Read Just Plain Al: The Al Series, Book Five for Free Online

old boy. The Master. They don’t tip the way folks do for the golden oldies, that’s true, but there’s lots of real music lovers out there. Warms my heart if not my palm.”
    Rudy is always joking with us. “You girls win the lottery yet?” he asked us. “Thought I saw you on TV the other night, picking up your prize. No? Wasn’t you? Too bad. I was gonna ask could I borrow a couple hundred simoleons from you. A story for you: a lady leaves a mink coat in my friend’s cab. He sees it laying there, returns it to the hotel he left the lady at, thinks he hears noises coming from it. He goes inside, the lady’s having hysterics. ‘My baby, my baby,’ she’s crying. My friend hands over the mink. The lady busses my friend, a big hug, big kiss, no money for his honesty, though. Then she reaches in and hauls out one of them little foreign dogs with a face on it only a mother could love. She goes kissy, kissy to the mutt, and that’s that. No tip, no nothing. Next time my friend says he keeps the coat and leaves the country. How’s that for a story?”
    â€œI never know whether to believe you or not,” Al said.
    â€œYou better believe me, sweetheart,” Rudy said. “I was stolen by gypsies from my ancestral castle. The moat wasn’t working that day, which is how the gypsies wormed their way in. So then they try to sell me back to my mother, the queen. She says, ‘Has he got a little birthmark the shape of a star on his knee?’ The gypsies say, ‘Sure, he’s got one just like that.’ So my mother, the queen, screams, ‘He ain’t mine, then. My baby didn’t have a mark on him!’”
    Rudy broke into “Way down upon the Swanee River,” accompanied by a soft-shoe routine. Quite a few people stopped to watch, clapping along, smiling. It was Rudy’s kind of crowd. He was once a vaudeville star, he told us. The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd, was what counted, he said.
    We waved and walked on.
    â€œThe one about the lady with the mink coat might’ve been true,” I said, “but the gypsy story was a phony. That I know.”
    Al rolled her eyes at me. We stopped for another look at the leather dresses. They were gone from the window. The mannequins stared out at us, naked as jaybirds. We blew circles on the glass and wrote Down with McKinley in them. Then we headed home.
    About halfway there, I said, “I didn’t realize it was so far. Maybe we should’ve taken the bus.”
    â€œOne dollar times two is two dollars,” Al reminded me sternly. “That mounts up.”
    â€œWait,” I said and tied my sneaker.
    â€œIf he doesn’t send me a birthday card, who cares?” Al said. “It’s just a dumb old fourteenth birthday, anyway. Who cares?”
    I didn’t know if she meant her father or Brian. And I didn’t ask.

chapter 7½
    When I rang Al’s bell next morning, she came to the door still in her pajamas, with a towel wrapped around her head.
    â€œAre you doing needlepoint?” I said. Usually when she looks harassed that way it means she’s doing needlepoint.
    â€œNo,” she said grumpily. “I’m working my buns off. Come on in, but don’t expect me to entertain you.”
    Entertain me? Since when. I followed her into her bedroom. It was a mess. It looked as if robbers had trashed it looking for cash stashed under the mattress. Or the world’s biggest diamond.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    Al bent over a pile of clothes and began tossing them every which way. Bright spots of color flew through the air like confetti: yellow, red, blue, orange.
    â€œI’m getting rid of it. Giving it all away.”
    I picked a plaid shirt off my head where it had landed. “What for?” I asked.
    Al drew herself up and gave me her holy look. All she does to look holy, she told me, is think of St. Francis of