PORKY WAS SITTING in one of the wooden booths, flipping through some papers that I took to be bills of lading.  I took them to be bills of lading not because I had any firsthand experience with bills of lading, but because I had encountered the term in my ramble through the unshelved books in the library, liked the sound of it, and welcomed an opportunity to use it, almost as much as I did splines, the need for which almost never came up, though the word had begun to make me giggle inwardly whenever I thought of it, since it inevitably brought with it, bound to it as if by a force as mysterious and strong as the forces that bind the diminutive components of all the stuff we are or know, the anticipation of the day when Raskol and I would change the combinations of the locks and baffle our chums.
    “Bills of lading, huh?” I said, taking a seat opposite Porky.
    “What?” he said.  “What do you mean?”
    “I—um—I thought those might be bills of lading.”
    “These?  These are just the sheets that come with all the stuff I get shipped to me here—ketchup, tartar sauce, potatoes, that kind of thing.  They always give you these sheets that list everything they deliver to you.  I figure if they go to that trouble I ought to read through them, you know?”
    “Sure,” I said, happy that Porky seemed not to have noticed my ignorance.  “That makes sense.”
    “What—did you find that in a dictionary or something—bills of lading?”
    “A book,” I said.  “Not a dictionary, just a book.”
    “Peter,” said Porky, “you want to be careful about using a term that you don’t really know well enough.  You can make a fool of yourself.”
    “Yeah, I guess so,” I said.
    “Some terms are much more dangerous than others,” he said.  “You fling them around when you really don’t know what you’re doing and people can spot you as a faker right away.”
    “I know what you mean,” I said.  “Like epistemology.”
    “Well, yes,” said Porky.  “I guess so.”
    “And ontology.”
    “Sure,” said Porky.
    “A lot of people get those confused,” I said.
    I had no idea whether this was true or not, but I loved throwing those two words around.
    “And fuck,” Porky said.  “That’s another one you have to watch out for.  But anything, even something as apparently straightforward as bills of lading, can demonstrate that you’re a guy who doesn’t know what he’s talking about—if you are a guy who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
    “How’s business?” I asked, eager to get off the subject of my ignorance.  “Are we making the big money yet?”
    “Well—”
    I took my notepad out of my back pocket.  “Let me get the figures down,” I said.  “How many dozen fried clams last week?”
    “I’m not sure,” said Porky.  “I—”
    “Stuffed?”
    “I haven’t got those figures—”
    “Gallons of chowder?”
    “Say, Peter,” he said with sudden interest, “how’s school?  New school year!  Unfamiliar surroundings!  Strange faces!  Surprising things!  Tell me all about it.”
    “Well,” I said, “let’s see.”  Mentally I scanned my new experiences, looking for one that would appeal to Porky.  It didn’t take long for me to spot exactly the one.  “There’s a new science teacher,” I said.  “In fact, most of my teachers are new.  Everything’s new, come to think of it.  The water fountains are new, and really nice too.  They don’t work yet, but I bet they’ll work great once they work at all.  And there are two gyms.  Two complete gyms.  Isn’t that something?”
    “Sure is,” said Porky.  “What do they serve you for lunch?”
    “Oh, the usual stuff,” I said.  “But the science teacher, let me tell you about the science teacher.”
    I knew that I had, in Miss Rheingold, a topic that Porky was sure to be interested in.  However, as soon as I began to frame my first remark about her, I realized that she was a topic beyond my descriptive powers.  No, that’s not exactly right.  I didn’t know whether she was beyond my descriptive powers or not.  She was completely outside my descriptive experience.  I had never had occasion to describe any woman before, and Miss Rheingold was a woman who deserved a fine and precise description from someone with practice.  I had never even used the vocabulary that would be required.  Those were more reticent times, when it was not unusual for a boy of eleven never to have said the word breasts, for example.
    “She has blond hair,” I said.
    This wasn’t the powerful beginning I had hoped for, but it was a start.  It had the virtue of staying on familiar ground, and it caught Porky’s attention; he was at least interested in hearing what came next.  It didn’t do her hair justice, though, so I made another attempt.
    “It’s really light blond,” I said, “kind of the color of—” I looked around the room for something that might help me out.  “Lemonade,” I said.  “She has lemonade hair.”
    “Lemonade hair,” said Porky.
    “That isn’t quite right,” I said.  “It’s more like—beer.”
    “Beer.”
    “Kind of in-between.  If I mixed some beer and some lemonade, I think I could get it just right.”
    “Shandy,” said Porky.
    “Hm?”
    “That’s what it’s called.  Beer and lemonade.  Shandy.”
    Another good one: shandy.  Shandy, ontology, epistemology, bills of lading, splines.
    “I can picture it,” Porky said.  “Shandy hair.  Very nice.  What color eyes?”
    “Um, I don’t know.  I didn’t notice.”
    I brought her face to mind and stared at it, trying to see what color her eyes were.  I couldn’t be sure.
    “She has a very smooth forehead,” I said.
    That had impressed me.  It made her seem relaxed, even when she was dishing out science at her most frantic pace.
    “It’s very smooth,” I said.  “Round.  Like a honeydew melon.”
    I was surprised to find how apt that was.  Her forehead had seemed very like the skin of a honeydew—smooth, cool, pale.
    “She has honeydew skin,” I said.
    I was beginning to feel a growing confidence in my descriptive talents.
    “Honeydew skin,” said Porky.  “I like that.  But that shandy hair—that was great.  Delicious.”
    “And then her teeth,” I said, getting up a good head of steam.  “Her teeth are like—um—sugar cubes.”
    I seemed to be getting pretty good at this.
    “The Captain’s Shandy!” said Porky.  He slapped his hand on the table.  “The Captain’s Shandy!”
    “And her legs,” I said, daring, thrilled, embarrassed, “are—”
    “It’s going on the menu tomorrow!” said Porky.  “Peter, I’ll never regret the day I let you talk me into letting you invest in the business.  You’re a fountain of ideas.”
    I couldn’t think of a single suitable comparison for Miss Rheingold’s legs, and I have never succeeded since, though my mind returns to the attempt every time I take a swallow of beer or lemonade on a summer’s day or notice shandy on the menu board at a Kap’n Klam Family Restaurant.