The memory was clear: Solomon, quite impassive, gazing at him from behind the glass. And Erik, young and flustered, weighted down by the symbolic significance of this small task, dropping the betting slips that Edie had given him.
And retrieving them off the grimy tiles of the floor, with a queue growing restive, muttering behind him. (A queue of grimy working men, grim-faced, none of them seeming like anyone it would be a good idea to cross.)
Not that retrieving them had been much help. Edie had only marked off horses and race-times, in the redtop she'd handed him before leaving for her stint at the local community library: with careful instructions about bet structure, and tax, and arithmetic, and the six shillings that ought to be ample. Apparently.
Erik had looked at the newspaper, standing there in the betting-shop. At the slips. Numbers and words had merged together, stress mounting. Not that he had cried, nor even come close. But it would have been a relief, just the same.
"You haven't got a sodding clue what you're doing there, have you, sonny Jim?" And despite the words, Solomon's voice had been kind.
*Mental arithmetic under pressure counts as cruel and unusual punishment.
Chapter title is from the King James version of Exodus 2:22.
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the Jew gets blackballed from the country club
FanfictionErik has a life beyond and outside his connection with Charles - with Edie, with Raven, even with Az. With the (closeted) 1960s gay community, with his Jewish faith and community, with the wider world beyond that. This story is complementary to 'Jus...
