“He’s not dumb,” Moshe insisted. “He’s just a cut-up. When he had to learn his bar mitzvah parashá, he put it off until the last minute. Then he memorized the whole thing in three months. He pulled it off and did Musaf, too. And he did a decent job. He’s not dumb.”

“Well, he acts dumb,” Ephraim said.

“That is true,” Moshe said. He turned to Decker and said, “You haven’t found him, huh?”

Decker shook his head. “You two good friends?”

“Good friends?” Moshe said. “A long time ago. Now we just kinda know each other. The older we get, the less I have to do with him. Noam keeps to himself, doesn’t talk too much. Our interests are different. As you might have noticed, I like sports, I like cars, I like…”

Moshe blushed.

“You like girls,” Decker filled in the blank.

“We don’t see the girls too much,” Moshe said. “Our school hours are long and we’re in separate buildings.”

“Noam like sports and cars?” Decker said.

Moshe shook his head. “Couldn’t care less.”

“How about computers?”

“Noam likes computers?” Moshe said. “That’s news to me.”

“I mean computer games.”

“Oh.” Moshe thought a moment. “He had this little pocket game—Octopus. Used to play that all the time. I find those things boring but a lot of kids are into it. Mostly the younger ones.”

“Do you know if Noam ever hangs around the arcades?” Decker asked. “Maybe he has a friend with a Nintendo game system?”

Moshe shook his head. “We don’t have a TV so we don’t have any game systems. No one around here does.”

“Does he have any other pocket games besides Octopus?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How about girls?” Decker said. “Does Noam ever talk about girls?”

Moshe’s blush returned to his cheeks. “Yeah, he likes girls.”

“Talks about them?”

“Yeah.”

“A lot?”

Moshe said, “Depends on what you think a lot is?”

Decker said, “When he talks about the girls, is he crude, graphic in how he likes them?”

“Yeah,” Moshe said. “That kinda bothers me. We weren’t brought up to talk like that.”

Refreshing, Decker thought.

“I think Noam’s a pervert,” Ephraim said.

“He’s not a pervert,” Moshe said.

“He’s a pervert,” Ephraim said. He turned to Decker. “He hangs around the younger kids a lot.”

Decker raised his eyebrows. Moshe came to Noam’s rescue.

“It’s not like you think. It’s all out in the open. He just plays with them.”

“How young are we talking about?” Decker asked.

“First of all,” Moshe said. “He doesn’t hang around them. Sometimes he plays tag or mouse-in-the-middle with the younger kids at shul. They’re maybe six or seven. He’s real nice to them. They like him, too. So he’ll make a good camp counselor. What’s wrong with that?”

“Do you think it’s strange?” Decker said.