Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Read Online Free PDF

‘Incidentally, you made a couple of cracks I didn’t get. Mind clearing ’em up?’
    ‘Yeah? What?’
    ‘You said a couple of times that you had an interest in me. What exactly did that mean?’
    ‘Don’t you know this set-up?’ he asked, a little surprise in his tone.
    ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ I said.
    ‘Holiday owes me a thousand dollars for this job. I did it on credit.’
    ‘Wasn’t that risky for you?’ I said.
    ‘Well, she’s the kind of a dame it’s hard to say no to,’ he said. ‘I’ve done things for her before. She always paid off.…’
    ‘One way or the other?’
    ‘One way or the other,’ he said mildly. ‘Of course, everything’s gonna be great now that she’s got you to help her,’ he said.
    That’s what you think, that she’s got me to help her, I thought. You won’t be long finding out who’s going to help who. ‘I’m sure of that,’ I said.
    ‘Crawl in a car and take a nap,’ he said. ‘I’ll wake you up when she calls.’
    ‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘But, first I got to have some milk.’
    ‘Milk?’
    ‘Milk. It’s been two years since I had any milk.’
    ‘I like milk myself,’ he said.
    ‘Good,’ I said. ‘We got something in common, anyway.’
    He winked at me. ‘Yeah. But it ain’t milk,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah. But it ain’t milk,’ I said, walking out.
    The sidewalks were full of people and the street was full of trucks. It was a dead-end street. Two blocks down, to the south, it ran into a big produce market and stopped. The market was a single mass of movement and noise. The other way, to the north, the direction from which we had come, was the business district, with many tall buildings. It was a big town and that was good.
    I walked on up the street, looking for the retail market I had spotted on the way in. It was nice and comfortable being out in the open again, moving among people who paid no attention to you. The street noises were pleasant and the grind of the trucks was like spring music. The market turned out to be in the next block, HARTFORD’S , the signs said. It was a cheerful market, with a bakery on one side and an ice-cream booth on the other and the vegetable department in between, with its neat rows of vegetables and fruit I went through the enamelled turnstile by the cashier’s counter and on back to the icebox, passing along between tiers of canned goods and bottled goods and packaged bread and cookies. It was wonderful, like a fairy land.
    The icebox was the biggest icebox I’d ever seen. It took up the whole back wall. The door I opened was man-sized, and the cool, moist air tumbled out, smelling of butter. I saw no bottles of milk. There were many packages of cheese and stacks of beer and soft-drink cases and piles of melons and enough butter to fill a freight car, but I didn’t see any milk. As I stood there, holding the door open, telling myself that this was always the way, I heard a scraping sound behind me and I turned and there was a man in a white uniform dragging a wooden box which was filled with bottles of milk. He stopped beside me and when he raised up I saw that he was an old man and was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles.
    ‘This is like rubbing Aladdin’s Lamp,’ I told him.
    ‘Late getting away from the plant this morning,’ he said. ‘Danged bottle-washing machine busted.’
    I smiled sympathetically and picked two quart bottles out of the wooden box. Just then a slender man wearing a neat double-breasted suit paused in the aisle.
    ‘We’re both a little late this morning, Joe,’ he said to the milkman.
    ‘Oh, hello, Mister Hartford,’ Joe said. ‘Yeah. Danged bottle-washing machine busted.’
    Mr. Hartford nodded and went on. He had a bundle of currency in his hand, tied with a string, and a couple of bank books. I looked around to see where he had come from. A flight of steps led to an office directly above the big icebox. That was where he had come from. Yes, sir.…
    ‘What time do you