Disclaimer: Inglorious Basterds and the character of Donny Donowitz belong to Quentin Tarantino.

Her dark eyes were frozen in mid-glint, lips pursed in a saucy red pout, high cheekbones tinted with a tell-tale I've-been-a-naughty-girl blush. Her hair fell in artfully-constructed waves of auburn about her creamy bare shoulders. But truth be told, Reuben Schechter, recently bar-mitzvah'd, was not interested in anything above the model's neck. Never before had he ever imagined that breasts could grow to that size and still maintain their… bounce. Not an inch of flesh sagged or wrinkled unattractively; she had a waist so trim it was unreal. Disappointingly she had her legs crossed in front of her, but what legs! Slender and white, they seemed to go on for days. Girls should just walk around sans clothes at all times, although, on second thought, girls like that probably didn't exist beyond the confines of a dirty magazine. Not in Boston, in any case.

"The redhead's a looker, huh?"

Reu nodded, his mouth dry as bone, and began to croak out a comment about her perky nipples. It was then that the smell of cigarette smoke wafted towards his nose. When he glanced up from the magazine it was to find Donny Donowitz sprawled out on the bed as if he owned it, puffing away. "What the hell are you doing?"

His best friend took a leisurely drag on the cigarette, then tipped his head back and exhaled towards the ceiling. "Smoking."

"In my room?"

"Damn straight."

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Donny," Reu snapped, torn between annoyance that he had been too involved in ogling the model's assets to notice Donny lighting up, and jealousy of how debonair he looked with the cigarette cradled lightly between his fingertips, blowing out clouds of smoke as if it was no big deal. The first and only time Reu had attempted to smoke he lost his lunch in a nearby garbage can within the first five inhalations. "Put it out, would you?"

"Golly gee, would you just look at the cans on that broad?"

"I'm not kidding, Donny."

"Never said you were."

The next exhalation of smoke floated right into Reu's face, and he coughed resentfully. "That stuff is terrible for you."

"That stick is shoved so far up your ass it'll be tickling your guts soon, Reuben."

"Jeez, you know what? Fine, just crack open a window at least, so my ma doesn't find out."

The cigarette clamped tight between his teeth in the corner of his mouth, Donny got to his feet. He cracked his neck casually and ambled over to the window, then pried it open. The March winds were chilly, but at least they sucked the cigarette smell from the room.

"When you die at eighteen 'cause your insides are all shriveled and black…"

"Then you can laugh all you want. Hell if I care, I'll be dead." Donny cocked a dark brow towards the magazine, grinning wolfishly around his cigarette. "Big day for you, Reu, your first dirty magazine! Soon you'll be wiping your own ass after you crap."

Just because Donny was fifteen, two years older than Reu, had seen more, done more, he thought he was such a hotshot. Asshole. Reu glanced down at the glossy magazine in his hands, growing pleasantly warm once more at the sight of the naked redhead. Then again, he was the hotshot asshole who provided the dirty magazines, which was why Reu kept him around. That a couple of other reasons.

"And if you think I'm gonna let you keep it, you can fugeddaboutit."

"What? How come?"

"'Cause otherwise you'd lock yourself in here all day and never meet a real girl, that's why."

Reu let his eyes travel over the model's body forlornly, trying to memorize every last naked curve and plane before it was taken away from him forever. "How'd you get this anyways?"

"Just have to know where to look."

At that moment came a series of highly assertive knocks on the other side of the door. "Reu? Are you in there, Reu? I need your help."

"Jeez, Rivka!" The pages rustled incriminatingly as he scrambled around looking for a place to hide the magazine, and although he knew it was fruitless he shouted out, "Don't come in!"

The door swung wide open just as Reu threw himself onto his stomach and shoved the magazine under his bed with the rest of his junk. His little sister marched into the room, brandishing a pencil and paper like weaponry. Her short dark curls stood out around her head in the parody of a halo; when she was truly frustrated she couldn't keep her hands out of them. "It's division again. I'm having trouble on question four. Why is it so cold in here? And what're you doing on the ground?"

Reu got to his feet and dusted himself off, trying his best to look as blasé as Donny did every second of his life. "Oh, you know, just…" The feeble start to the explanation died in his throat, because Rivka had just caught sight of Donny and was rapidly assuming an expression of utmost revulsion.

"Are you smoking?"

"Nope, building a snowman," returned Donny, unfazed, and took a deep drag on his cigarette.

"That is absolutely foul."

"So's your face."

Rivka, who was self-conscious enough about her looks as it was, bristled to the very tips of her wild hair, her cheeks taking on a scarlet tinge; the pencil dropped out of her grasp to the floor.

"All right, what have you got?" Sensing trouble, Reu plucked her homework out of her hand quickly before it was crushed in her little fist. He gave the problem at hand a quick once-over, then shoved it under her nose. "Right here you forgot to multiply the six by three. Once you do that, get eighteen, then bring down the two, everything should work."

