Read Never Love a Stranger for Free Online Page B

bed.
    “You’re so strong,” she said. “You mustn’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.” And after a while she said; “Hurt me, please hurt me….”
    It was midnight when I left her. Walking through the streets, wet and muggy, I felt now I was a man. But I was a fool. I was not yet fourteen and big for my age and too big for my breeches.
    Chapter Six ‌

    I T was Saturday morning and Keough left me in the store all alone. He was taking his wife and kid down to the station to put them on the train for the country where they were going to stay all summer.
    I had all the tables set, the beer iced in the cellar, and the place swept clean. I had cleaned out the toilets, polished the glass showcase in which he kept the cigars, and was now washing down the windows. They were half covered with black paint so no one could see in, and just had the words on each window, “Billiards” in small, black letters. I had wet the windows with a brush and then wiped them down with a squeegee on a long mop handle.
    While I was working, Jerry and Ray came down the street. They stopped to watch me. “Jeeze!” said Ray, “you’re as good as a regular window washer.”
    “It’s a trick,” I said proudly. “Ya gotta know how to work the squeegee!” With a final wipe and flourish I finished. I picked up the pail and brush and walked into the store. “Come on in,” I said to them. “Keough’s out.”
    They came into the store. It was the first time any of them had been in the place. Kids weren’t allowed.
    “How’s about lettin’ us shoot some pool, Frankie?” Ray asked.
    “Can’t. Ya gotta be an adult. Minors can’t play. See the sign?” I pointed to a sign over the cash register that read, “Minors not permitted.” “We can get closed up if you play.”
    “How about comin’ swimmin’ with us this afternoon?” Jerry asked.
    “I’d like to,” I said. “Maybe if you’ll drop by this afternoon and we’re not busy, Jimmy’ll let me off.”
    “O.K.,” said Jerry. “We’ll stop by on our way to the docks.”
    The afternoon was hot and Keough had come back from the station in a good mood and whistling: “My Wife’s Gone to the Country, Hooray, Hooray!” We weren’t busy and he let me off for a couple hours.
    The three of us walked down the street towards the Fifty-fourth Street dock. I saw Marty on the other side of the street. I called: “Hey, Marty!”
    He came over to us, and I introduced him all around and asked him to come swimming with us.
    “I’d like to,” he said. “That is if the other fellows don’t mind.” “Hell, no!” I said. “The more the merrier.”
    The dock was crowded when we got there. I saw some fellows I knew. Pete Sanpero was there with his gang, but he didn’t say anything to me so I didn’t pay any attention to him. We swung ourselves under the dock and got out of our clothes. Then we jumped into the water. It was warm and dirty near the dock because a sewer emptied there, but when you swam out a little ways it was nice and fresh. We splashed around a little and then I said to the others: “I wish we could fly back to the docks from here so we wouldn’t have to get that slime over us when we go back.”
    Jerry called back to me: “If you’d come up to the country like I asked you, you could swim in a real lake.”
    An aeroplane roared overhead. We all turned and yelled. Then Ray said: “I wonder if that was Rickenbacker.”
    “Hell!” I said, “if it was, it was an angel. Rickenbacker’s dead.”
    “No he isn’t,” Marty yelled. “He’s alive. He shot down the ace of the German flying circus, von Richthofen.”
    “Anyway, America has the best goddam aeroplanes in the world. And American fliers are the best,” Ray said.
    We floated on our backs awhile and watched the ferries and the Hudson River boats go by. Then we got out of the water and stretched out on the docks in the sun. We were stark naked and too far from the streets for anyone to see us. We