Dreams Are Not Enough Read Online Free PDF Page A

the road. A justice of the peace did the ceremony. No … priest….” She buried her face in her hands.
    “Hey, no need to carry on like that.” The manager’s voice had softened.
    “It’s … a … a mortal sin….”
    “Dearie, it’s okay, okay.”
    Alicia’s head remained bent. Unconsolable little sobs drifted from the black veil of tousled hair.
    The manager touched Barry’s naked arm.
    “Pay me later,” she hissed.
    “Go make it up to the kid.”
    When the door closed, he stared at Alicia. Her body shuddered as if with sobs.
    “Hon, don’t, please don’t. I know how you feel. Remember, I told you my mom’s parents disowned her because Dad wasn’t Jewish. Listen, if you want, I’ll become a Catholic. Religion’s a big deal to Beth, but it means nothing to me.”
    Alicia looked up. She was convulsed with laughter.
    “The old bag,” she managed to gasp out.
    For a moment he was devastated that she had fooled him so completely.
    After three UCLA creative writing classes he considered himself possessed of a seasoned author’s acute powers of perception.
    Then he was realizing that Alicia, naked and unprepared, had gotten the witch manager off his back. He never could have pulled it off. He was fairly certain that few girls could have done so superb an acting job.
    “You deserve an Oscar,” he said.
    “Can I count on you to always come to my aid like that?”
    “Of course,” she said happily.
    “Aren’t you my husband?” Her remark aroused him. He was her husband. Pulling back the sheet, he lowered himself onto that lush body.
    “Barry Cordiner and Alicia Lopez Cordiner,” he whispered.
    ^
    ^
    Her name wasn’t Alicia, her father hadn’t been a Lopez, she didn’t come from Texas and she wasn’t eighteen but barely fifteen.
    Her earliest memory was of endless rows of strong-smelling celery.
    “Now don’t you go straying off,” her mother had said with a slap. The pickers and packers had no time to smile even when she did her little dance. As the great yellow sun rose to the middle of the sky she felt like melting into tears, but she was nearly four, too old to be a crybaby. A distant clump of eucalyptus promised shade. Forgetting her mother’s warning, she went toward the trees. A line of ants carrying fragments of green distracted her, and she knelt to watch. She was too absorbed to hear the footsteps. A heaviness on her head was her first inkling of the man.
    “Ain’t you the prettiest little tad of a thing with this black hair and them big blue eyes.”
    She had never seen him before. He had no teeth in front and his smile frightened her.
    “I have to get back to my momma,” she said as politely as possible.
    He laughed in a funny, rusty way, squatting near her.
    “I buy my friends things. How’d you like a nice big cold Coca-Cola?”
    She hardly ever got so much as a sip of Coke, and she was remembering how hot and thirsty she was.
    “Where is it?”
    “First you gotta show we’re friends.” He stroked her leg. His breath smelled like doody, and his fingers felt slimy, terrible, as they crawled up her thigh.
    “I’m not your friend!” she said in the tone her mother deplored as her Miss Snotty voice.
    “Ain’t long before you will be,” he said. Now he was fingering his grubby pants.
    “Then you’ll get your Coke.”
    She tried to move, but he gripped her leg tighter, and pulled out his pee-pee. The men often relieved themselves in the field, but they always turned away decently. This thing was an ugly red, fat and stiff as a baseball bat.
    “First, you gotta stroke this.” He grabbed her hands, pulling them to that ugly thing.
    She used the only weapon she had, her even white milk teeth. Leaning forward, she bit him hard.
    He gave a high squeal, releasing her. She ran as hard as she could in the direction of the truck and her momma.
    Her mother, May Sue Hollister, wasn’t sure where to put the blame for her younger daughter, Alice, but she’d had the hots for a