"Oh." Temporarily distracted, she took back the page and looked it over herself. "Thanks."

"Come one, Rivka, this is basic stuff."

"I'm terrible at math, you know that."

"Yeah, I do."

"Hey, Rivka." Donny blew smoke in her general direction, goading her. "What's one plus one, or is that too hard?"

She glowered at him wrathfully over the top of her homework. "What's you minus your big stupid mouth?" Without waiting for an answer, she spun on her heel and stalked out, letting the door slam behind her so had that it made the room shake.

Reu dropped o the floor once more, feeling around beneath his bed for the magazine. Above his head he heard Donny chuckling. "She really hates me, doesn't she?"

A memory sprang unbidden to Reu's mind, the memory of his sister's face at Donny's bar mitzvah while the man of the hour fell over himself like an idiot in his eagerness to swap spit with Eva Goldberg in the coatroom, and he could have declared that that was most definitely not the case. He preoccupied himself with searching for his old friend the redhead and mumbled instead, "Well, maybe if you weren't such a dick to her…"

"I'm not a dick."

"You can be one sometimes."

"All right, maybe sometimes. You know your sis though, 's like everything I say pisses her off somehow…"

"I'm not on your side here, Donny." In his haste to hide the magazine the page had creased. It might have been his imagination, but Reu could have sworn the redhead's sultry come-hither expression had morphed into one of reproach. He used the flat of his palm to smooth out the wrinkles the best he could to mollify her.

Donny watched him for awhile, then unable to keep silent for long, per usual, remarked, "If that's how you think broads like to be touched, you're never gonna get laid."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Something on the floor caught Reu's eye, and he glanced down; in her moment of drama and temper Rivka had accidently left her pencil behind.

"I'm just saying, Reu, if and when the time comes, I don't want to hear from her later about how you just sat around like a dumb schmuck 'cause you didn't know where the hell to start."

"Gee willikers, don't I feel like a champ now?"

Donny said nothing in response to the sarcasm, only gazed at him with an uncharacteristically calculating look in his eyes. Reu began to get nervous. There was no mistaking it; the only time Donny looked calculating was when he was on the brink of introducing one of his ideas, most of which were terrible. Sure enough, he soon extinguished his cigarette on the windowsill (Reu winced, reminding himself to scrub out the burn mark the best he could later on) and reached for the baseball glove he had thrown onto the bed earlier. He produced the ball that had been nestled inside, displayed it with a flourish, and lobbed it gently to Reu.

"What is this, Reuben?"

"A baseball."

"Wrong. It's a tit, and it belongs to the redhead sitting in your lap."

Reu looked to the object in his hands that was undoubtedly a baseball. He looked down at the magazine, the model smiling up at him seductively. To the baseball again. To the model once more. To Donny, who was looking back at him with a wide ain't-I-wicked-smaht grin stretched from ear to ear. He spoke flatly. "You're an idiot."

"For trying to help out my best friend?" Donny spread his hands out in a disarming gesture.

"Yeah! I mean… no way, there's no way you can get me to—"

"C'mon, Reu, work with me here. Have an imagination for two seconds of your life."

"My imagination's fine, thanks, but this is a crummy idea. I mean, honestly, what kind of sick freak would I have to be to pretend…"

"You'll be on your knees thanking me for this one day."

"This is a friggin' baseball!"

"Don't let Red hear you call it that."

Reu opened his mouth and then promptly shut it. His fingers tightened around the leather sphere, its ridges of stitching raised against his skin. Being best friends with Donny Donowitz meant picking your battles, of which there were too many. Sometimes it was worth it to fight back, like that time Donny had tried to talk him into raiding Mr. Zuckermann's new shipment of Manischewitz, and other times… Reu sighed in the face of imminent defeat. Other times it was worth it to just throw him a bone.

"Not so tight. She just got pissed and threw you off."

Reu loosened his grip, trying to imagine the redhead's squeal of rage and her subsequent forgiveness, the second chance she so generously offered him.

"It's real soft and smooth. You could probably use it as a pillow and drop right off to sleep."

In other words, a breast was supposed to feel exactly the opposite of a baseball.

"She's got a nipple too, remember, so… you know, flick it a little."

As he wiggled his thumb back and forth over absolutely nothing, Reu began to feel rather stupid. It didn't help that Donny was grinning at him like a proud papa watching his baby boy take his first steps.

"Yeah, that's it, Reu, you got a nice rhythm going there. Red's enjoying herself."

"Oh, hot dog," he answered without conviction, and thought about how if the model were really here letting him touch her tits she'd probably have died from boredom by now.

"How's it feeling?"

"Honestly?"

"Sure."

