Funny Boys by Warren Adler Page A

most important thing. Okay, there were rumors and things said. As she had learned early in life if you are afraid of the dark, don’t go into dark places.
    Pep’s work, she told herself, was certainly adventurous and filled with excitement, and probably courage, too, because whatPep and his associates did was, she assumed, dangerous work. Maybe there were killings connected to it, but they were most certainly righteous killings, necessary to protect themselves and probably society from extremely evil and greedy people. Like Robin Hood perhaps. She could live with that idea. Still better, she forced herself to put any contrary thoughts completely out of her mind.
    The important thing for her just as for the wives and girlfriends of the other fellows in the combination, was that their men were good husbands or boyfriends or fathers or sons and, of course, good providers. Pep was a wonderful son who treated his parents with great respect and was generous in his support. He was also a good uncle and brother. These were the real criteria by which to judge a man’s true character as far as she was concerned. Weren’t they?
    Often she heard people say things behind her back that were not exactly complimentary. Even here at Gorlick’s, some of the other women were snooty to her or looked down on her. She attributed that to jealousy. She had the best and handsomest man of all of them.
    She heard rumors, of course, that Pep might have other girls. She didn’t exactly like it, but she never ever confronted him with such suspicions. That was none of her business, either. After all, she was the one he had chosen to put up in Gorlick’s for the summer. She was his number one. If there was a number two or three she never asked.
    He was also very sweet and generous to her. He bought her dresses and shoes and gave her presents. He also gave her fancy underwear and he liked her to dress up with garter belts and high heels and brassieres that pushed her breasts into high mounds. He taught her about sex, and especially about those things he liked her to do to him.

    In doing those things, she felt like an actress in a movie, and he was the director. Her role was to perform and please him, which she did with obedience and enthusiasm. Once or twice she even had an orgasm, but for her, the most important thing was to give Pep pleasure. Soon she began to believe that her mother’s ideas about purity and marriage and being an old maid were laughable. Where would marriage get her?
    The game plan at Gorlick’s was for the men to come up on weekends and the women to stay on during the week. Some men stayed all week, but mostly they kept to themselves all day, playing cards or taking walks together, meeting with their women or children only at mealtimes.
    Pep wanted Abie Reles’s wife, Helen, to keep an eye on her, but that didn’t work out very well since Helen Reles played cards most of the day and night, which meant that Mutzie was stuck being a babysitter for their son, who was a brat. When she complained to Pep, he put an end to it. The Reles kid was a pain in the ass.
    The fact that Mutzie wasn’t a card player was a definite social handicap. She was younger than most of the others, too. Not to mention the obvious, which was that she attracted a good deal of attention from the men. This didn’t sit too well with the women and probably inspired a great deal of jealousy toward her. Of course, she understood that. Also, there was a certain status in being Pep’s girlfriend, which meant she couldn’t be friendly with just anyone. Besides, she wasn’t the gregarious type. The result was that during the week, she kept to herself mostly, waiting for Pep to come up for the weekend. She sensed that people got used to her being alone and soon accepted it.
    At meal times she ate at the same table with Helen and Harriet, Bugsy’s wife, and some of the others, but she was rarelypart of the main conversation, although she listened to what was