Lennie giggled and smirked, putting his hands over his mouth, lattice-hike. Then, he said me an’ Rose was really going to catch it.

“You just wait, I’m gonna tell Myra on you! I seen him! I seen oh’ smarty Nick! He come sneaking out here so’s you ‘n’ him could do somethin’ nasty!”

“You mean screwing?” Rose said. “What’s nasty about screwing?”

“Ooh!” Lennie pointed a shaky finger at her, his eyes popped as big as saucers. “Now, you done it! You’re really gonna catch it now! I tell Myra you—”

“What’s the matter?” Rose said. “You screw Myra all the time, and don’t tell me you don’t, you stupidlooking jackass! That’s what makes you goofy, banging her so much. You’ve tossed it to her so often you’ve thrown your ass out of line with your eyeballs!”

I almost busted out laughing.

That Rose! There just wasn’t no one like her, goddang it! In less than a minute, now, she’d got Lennie so mixed up that he couldn’t have found his butt if it’d had a bell on it.

He pointed his finger at her again, shaking all over. Rubbing his eyes with his other hand as he started to blubber.

“I ‘deed’ not! I do not! I never done nothin’ like that, an’—”

“The hell you didn’t! You’re not her brother, you’re her boy friend! That’s what she keeps you around for, to diddle her fiddle. Because you’re how-hung and she’s high-strung!”

“It a-ain’t n-neither! I ‘de-ed’ not! You—y-you’re just a m-mean ol’ storyteller, an’—”

“Don’t lie to me, you liver-lipped bastard!” Rose shook her fist in his face. “I’ve seen you pouring it on her! I climbed up one of those ladders the painters are using and peeked in the window, and goddam, you were pounding it hike a drum. The way you were banging the bunghole, you damned near fell in!”

Well, god-dang. It was better than a circus. And it just went to show what a fella could do when he really put his mind to it.

Here you take a common everyday thing like fornication, which, like the fella says, can be a pretty fleeting pleasure. But if you can just take the idea of it, you know, and start tossing it around amongst the right people, or the wrong ones, dependin’ on your viewpoint, why then you can get something pretty god-dang unusual. Something like what was going on here.

A heck of a lot of laughs—plus the means of getting some people to get rid of themselves, when there ain’t no way for you to get rid of them.

“I’m g-gonna tell M-Myra!” Lennie blubbered. “I’ll tell jus’ what you said about her, every dirty m-mean word an’—”

“Cow’s ass?” said Rose, like she was sayin’ “How’s that?” and, “Suck which?” Like she was sayin’ “Says which?” “You and Myra better stop playing tickle the pickle, boy, before you bat your brains out with your balls.”

“I’m gonna tell Myra!” Lennie bawled, stumbling toward the door. “You’re gonna get it!”