"Like I'm warming up at the mound."

Donny's grin faded, and his dark brows began to knit together in a glower. "Didn't I tell you to forget it's a baseball?"

"You did, but…" Reu trailed off and heaved a great sigh, wondering how he could ever have been coerced into acting like this was completely normal.

"What's the matter? You were rounding second base like a pro and then bam! Hit a wall."

"Jeez, this is useless."

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself, rookie, it's your first time at bat."

"It's not that. I just can't believe I'm feeling up a baseball and pretending it's a tit 'cause I'm too pathetic to find a real girl to practice on."

"Now that's a load of crap," said Donny severely. "The Sox haven't picked me up yet, but has that stopped me from playing ball? You bet your ass not."

His head was stuffed so full of baseball that it was amazing he had any space in there to think about girls. "So I guess we're both schmucked then."

Donny grinned, reaching out to sock him affectionately on the shoulder, and then there it was again, the calculating look. "You got another ball lying around here?"

"Should be one under the bed, why?"

"We're gonna try something different." Reu watched in some interest as Donny launched himself over the bed and disappeared beneath it, yakking all the while. "I'm telling you, buddy, the only way you're gonna get comfortable with this is if you practice. I was lucky that Eva Goldberg was horny enough to let me practice as much as I wanted. Too bad she's gone now; she would have loved to help you out…"

"Where'd she go?"

"Her folks caught her nailing some goy, an Italian, I think, and they shipped her out to her aunt and uncle in New York. I told her to give Babe Ruth a kick in the pants for me when she got there, but she didn't think it was too funny. It's a damn shame. Killer tits on that girl."

The depths of Donny Donowitz's gallantry truly knew no bounds.

"Anyways, you'll get to try this on a real live and kicking broad one day but for now, we work with what we have, huh? Found it." Donny resurfaced with the baseball and held it aloft triumphantly. "Two of these and you've got yourself a rack."

"I don't know about this; it felt dumb with just one ball, so two's magically gonna make it feel less dumb?"

"I can't do anything about the fact that your imagination stinks, but damn it, I'm gonna teach you how to touch a girl's tits if it's the last thing I do. Throw me yours." Reu obliged and Donny caught it easily, weighing them both in his hands. "Now this—" He pointed a warning finger, "—doesn't leave the room, understand?"

"Sure," Reu answered and watched in bemusement as Donny climbed back onto his bed and propped himself up on his knees. "Jeez, how important is it to you that I learn how to do this?"

For answer Donny inserted both baseballs up the front of his shirt and adjusted them so they protruded like… well, two perfectly rounded baseball-shaped breasts.

"Holy…" Reu felt his eyes open so wide they almost bugged out of his head.

"Next time we run into Eva, remind me to ask her how she walks around, 'cause tits are friggin' heavy."

"What is this right now?"

Donny grinned and wiggled his fake assets at Reu, enjoying the reaction. "Told you we're gonna work with what we've got."

"You are a crazy, crazy man," Reu managed to splutter, horrified, amused, and somewhat touched, all at the same time. "It's still gonna feel like I'm groping a baseball."

"Yeah, I know, but at least you can attach a face to it now, right?"

If he ever ended up fooling around with a girl who resembled Donny in any way, especially in the face, he might just have to shoot himself.

"C'mon now, show me what you got, before I change my mind about this."

Trying to control his snickers, Reu reached out to squeeze the baseballs gently, fully aware that this was no longer about his sexual education but about appreciating the fact that his best friend cared enough about his sexual education and was shameless enough to pull a stunt like this.

"Ooh, you're making me horny!" Donny exclaimed in a high-pitched voice and wriggled his hips with a little more emphasis than necessary to perpetuate the metaphor.

"Shut up, you're ruining it."

"You like your girls quiet? Me too."

"I don't know what kind of girls I like, but definitely not the ones with chest hair and baseball tits."

"Touché, asshole. Next time you need a favor, see if I come to your rescue, 'cause I'll probably be too busy banging the last girl you brought home, assuming there even was—"

The door swinging open came as a surprise to both of them. Reu had no time to remove his hands from the baseballs, nor Donny time to let them drop out of the support of his own and roll down the front of his shirt innocently. Both frozen, they stared wide-eyed towards the doorway where Rivka stood staring back, one hand still clutching the doorknob. For several moments, or possibly several years in which the world stopped turning, none of them moved nor spoke. Then slowly, Rivka stepped forward into the room. Without looking away, she bent down and picked her pencil up off the floor, then straightened slowly. Clasping it in both hands like a holy relic, she looked from Reu to Donny, her mouth opening to speak. They drew in a breath simultaneously. Instead she shook her head, her curls bouncing, and an unsettling smile spread across her lips. Backing out of the room, she took hold of the doorknob and pulled the door closed until it settled with a gentle click.