”

(“you must sit down”) Laslo and Herman Dorksy have talked about rushing guard tower number three!

He grinned as he did it. Huffmann had been a finger-snapper and a thigh-patter, creating fast, intricate rhythms that he seemed utterly unaware of.

… whose favorite saying was “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” slipped on her friend Janet’s wet kitchen floor and sprained her hip. She was at home in bed. It wasn’t serious, not at all, and thank God (what God) for that, but it …

… Kessel, who had a picture of his girlfriend naked, lying on a sofa with her hands behind her head. Kessel charged the men to look at it. He remembered the names of the doctors and their experiments—thresholds of pain, the brainwaves of dying men …

The other photo showed an SS officer named Kurt Dussander behind his desk at Patin, his cap cocked to one side. If they had the photograph the hippie had taken, they had been in his house.

Brodin has his mother’s wedding ring taped below his scrotum! (“you must sit down”) Laslo and Herman Dorksy have talked about rushing guard tower number three!

At that same moment, their cat—it was named Lover Boy, not Morris—tore around the corner of the garage, its fur bushed out into hackles and its green eyes flaring. The Rogans’ collie pup was in hot pursuit, its tongue hanging out and its leash dragging behind it.

“So I called the hospital,” Lydia said, shrugging her coat off and settling in for a good long visit, “and they said it was past visiting hours but in my case they would …

Uneasy? Yes. For some reason the boy seemed very uneasy. Dussander had charmed Dick and Monica Bowden from the moment he and the boy had arrived.

But the pills would float him off just as nicely no matter how they were washed down. “Morris Heisel, salud,” he said with a faint smile, and poured himself a glass of water.

I met you. And I found out later from Mr. Halleck down the block that my dad put a lien on his car to scare up that two hundred bucks. “And now I’ve got you, and we’ve got Todd.

The old man looked forward to his visits so much. “That Mr. Storrman, the algebra teacher, is really hard,” Todd said. “Lots of kids got D’s. Three or four got F’s.” Bowden nodded thoughtfully.

I couldn’t understand why I had to wear pants from the Goodwill box while Mrs. Mazursky could get a ham on credit with that same old story about how her husband was going back to work next week.

Her favorite was his final fourth-grade card, on which Mrs. Upshaw had scratched: “Todd is an extremely apt pupil.” He was, too. Straight A’s and B’s all the way up the line.

… he wanted was on the fourth floor, and showed them to a creeping, clanking elevator that frightened Norma into an uncharacteristic silence. She regained herself on the fourth floor, prancing and capering up and down the dim aisles of stacked …

You member me tellin you that, Lieutenant Bozeman?” “I remember.” Several of the winos who hung around the Salvation Army and the soup kitchen a few blocks away had told a similar story about two of the murdered derelicts, Charles “Sonny” Brackett and Peter “Poley” Smith.

He remembered Private Henreid, who manned a machine-gun in the northeast tower and the wen Private Henreid had had between his eyes. Some of the men called him Three-Eyes, or Old Cyclops.

(“and tell us everything!”) Rachel Tannenbaum’s husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who comes on after Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is always picking his nose …

(Randy Chambers from just down the street—a good boy, but rather fat and slow.) During that year Dussander had put an end to three winos in his kitchen.

How about if I said, “Oh, by the way, did you know your good friend Ray Trask’s daughter is one of the biggest sluts in Santo Donato? She’d kiss her own twat if she was double-jointed, Dad-O.

“Oh, I think the kid was in on it somehow,” Richler said. “Somehow, some way, to some degree. But is he cool? If you poured hot water into his mouth I think he’d spit out icecubes.

… a boast he had made to Ruth (but never to Lydia; it didn’t pay to boast to Lydia; she was not like Ruth, who would always smile sweetly at his harmless puffing and crowing): I never forget a face. Here was his chance to find out if that was …

Dussander was a big fish, but he wasn’t the last one in the lake—or so Sam Weiskopf says, and I believe him. They think Dussander might have known about a lot of other fish.

Like when he wanted to feel around under Sharon Ackerman’s dress last year.

“But it’s him,” Ed almost moaned. “Jesus Christ Almighty, that’s him!” Sondra French looked at the picture long and fixedly. “He doesn’t look like Peter Wimsey at all,” she said finally.

… long fingers of the trusty they had called Stinky-Thumbs could reach. One woman, he remembered, had had a small diamond, flawed, it turned out, really not valuable at all—but it had been in her family for six generations, passed from mother to eldest daughter (or so she said, but of …

Tannenbaum, some of it to Booger-Eater so he wouldn’t take his wife’s pearl earrings!

… with the apehanger handlebars up the residential suburban street, and that’s just what he was: Todd Bowden, thirteen years old, five-feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, …

But now things have changed. Today I impersonated your grandfather, one Victor Bowden. No one can have the slightest doubt that I did it with . . . how is the word? . . . your connivance.

“From Willi, I think. Willi Frankel. Dear . . . dear Willi.” Todd looked at his watch and saw that already two minutes had passed since he had hung up the phone.

… things—cup their testicles through the pockets of their pants, click their teeth together . . . Wolff had been a great teeth-clicker. He grinned as he did it. Huffmann had been a finger-snapper and a thigh-patter, creating fast, intricate …

… tell us everything!”) Rachel Tannenbaum’s husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who comes on after Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is always picking his nose and then putting his fingers in his mouth. Tannenbaum, some of it to …