Never Love a Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page A

come so’s I could go to work for Keough and make some real dough.
    I left the school with Jerry that afternoon. He seemed to be surprised when I walked out the gate with him.
    “I thought you were confined to school, Frankie,” he said. “Yesterday was the last day,” I answered.
    “Doing anything special this afternoon?” he asked me. “Why?”
    “Nuthin’,” he said, “I was just curious.”
    We walked along for a few minutes without saying a word. Then Jerry said: “Frankie, how would you like to come out to the country with me this summer?”
    “Quit your kiddin’,” I said.
    “I’m not kidding. I mean it.” His blue eyes were earnest. “I asked Papa, and he said to bring you over to the house for dinner some day this week and we’d talk about it.”
    “Nuts!” I said, “they probably wouldn’t let me go, anyway.”
    “They would if my dad asked them to let you go. You know who he is?” Jerry said.
    Yes, I knew his father; everyone did—big Jerry Cowan, New York’s smiling Mayor. You saw pictures of him in the papers every day—carnation in his buttonhole, white teeth gleaming, shaking hands with the representative of the latest corngrowers’ association or some other crummy outfit. Yeah, his old man could get almost anything he wanted. He was Mayor of New York.
    We were at the door of the poolroom. I stopped. I looked into the poolroom. It was dim inside and I could hardly see into it. I thought of spending the summer in there with the smell of needled beer and urine from the toilet. I thought of spending the summer in the country with Jerry. He probably had a swell joint with servants and everything. There’d probably be fishing and swimming and all kinds of stuff. A picture of me diving into a lake flashed in my mind. I had never swum in a lake. It must be swell. Some fellows told me it was. I had gone to Coney a couple of times but mostly did my swimming off die dock at Fifty-fourth Street. Golly, a summer in the country would be swell. I turned to Jerry, “Naah, Jerry,” I said. “Thanks anyway. They—I mean—I got a job here. I gotta work this summer. I can’t be broke. I gotta make a little dough. And, hell, I hate the country anyway! I always got the heebies there.”
    Jerry looked at me and then laughed. Jerry was no dunce. He knew what was on my mind. Jerry was a strange friend. He wasn’t an easy one to make friends with; neither was he stuck-up. He was just—particular. I don’t know why he liked me, but if I could see far enough ahead, if I could only have known what Jerry and I—but well get to it when we get to it. It’s bad enough we can look back and remember; it would be a lot worse if we knew what was coming.
    “O.K.,” he said, “if that’s what you want. But come over to my house for dinner one
    evening anyway.” I noticed he said “dinner” not “supper” the way I did.
    “I will.” I stood awkwardly on one foot. I didn’t know whether to thank him again or not. Then I thought: “To hell with it! I thanked him before.” Aloud I said: “I gotta go in to work.” I stood there watching him walk down the street and turn the corner.
    I turned and looked into the poolroom. The clock on the back wall said three fifteen. I was early. I didn’t have to be there until four, and I didn’t feel much like working right then. I looked for Jimmy. He was talking to some geezer and didn’t see me; so I ducked and scooted up the block and sat down in the sun on the steps of an old tenement, waiting until it was four o’clock before going back to Keough’s. I thought about going to the country with Jerry.
    I lit a cigarette and was waiting for die time to pass when I heard some yelling going on over the other side of the street. A couple of kids I knew had cornered a Jewboy and were giving him the works. I looked on with idle interest. I felt too lazy to go over and join in the fun. They stood around him in a half circle and tormented him.
    “How does it