The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler Page A

dreamt that you were nice to me,
very
nice to me, and I made you a gift of a little fur jacket to keep you warm in winter here … and here … and here.” Rubin confined himself to the chambermaids. “Why not?” he’d say. “To them it’s nothing.” But actually all he ever did was pinch them. He pinched hard.
    Duddy knew that there were many techniques and he had had some experience himself. There had been that afternoon he had got Birdie Lyman’s brassiere half off when the goddam movie had suddenly ended, and once with a Belmont Park pick-up he’d had everything but. Still, he was scared.
    “Yvette’s got a real lust for you,” Cuckoo told him one night. “Why don’t you do something about it? You could bring her here if you wanted …”
    “Aw. Yvette. Those are a dime a dozen.”
    But Linda was something else. Soft, curvy, and nifty enough for one of those snazzy fashion magazines, she seemed just about the most assured girl Duddy had ever met. She had been to Mexico and New York and sometimes she used words that made Duddy blush. Her cigarette holder, acquired on a trip to Europe, was made of realelephant tusk. At night in the recreation hall she seldom danced but usually sat at the bar joking with Irwin and Paddy and other favorites. Every afternoon she went riding and Duddy had often seen her starting down the dirt road to the stables, beating her whip against her boot. Linda was nineteen and the daughter of a hotel owner – she was maybe an inch and some taller than he was too – and Duddy couldn’t understand why she wanted to go out with him. He’d been leading Thunder back to the stables when he had run into her.
    “Day off today?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Buy me a drink?”
    “Wha’?”
    “I’m thirsty.”
    “Sure. Sure thing.”
    He took her to the Laurentide Ice Cream Bar.
    “No,” she said.
“A drink.”
    It was not even dark yet.
    “Let’s go to the Châlet,” she said.
    The bartender there greeted her warmly. Luckily Duddy had lots of money on him because she drank quickly. Not beer, either.
    “Well, Duddy, how do you like shoveling food into the greedy mouths of the
nouveaux-riches?”
    “Your father is a very decent man to work for,” Duddy said earnestly. He couldn’t understand why she looked so amused.
    “Why?”
    “Jeez. I dunno. I mean …”
    “Did you know that he pinches all the chambermaids’ little bums?”
    “Maybe we oughta go?”
    “No. Let’s have another. Hey, Jerry. Two more on the rocks.” Turning to Duddy again, she laughed. “You shouldn’t let Irwin pick on you like that. You ought to talk back to him.”
    “I’m not scared. I keep quiet, but I’ve got my reasons.”
    “Is that so?”
    There was that amused smile again. He didn’t like it.
    “Yeah.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well,” he said, feeling a little dizzy. “I don’t really have to work as a waiter, you know. My father’s in the transport business. But I’m making a study of the hotel business like.”
    “Shouldn’t I warn my father that he’s harboring a future competitor in the dormitory?”
    Duddy laughed. He was pleased. “Hey, have you ever read
God’s Little Acre?”
    Duddy figured if she had, and admitted it, there might be something doing. But she didn’t reply.
    “I’m not much of a reader, really, but my Uncle Benjy has read millions of books. Hard-covered ones. My brother Lennie is gonna be a doctor.”
    “What are you going to be?”
    Without thinking, he said, “I’m gonna get me some land one of these days. A man without land is nothing.”
    He told her about his brother Bradley and that the Boy Wonder, an intimate of his father’s, was willing to back him in any line he chose.
    “Why don’t you take me dancing tonight?”
    Duddy drank three cups of black coffee and took a swim to clear his head before he returned to the dormitory. Irwin, lying on the bed, made him nervous – Linda was supposed to be
his
girl – and Duddy couldn’t understand