Blue Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

can call the Wilsons. Table for two.” She handed Josie the microphone.
    “That’s okay,” Josie said, shaking her head. Shy about speaking, she would never talk on the loudspeaker. All the other kids had loved it. Cass remembered watching Belinda lift the heavy chromemicrophone, flip the red switch, and blow softly into the speaker. Then in a steady voice she’d call the party, unconsciously imitating her grandmother’s Thornton accent.
    Mary called the Wilson party, and they came forward: a high-school-aged couple, dressed for a prom. Mary had to smell the girl’s white rose corsage, comment on the boy’s pearl-gray tuxedo. Then she called Vinnie Fusaro, a waiter not many years older than the Wilsons, to lead them to their table. “Make sure they have a view,” Mary commanded. “Aren’t they cute?” she said to Cass.
    But Cass was watching Vinnie Fusaro from behind. He had brown hair, dark and silky as a polished table. It curled over the collar of his white shirt. He didn’t walk; he swaggered. He carried the leather-bound menus as if they meant nothing to him, objects that had simply materialized in his left hand. Cass thought of Billy twenty years ago: cocky in high school, carrying his school-books as if they were air, as if he never planned to read them, anyway.
    “Who does Vinnie Fusaro remind you of?” Cass asked her mother.
    “He’s the spitting image of his father, God rest his soul.”
    “That man looks like Daddy,” Josie said, oblivious to the conversation.
    Cass glanced down and wondered if Josie looked in the mirror and also saw her father. Josie had Billy’s wide dark eyes, his tangled curls, a tan in June that Cass would kill to have in August.
    “Well, hi,” Bonnie said, untying the white apron that covered her black uniform. “What perfect timing. I’m just about to leave for the day. I have to get home and feed your cousins,” she said straight to Josie, hugging her.
    Bonnie weighed one eighty-three. She had always gained weight easily, but in the last few years she had piled it on steadily, as if becoming fat were her goal. She ate a handful of mints from the reservations desk.
    “You shouldn’t eat those,” Mary said.
    Bonnie ate another handful.
    “Where’s Nora?” Mary asked. “My feet are killing me. She’s supposed to take over for me here, and I want to go home. Yourfather is all alone with his mother, and you
know
they’re driving each other crazy.”
    “We’ll go find Nora,” Cass said. “Josie, will you be a good girl for Gram?”
    Josie did not answer, and Cass, walking away with Bonnie, knew that she hadn’t even heard the question.
    The noise level was high tonight. A few fishermen stood along the mahogany bar, but mostly the crowd was from out of town: women wearing obvious eye makeup, men slightly overdressed in pale suits and ties. It was too early in the summer for the blue-blazer crowd.
    “Hey, sailors!” Cass yelled to John Barnard and Al Sweet. They motioned her over, but she just blew them a kiss.
    “You’re a married woman,” Bonnie said. “Good thing your husband’s not here.”
    “I wish he were. Got to keep him on his toes,” Cass said.
    Nora stood between John and Al, shooting dagger looks at Cass. “My God, is she still going after Al?” Cass asked.
    “She’s lonely,” Bonnie said. “But it turns my stomach, the way she throws herself at him. You know he couldn’t care less about her.”
    It made Cass sad, the way Nora had no respect for herself. It showed in her face. She had pale, thin cheeks, the complexion of someone who smoked and drank too much. She had bleached the red out of her hair, and blond waves fell to her narrow shoulders. Nora was seven years older than Cass, four years older than Bonnie. As teenagers, all the Keating girls had tried to scrub away their freckles, squirt lemon juice into their hair to dull the red. Now, watching Nora talk to John and Al, Cass thought Nora looked more Nordic than