Read The Bay of Love and Sorrows for Free Online

— cheese too.”
    She sat down on the bed immediately and began to eat and he watched her. Although he didn’t like to, he asked her about the boy
    “Oh, he’s no one. He’s doing a drafting course, so I see him because our room is just next door. Sometimes the boys like to come over and tease us — well, you know boys,” she said, putting jam on a roll and looking at him.
    She paused, and smiled prettily, her head cocked just slightly, as if questioning him.
    “What’s wrong?” she said,
    “Oh, I don’ know — just a long way to come fer an hour,” he said.
    “I know,” she said, and again, as it had been the first night he spoke to her, the word know was said sensuously, “But it’s just my test,” she said, “I have to study for it tonight — “She paused and reflected on something, “Tom — when are you going to get a haircut?”
    “Oh, I been puttin it off — I didn’t get to town,” he said, reaching along his neck.
    “Well, it’s getting long again, isn’t it. You don’t want it like Mike Skid’s all-greasy long hair,”
    She smiled, put the roll down, and came over and sat on his knee for a moment. The door of her room was half-closed, and it was almost dark. He realized that in another half-hour he would have to leave and drive home,
    “Are you going to take upgrading next year like you promised?” she asked, rubbing his nose with hers,
    “Maybe — if you want me to,” he said,
    She smiled, held his face in her hands, looked at him intently, then gave him a lingering kiss that tasted like jam and butter. Then she suddenly leaned forward so he could kiss her eyes, like a child who has just seen something that has scared her,
    “There, that’s better” she said, “My eyes are kissed all better again”
    And Tom hugged her, knowing he was profoundly in love,
    At this time Michael was firmly established with his new friends, but they realized that at any time he could give this life up for a safer, more sedentary life. And in certain poignant ways Madonna tried to stretch the boundaries of her relationship with him,
    Sitting on the opposite side of the table from him, in her small house, she would shake her head and say: “Someday I’d like to see your house — I’ve never been in a house like that — well, I was at a house where I made curtains once — Rita Walsh showed me — but other than that, no, I’ve not been in a house. Now Karrie Smith has a nice house I guess — I been down there.”
    Michael would nod.
    “Some day Madonna is goin to get her own bicycle,” Silver would say, smiling. “She never had a bicycle before, didn’tcha, Madonna”
    “Well, I don’t care about no fuckin bicycle now, Silver, for Jesus Christ sake — I’m nineteen fuckin years old — “
    Madonna would blush, embarrassed that this secret about her childish wish to have a bicycle was now revealed.
    “Well, I’ll get ya one anyway someday, ya stupid quiff — I tol’ja I would.”
    “Silver got on pills and tried to knife himself, and went and stabbed hisself in the leg — and now he’s back into sniffin the glue.”
    “Ya ya ya ya ya, so what the fuck,” Silver would answer, angry that this had been told about him.
    “Stay away from my fingernail polish is all I’m saying.”
    “Ya ya ya ya ya “
    One night, near the time Tom went to visit Karrie, Everette came to Madonna’s house. He mentioned that a friend of his was coming to trial for rape, and wanted to know if Michael could put in a word for this man. And for the second time Michael heard the name of the girl he’d once taken to the school dance: Laura McNair. She was prosecuting this friend of Everette’s.
    “I want you to help him out if you can,” Everette said.
    In ways in which he himself never understood, Everette’s entire life was obsessed with and dealt with institutions and the courts and the law. His eager face showed this as he waited to hear Michael’s answer. It was as if this obsession were a