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'But mainly a moron, Arbeiter,' said Susie the bear. 'A truly basic moron.'

'The bear would make a good driver,' Schraubenschlussel said.

'Stick it in your ear, Wrench,' said Susie the bear.

'The bear is too hostile to be trusted,' Ernst said, so logically.

'You bet your sweet ass,' said Susie the bear.

'I can drive,' Franny said to Ernst.

'You can't,' I said. 'You never even got your driver's license, Franny.'

'But I know how to drive,' Franny said. 'Frank taught me.'

'I know how to drive better than you, Franny,' Frank said. 'If one of us has to drive, I'm a better driver.'

'No, I am,' Franny said.

'You did surprise me, Franny,' Ernst said. 'You were better at following directions than I thought you'd be -- you were good at taking instructions.'

'Don't move, dear,' Schwanger said to me, because my arms were jerking -- the way they do when I've been curling the long bar, for a long time.

'What's that mean?' Father asked Ernst; his German was so poor. 'What directions -- what instructions?' Father asked.

'He fucked me,' Franny told Father.

'Just sit tight,' Wrench said to my father, moving near him with his tool. But Frank had to translate for Father.

'Just stay where you are, Pop,' Frank said.

Freud was swishing the baseball bat as if he were a cat and the bat were his tail, and he tapped my father's leg with it -- once, twice, thrice. I knew that Father wanted the bat. He was very good with the Louisville Slugger.

Occasionally, when Freud was napping, Father would take us to the Stadtpark and hit us some grounders. We all liked scooping up ground balls. A little game of good old American baseball in the Stadtpark, with Father whacking out the ground balls. Even Lilly liked playing. You don't have to be big to field a ground ball. Frank was the worst at it; Franny and I were good at fielding -- in a lot of ways, we were about the same. Father would whack the sharpest grounders at Franny and me.

But Freud held the bat, now, and he used it to calm my father down.

'You slept with Ernst, Franny?' Father asked her, softly.

'Yes,' she whispered. 'I'm sorry.'

'You fucked my daughter?' Father asked Ernst.

Ernst treated it like a metaphysical question. 'It was a necessary phase,' he said, and I knew that at that moment I could have done what Junior Jones could do: I could have bench-pressed twice my own weight -- maybe three or four times, fast; I could have pumped that barbell up and not felt a thing.

'My daughter was a necessary phase?' Father asked Ernst.

'This is not an emotional situation,' Ernst said. 'This is a matter of technique,' he said, ignoring my father. 'Although I'm sure you could do a good job of driving the car, Franny, Schwanger has asked us that each of you children be spared.'

'Even the weight lifter?' Arbeiter asked.

'Yes, he's a dear to me, too,' Schwanger said, beaming at me -- with her gun.

'If you make my father drive that car, I'll kill you!' Franny screamed at Ernst, suddenly. And Wrench moved near to her, with his tool; if he had touched her, something would have happened, but he just stood near her. Freud's baseball bat kept time. My father had his eyes closed; he had such trouble following German. He must have been dreaming of hard ground balls spanked cleanly through the infield.

'Schwanger has asked us, Franny,' Ernst said, patiently, 'not to make you children motherless and fatherless, too. We don't want to hurt your father, Franny. And we won't hurt him,' Ernst said, 'as long as someone else does a good job of driving the car.'

There was a puzzled silence in the lobby of the Hotel New Hampshire. If we children were exempt, if Father was to be spared, and Susie the bear wasn't to be trusted, did Ernst mean he would use one of the whores for a driver? They couldn't be trusted -- for sure. They were only concerned with themselves. While Ernst the pornographer had been preaching his dialectic to us, the whores had been slipping past us in the lobby -- the whores were checking out of the Hotel New Hampshire. A wordless team -- friends in any crisis, thick as the thieves they were -- they were helping Old Billig move her china bears. They were bearing their salves, their toothbrushes, their pills, perfumes, and prophylactics away.