Garbo Laughs Read Online Free PDF Page A

demanding-everything-under-the-sun. She remembered when it was the kids who were supposed to be good. A soft orange soccer ball went gently from foot to foot, and a new boy was hunkered on the curb, watching. He had a newspaper stuck in his back pocket and a pencil behind his ear, and he was leaning forward with his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, pale, tall, wiry-haired – and nobody was asking him to play.
    Dinah knelt on a slab of foam to protect her knees. Her hands stirred up the smell of mint. This was a friendly neighbourhood, but only up to a point, and she had never understood the point. How much did it take to invite a new kid to play? When she was just a few feet away from the boy, she said in a conversational way, “I always hated soccer.”
    He looked at her and said easily, “I love soccer.”
    “Want me to introduce you?” She nodded towards the game.
    “Oh, I don’t like playing,” he said. “I like watching. I’m going to be a sportswriter.”
    “Are you?” She leaned back on her heels. “Then you’ll have to learn how to drink booze and play cards.”
    “I know how to play cards.”
    “Crazy eights? Hearts?”
    “Rummy,” said Kenny. “Gin rummy. Want to play?”
    They laid out the cards on her front porch and sat on the top step. She said, “Gin rummy’s what Fred Astaire used to play. But I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him.”
    “I’ve heard of Fred Astaire.”
    “Have you heard of Gene Kelly?”
    “I’ve heard of Gene Kelly.” Then, darting her a look, he asked her who she thought was better. Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire.
    “Gene Kelly,” she answered promptly. “I know Fred’s a great dancer, but Gene was a lovely man to look at.”
    “What about Frank Sinatra?”
    Dinah had to smile. “How old are you?”
    He told her.
    He was tall for ten. Not that she had a lot of experience in these matters. “And you like Frank?”
    “Do
you
like him?”
    “I’m crazy about him,” she said. “Frank and I are
very
close.”
    Kenny’s eyes shone. He grinned.
    Dinah said, “Remind me of the rules for gin rummy.”
    “When you’ve got seven points or less you can knock. Or you can wait and gin.”
    “Well, if Fred Astaire could do it, so can I.”
    “Did he win?” “That I don’t know.”
    “What kind of useless fact is that?” Kenny demanded. “Fred Astaire played gin rummy but you don’t know if he won?”
    “What did Frank Sinatra play?”
    “He played crap!”
    Dinah leaned back against the porch post. She couldn’t believe her luck, meeting a kid like this. “How do you happen to know Frank Sinatra?”
    “We watch his movies. We listen to his music.”
    “I’ll have to meet your folks,” she said, and later in the week she did. She dropped over to say hello and found all four of them – mother, father, big sister, Kenny – on the back porch, reading. The porch was wide and airy with a high sloped roof against the sun and rain. In the middle of the porch was a square table covered in a floral plastic cloth. Around the table wereseveral folding chairs. A hammock hung suspended between one of the porch posts and a hook buried in the brick wall. A workbench covered in sawdust took up another corner. A wide shelf below a window held dishes and utensils, and next to it, on a narrow wooden table, were a dishpan and dish rack, and above the dishpan was an outdoor faucet.
    “You could live out here,” she said, turning around in one spot, and Lew said, “We do. We’re out here from morning till night.”
    “That’s what it looks like.” And it was quite evident from her tone and the look on her face how much she admired their world of light housekeeping and easy company.
    Harriet and Lew were wearing shirts and shorts faded from countless summers; the books in their laps were library books. They didn’t look like Frank Sinatra types, thought Dinah, they looked like professors who would never get tenure. And she liked them immediately and without