Gypsy Davey Read Online Free PDF

peanuts, huh? And they got honey on ’em. Sugar, sweet stuff, y’know.” Victor ripped down a second bag, to read the ingredients. “Ya, kid, this should be okay. You should like this.”
    He watched with pleasure as Davey wolfed down the peanuts. The fourth sad song since Lois left started playing. Jim Reeves singing “Then You Can Tell Me Good-bye.” “But like I say anyways, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no kids. How old are you anyway, kid? Like, I dunno, ten or somethin’?”
    Davey crumpled the foil bag in his left hand, looked up at Victor, and held up his five fingers on his right hand.
    â€œOuch,” Victor said. “You’re five ? Boy was I off, huh? But I told you I don’t know nothin’ about it, kid. But whoa, maybe you shouldn’t be in here?” He started talking to himself again. “Nah, it’s okay. This ain’t that kinda place. We got your pizzas and your booths and your hot dogs, buffalo wings, ’tater skins. This is a restaurant. Ain’t like it’s a bar, it’s a restaurant, right, kid?”
    â€œDavey.”
    Now it was Victor’s turn to give the wide-eyed stare. “Excuse me?”
    â€œDavey. You call me kid, but my name is Davey. You heard, back before, my mom call me Davey, but you call me kid. I like Davey better, please.”
    â€œYou’re absolutely right, little monk,” said Victor, bowing at the waist. While he still couldn’t get a smile, or any real facial expression out of the boy, Victor got closer, elbows on the bar. Davey didn’t pull away from Victor, but looked right back at him. “I’ll tell you this, Davey: I might not know nothin’ about kids, but I know this much.” Victor could not take his eyes off Davey’s eyes, Davey’s big, sea-glass green, sea-glass murky, unblinking eyes. “You’re an old kid. Ain’t ya, Davey?”
    â€œVic, Vic,” a customer called.
    â€œBe right witcha, Davey,” Victor said as he went to serve.
    Davey slid off the bar stool and walked to the dance floor to catch up with his mother. First he stood at the edge of the floor, looking up at the twenty or so couples dancing slow, tight together, everybody looking so unusually tall, plus the extra four inches added by the raised dancing area. But nobody on that side was Lois. Davey started wading in. Nobody seemed to notice him. He took a light elbow to the head from a plump, happy-faced woman, somebody else’smother, who looked down and said, “Oohh my oh my, innee cute.” He bounced like a bumper car from one hip to another as people went about their romance as if there was no little person pushing his way through, stopping to stare up at every woman. At the very center of the throng, Davey stood momentarily frozen, being bumped again and again by the same two men, who had him sandwiched between their rear ends. He lost track of which direction was the one he came from and which was the one he wanted. The bodies hitting him were like black trees closing in beside him and over him until the air seemed to be getting hotter in Davey’s lungs, and easier to taste on the way down. “Get along now, darlin’,” a woman said, not too friendly, as she gave Davey a little shove toward the back wall of the room. The far end of the dance floor.
    Which was where, coming to a small clearing, Davey found Lois. She had gone to the farthest spot from where she had left Davey, just looking for that little bit of privacy, for those few minutes, for herself and for Davey too. She and Jerome were dancing in a private space between two cabaret tables against the wall, with a distance of no more than three feet between them and the other dancers. But with the others so packed together, it was like their own little stage. Davey stood and watched. Because he couldn’t do anything else.
    He watched as Jerome kissed his mother on the