Nine Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mickeranno."
    Eloise
raised her voice to a shriek. "You get in the center of that
bed. Go on."
    Ramona,
extremely frightened, just looked up at Eloise.
    "All
right." Eloise grabbed Ramona's ankles and half lifted and half
pulled her over to the middle of the bed. Ramona neither struggled
nor cried; she let herself be moved without actually submitting to
it.
    "Now
go to sleep," Eloise said, breathing heavily. "Close your
eyes.... You heard me, close them."
    Ramona
closed her eyes.
    Eloise
went over to the light switch and flicked it off. But she stood for a
long time in the doorway. Then, suddenly, she rushed, in the dark,
over to the night table, banging her knee against the foot of the
bed, but too full of purpose to feel pain. She picked up Ramona's
glasses and, holding them in both hands, pressed them against her
cheek. Tears rolled down her face, wetting the lenses. "Poor
Uncle Wiggily," she said over and over again. Finally, she put
the glasses back on the night table, lenses down.
    She
stooped over, losing her balance, and began to tuck in the blankets
of Ramona's bed. Ramona was awake. She was crying and had been
crying. Eloise kissed her wetly on the mouth and wiped the hair out
of her eyes and then left the room.
    She
went downstairs, staggering now very badly, and wakened Mary Jane.
    "Wuzzat?
Who? Huh?" said Mary Jane, sitting bolt upright on the couch.
    "Mary
Jane. Listen. Please," Eloise said, sobbing. "You remember
our freshman year, and I had that brawn-and-yellow dress I bought in
Boise, and Miriam Ball told me nobody wore those kind of dresses in
New York, and I cried all night?" Eloise shook Mary Jane's arm.
"I was a nice girl," she pleaded, "wasn't I?"

    Just Before the War with the Eskimos

    FIVE
STRAIGHT SATURDAY MORNINGS, Ginnie Mannox had played tennis at the
East Side Courts with Selena Graff, a classmate at Miss Basehoar's.
Ginnie openly considered Selena the biggest drip at Miss
Basehoar's--a school ostensibly abounding with fair-sized drips--but
at the same time she had never known anyone like Selena for bringing
fresh cans of tennis balls. Selena's father made them or something.
(At dinner one night, for the edification of the entire Mannox
family, Ginnie had conjured up a vision of dinner over at the
Graffs'; it involved a perfect servant coming around to everyone's
left with, instead of a glass of tomato juice, a can of tennis
balls.) But this business of dropping Selena off at her house after
tennis and then getting stuck--every single time--for the whole cab
fare was getting on Ginnie's nerves. After all, taking the taxi home
from the courts instead of the bus had been Selena's idea. On the
fifth Saturday, however, as the cab started north in York Avenue,
Ginnie suddenly spoke up.
    "Hey,
Selena. . ."
    "What?"
asked Selena, who was busy feeling the floor of the cab with her
hand. "I can't find the cover to my racket!" she moaned.
    Despite
the warm May weather, both girls were wearing topcoats over their
shorts.
    "You
put it in your pocket," Ginnie said. "Hey, listen--"
    "Oh,
God! You've saved my life!"
    "Listen,"
said Ginnie, who wanted no part of Selena's gratitude.
    "What?"
    Ginnie
decided to come right out with it. The cab was nearly at Selena's
street. "I don't feel like getting stuck for the whole cab fare
again today," she said. "I'm no millionaire, ya know."
    Selena
looked first amazed, then hurt. "Don't I always pay half?"
she asked innocently.
    "No,"
said Ginnie flatly. "You paid half the first Saturday. Way in
the beginning of last month. And since then not even once. I don't
wanna be ratty, but I'm actually existing on four-fifty a week. And
out of that I have to--"
    "I
always bring the tennis balls, don't I?" Selena asked
unpleasantly.
    Sometimes
Ginnie felt like killing Selena. "Your father makes them or
something," she said. "They don't cost you anything. I have
to pay for every single little--"
    "All
right, all right," Selena said, loudly and with finality enough
to give herself the