After I'm Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t ponder the why of this, and she certainly didn’t want her husband to be a virgin. Nor did she expend much time thinking about how her future husband might have gained his sexual experience. Presumably with other girls, not nice girls, why should she care? Bambi was a prize, and part of the prize was her virginity, much in the same way new cars were prized for their unblemished whitewalls and perfect upholstery. Yet their value dropped the moment they were driven off the lot.
    Barry glanced at the door, which gave her a chance to put down her drink. They would dance soon and she could “forget” the cup. There was a potted plant nearby, but that was too crude, pouring out the contents, and he might get her another one. She would just tuck it on the windowsill—
    “Crashers,” he said. “They’ve got some nerve.”
    There were three men in the door. One was handsome in a very conventional way, with broad shoulders and lots of dark hair, medium height. A boy from the neighborhood, Bert Gelman, a senior, but not a Sigma. One was enormous, a sphere of a man, and jolly-looking, with pink cheeks and a sheen of sweat despite the cold night.
    The third was on the short side, with very dark skin, a biggish nose, and so much energy it seemed to be coming off him in waves. Older. Older than the kids at the dance, older than his companions. She put him at twenty-four, twenty-five. His gaze seemed to say, Kid stuff, although the Sigma dance was very sophisticated, as nice as the country club dances her parents attended.
    Then the crasher’s eyes caught Bambi’s, and any flicker of amused condescension faded. He walked straight toward her as if—as if she were a landmark, something famous, something he had been waiting to see all his life. She was the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon.
    “Felix Brewer,” he said. “And this is Bert Gelman and Tubby Schroeder.”
    “Which is which?” she asked, and the three laughed. They probably would have laughed at anything she said, though.
    “Actually, I know Bert,” she said, putting out her hand. “You were a year behind me at Forest Park.”
    “This is a private dance,” Barry said.
    “Yeah, I’d keep it private, too, a limp affair like this,” said the man who had introduced himself as Felix. Felix the cat, Bambi thought, but, no, he wasn’t catlike. Nor doglike. He was—what was smart and shrewd, a little dangerous, but not a predator? A fox? But a fox would eat chickens, given the chance.
    “Limp affair? Do you see who’s on the bandstand?”
    “Yeah, not bad, but couldn’t you get someone like Fats Domino? He’s great. We saw him last week on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
    “You go to Pennsylvania Avenue?” Bambi asked.
    “Of course I do. All the best music is there. You scared of Negroes?”
    “I’m not scared of anything,” Bambi said. “And the Orioles are Negroes, in case you haven’t noticed.”
    Bert smiled at Bambi. Lord, this was the problem with dating Barry; now every high school senior thought her fair game. The age of the fat one was impossible to tell, but he was at least twenty or twenty-one. They seemed an unlikely trio, mismatched in every way.
    Felix could read her mind. “This”—he jerked a thumb at Bert—“is my lawyer’s son, although I guess he’ll be my lawyer one day. And this”—thumb heading the other way, toward the round one—“is my bail bondsman.”
    She laughed her best laugh, a delighted trill.
    “No, seriously, he’s a bail bondsman. Not that anyone’s had to set bail on me yet, but you never know. So he’s not my bail bondsman, I guess, but he is one.”
    “Someone has to be,” Tubby said cheerfully.
    “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Barry said.
    “Young man, have you served your country?”
    “What?”
    “Have you served? I mean, obviously you haven’t been over there, but what’s keeping you from signing up?”
    “I’m not yet eighteen,” Barry said.