Rich Man, Poor Man Read Online Free PDF

there had been no time to get his mother to hospital. How many times he had heard that story. Big deal, being born at home. The Queen did not leave the Palace. The Prince first saw the light of day in the royal bedchamber. The house looked desolate, ready to be torn down. Tom spat again. He stared at the building, all exhilaration gone. There was the usual light from the basement window, where his father was working. The boy’s face hardened. A whole life in a cellar. What do they know? he thought. Nothing.
    He let himself in quietly with the key and climbed to the room he shared with Rudolph on the third floor. He was careful on the creaky stairs. Moving soundlessly was a point of honour with him. His exits and entrances were his own business. Especially on a night like this. There was some blood on the sleeve of his sweater and he didn’t want anybddy coming in and howling about it.
    He could hear Rudolph breathing steadily, asleep, as he closed the door quietly behind him. Nice, proper Rudolph, the perfect gentleman, smelling of toothpaste, right at the head of his class, everybody’s pet, never coming home with Wood on him, getting a good night’s sleep, so he wouldn’t miss a good morning, Ma’am, or a trigonometry problem the next day. Tom undressed in the dark, throwing his clothes carelessly over a chair. He didn’t want to answer anv Questions from
    Rudolph, either. Rudolph was no ally. He was on the other side. Let him be on the other side. Who cared?
    But when he got into the double bed, Rudolph awoke. ‘Where you been?’ Rudolph asked sleepily.
    ‘Just to the show.’
    ‘How was it?’
    ‘Lousy.’
    The two brothers lay still in the darkness. Rudolph moved a bit towards the other side of the bed. He thought it was degrading to have to sleep in the same bed with his brother. It Was cold in the room, with the window open and the wind coming off the river. Rudolph always opened the window wide at night. If there was a rule, you could bet Rudolph would obey it. He slept in pyjamas. Tom just stripped to his shorts for sleeping. They had arguments about that twice a week.
    Rudolph sniffed. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, ‘you smell like a wild animal. What’ve you been doing?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Tom said. ‘ I can’t help the way I smell.’ If he wasn’t my brother, he thought, Fd beat the shit out of him.
    He wished he’d had the money to go to Alice’s behind the railroad station. He’d lost his virginity there for five dollars and he’d gone back several times after that. That was in the summer. He had had a job on a dredge in the river and he told his father he made ten dollars a week less than he actually did. That big dark woman, that Florence girl, up from Virginia, who had let him come twice for the same five dollars because he was only fourteen and he was cherry, that would have really finished the night off. He hadn’t told Rudolph about Alice’s either. Rudolph was still a virgin, that was for sure. He was above sex or he was waiting for a movie star or he was a fairy or something. One day, he, Tom, was going to tell Rudolph everything and then watch the expression on his face. Wild animal. Well, if mat’s what they thought of him, that’s what he was going to be - a wild animal.
    He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the soldier looked like, down on one knee on the pavement with the blood leaking all over his face. The image was clear, but
    here was no pleasure in it any more.
    He started to tremble. The room was cold, but that wasn’t vhy he was trembling.
    vGretchen sat in front of the little mirror which was propped up on the dressing table against the wall of her room: It was an old kitchen table she had bought at a junk sale for two dollars and painted pink. There were some cosmetic jars on it and a silver backed brush she had got as a present on her eighteenth birthday and three small bottles of perfume and a manicure set all neatly laid out on a clean towel. She