Read Short Stories: Five Decades for Free Online Page B

soothingly. “I think perhaps you ought to take a little vacation from the Blades scripts.”
    “Go to hell, Herman,” Andrew said, knowing that Herman had found somebody to do the scripts more cheaply for him.
    “That’s hardly the way to talk, Ahndrew,” Herman said, his voice still smooth, but hurt. “After all, I have to stand in the studio and listen to the complaints.”
    “Sad, Herman,” Andrew said. “That’s a sad picture,” and hung up.
    He rubbed the back of his neck reflectively, feeling again the little lump behind his ear.
    He went into his own room and sat at his desk looking blankly at the notes for his play that lay, neatly piled, growing older, on one side. He took out his checkbook and his last month’s vouchers and arranged them in front of him.
    “One hundred and eleven dollars,” he murmured, as he checked back and added and subtracted, his eyes smarting from the strain, his hands shaking a little because the vacuum cleaner was still going in his mother’s room. Out on the athletic field more boys had arrived and formed an infield and were throwing the ball around the bases and yelling at each other.
    Dr. Chalmers, seventy-five dollars. That was for his mother and her stomach.
    Eighty dollars rent. The roof over his head equaled two Ronnie Cook’s and His Friends. Five thousand words for rent.
    Buddy was in the hands of Flacker. Flacker could torture him for six pages. Then you could have Dusty Blades speeding to the rescue with Sam, by boat, and the boat could spring a leak because the driver was in Flacker’s pay, and there could be a fight for the next six pages. The driver could have a gun. You could use it, but it wouldn’t be liked, because you’d done at least four like it already.
    Furniture, and a hundred and thirty-seven dollars. His mother had always wanted a good dining-room table. She didn’t have a maid, she said, so he ought to get her a dining-room table. How many words for a dining-room table?
    “Come on, Baby, make it two,” the second baseman out on the field was yelling. “Double ’em up!”
    Andrew felt like picking up his old glove and going out there and joining them. When he was still in college he used to go out on a Saturday at ten o’clock in the morning and shag flies and jump around the infield and run and run all day, playing in pickup games until it got too dark to see. He was always tired now and even when he played tennis he didn’t move his feet right, because he was tired, and hit flat-footed and wild.
    Spain, one hundred dollars. Oh, Lord.
    A hundred and fifty to his father, to meet his father’s payroll. His father had nine people on his payroll, making little tin gadgets that his father tried to sell to the dime stores, and at the end of every month Andrew had to meet the payroll. His father always gravely made out a note to him.
    Flacker is about to kill Buddy out of anger and desperation. In bursts Dusty, alone. Sam is hurt. On the way to the hospital. Buddy is spirited away a moment before Dusty arrives. Flacker, very smooth and oily. Confrontation. “Where is Buddy, Flacker?” “You mean the little lad?” “I mean the little lad, Flacker!”
    Fifty dollars to Dorothy’s piano teacher. His sister. Another plain girl. She might as well learn how to play the piano. Then one day they’d come to him and say, “Dorothy is ready for her debut. All we’re asking you to do is rent Town Hall for a Wednesday evening. Just advance the money.” She’d never get married. She was too smart for the men who would want her and too plain for the men she’d want herself. She bought her dresses in Saks. He would have to support, for life, a sister who would only buy her dresses in Saks and pay her piano teacher fifty dollars a month every month. She was only twenty-four, she would have a normal life expectancy of at least forty years, twelve times forty, plus dresses at Saks and Town Hall from time to time …
    His father’s teeth—ninety