Sideswipe Read Online Free PDF

slice of pie or cake. The Sneiders lived four doors down from the Sinkiewiczes, and once Mrs. Sneider had told Maya that if Pammi ever pestered her to just send her home. Maya had said she liked to have the little girl drop by, and that Pammi reminded her of her granddaughter back in Michigan, whose name was Tern, a name ending with an i, just like Pammi's. Despite that conversation, the two women were not friends. There was too much difference in their ages, and in just about everything else. Mrs. Sneider was only thirty-six, and she belonged to Greenpeace, the La Leche League, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, and the West Palm Beach chapter of N.O.W. Mrs. Sneider was away from home a good deal, but this was a safe neighborhood, and Pammi was allowed to play with other children and was also authorized to go to Julia Tuttle Park in the afternoons, by herself. In the afternoons, very few of the older men went to the park. It was too hot to sit there, for one thing, and when school was out, the older men did not like to hear the small children squealing on the playground equipment and chasing each other around. There were almost always a few mothers there with smaller children, so the park was considered a safe place to send children to get them out of the house.
     
    Pammi was barefooted, and she wore a blue-and-white striped T-shirt and a pair of red cotton shorts with an elastic waistband. She carried a leather sack in her left hand, a sack that had once contained marbles. She tiptoed over to the webbed lounger, where Stanley was sleeping on his back, and gave him a French kiss.
     
    Stanley spluttered and sat up suddenly. Pammi giggled and held out her grubby right hand.
     
    "Now," she said, giggling again, "you gotta give me a penny."
     
    Stanley wiped his mouth, blinking slightly. "What did you do?"
     
    "I gave you a kiss. Now you gotta give me a penny."
     
    "My wife's at the store," Stanley said. "But she should be back soon. I don't know if she's got any cookies for you or not, Pammi. I haven't been in the kitchen--"
     
    "I don't want a cookie. I want a penny for my collection." The girl held up her leather bag and shook it. The coins inside rattled.
     
    "I didn't ask you for a kiss, and you shouldn't kiss a man like that anyway. Not at your age. Who taught you to stick out your tongue when you kissed?"
     
    Pammi shrugged. "I don't know his name. But he comes to the park every day when it begins to get dark, and he gives me a penny for a wet kiss, and five pennies for a look. You owe me a penny now, and if you want a look you'll have to give me five more." Pammi put her sack on the terrazzo floor and stripped off her red shorts. Stanley looked, and shook his head. Pammi's hairless pudenda, which resembled a slightly dented balloon, did nothing to excite the old man.
     
    "Put your shorts back on. What's the matter with you, anyway?"
     
    As Stanley got off the lounger, Pammi laughed and danced away. He picked up her shorts from the floor and stalked the little girl, trying to drive her into a corner so he could put her shorts on again. Maya drove into the carport in the black Escort and parked, then came into the kitchen with a bag of groceries and looked through the sliding glass doors to the porch. By this time, Stanley had Pammi by one leg and was trying to insert it into the shorts, while Pammi giggled and tried to get away from him.
     
    "You owe me six cents first!" Pammi said. "You looked, you looked!" Then, when Pammi saw Maya's face through the glass doors, she stopped giggling and began to cry. Maya hurried through the living room and went out the front door, slamming it behind her. When Pammi began to cry and ceased struggling, and the front door slammed, Stanley let go of the little girl's leg. He was still holding her shorts in his right hand when Pammi ran out the back screen door and into the yard. She cut through the unfenced back yards and, bare-butted, raced home, four doors away.
     
    Still