Hummus

By Barry Rachin

Seventeen-year-old Sonny Gossage is infatuated with Naomi Shamir, the Israeli woman who lives down the street. He wants romance; all she can offer is a plate of hummus and an occaisional babysitting job.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Rachin
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781465841643

Barry Rachin

About the AuthorBorn in Boston, Massachusetts, Barry Rachin spent several years stationed in Yokuska, Japan as a Navy medic caring for casualties during the Vietnam War. He has studied at the University of Jerusalem, lived on a kibbutz for a year and holds a degree in clinical counseling from Simmons College. A self-taught woodworker, he presently lives in Attleboro, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

Book preview

Hummus

Barry Rachin

Published by Barry Rachin, 2019.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

HUMMUS

First edition. October 18, 2019.

Copyright © 2019 Barry Rachin.

ISBN: 978-1465841643

Written by Barry Rachin.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Hummus | by | Barry Rachin

Hummus

by

Barry Rachin

NAOMI SHAMIR IS ON the phone. Sonny Gossage’s mother was standing on the second floor landing just outside her son’s closed bedroom door. She wants to speak to you.

Sonny was thumbing through a back issue of National Geographic, ogling pictures of an annual West African fertility ritual. In an open field, teenage virgins were parading in front of the tribal leader. Decked out in leopard skin robes, the grizzled ruler sat on a rickety, straight-backed chair. The debilitated king, who appeared to be in his eighties, smiled regally as over a hundred bare-chested woman passed in review. The girls wore necklaces of gold, silver, ivory and shells at their throat and sported similar finery on their wrists and ankles. Everyone, especially the geriatric ruler, seemed to be having a splendid time.

Don’t know anybody by that name, the boy replied as he scanned the column of dark-skinned beauties waiting to present their physical assets.

The Israeli woman whose husband ran off last summer, Mrs. Gossage clarified. "She lives with her daughter in that fancy schmancy, split-level house with the green shutters.

Sonny felt his heart begin to race out of control. Throwing the magazine aside, he rose from the bed and made his way to the telephone. Hello? There was a brief pause. Yes, that was my flyer. After a moment, Sonny hung up the phone and grinned self-consciously. She wants me to mow her lawn twice a month. 

A WEEK AGO TUESDAY, Sonny hoofed it up and down the neighborhood stuffing mailboxes with flyers.

Lawn care and landscape services.

Reasonable rates!

Call 508-226-5987  Free estimates.

Sonny had no idea what he meant by ‘landscape services’. He was using his father’s beat-up mower and a Black and Decker electric weed whacker with a hundred-foot extension cord. Now I got thirteen accounts, including the Jewish lady.

MRS. SHAMIR WAS A DARK-skinned Sabra, native born Israeli, who moved into a spacious ranch house at the