Beggar of Love by Lee Lynch Read Free Book Online Page A

words.
    “What are you two doing?”
    Jefferson’s heart felt like a massive bell struck by a clapper. She stepped minutely back from Angela so that the bottom of the hiked-up skirt would fall. Angela pulled her hands away from Jefferson. She felt cold as a glacier when she met Angela’s shocked, unblinking eyes.
    The deep, accented voice seemed to boom from the alcove to the now-wide-open wooden door. The man was heavy enough to fill the doorway. He was almost bald, with gray tufts of hair everywhere: on his head, sprouting from his nose, ears, from the back of the hand that held a push broom. Angela tried to hide her face with her jacket. Jefferson stared him down. In a second the frozen feeling was gone. She straightened and summoned an angry defiance, born of defending her teammates, that now prepared her to kid and cajole their way out of this.
    “No,” Angela whispered. “Don’t let him see your face.”
    “He already did, Ange.” She knew seconds, perhaps thirty, had passed, but that they would only have the advantage for a few more.
    “Run,” Jefferson whispered. “Keep your head down. I’ll meet you behind the band shell in the park.”
    Angela only hesitated for the length of time it took Jefferson to speak. Then they were moving, Angela swift as the shadow of a bird as Jefferson was still pivoting to run—Angela was away—and the hairy arm, like a fat rolling pin, grabbed Angela’s arm. Jefferson stopped. Angela pulled away from the hand, twisted, ducked, slipped free, but the hand, the size of four of Jefferson’s, caught her skirt. She heard the rip, pushed him, heard the skirt rip more, should have pulled Angela, should have accused him of attacking them, but she still held a hope that no one would find out. He had Angela by the arm again.
    “Is that the candy-store kid? What’s going on here, girlie?”
    She thought of crazy explanations: we were rehearsing for a play; my friend is sick and I was helping her; wish I could stay and talk, but I have to catch a train. She couldn’t be flip with him clamped on Angela’s arm. She felt a new fire break out in her guts.
    Angela cried, “Take your hand off me!”
    “I don’t think so. Your father should hear about this.”
    “Hey,” Jefferson cried, clawing to get his hands away from Angela, but she could not pry them loose.
    “Let me go! He knows,” lied Angela.
    “Knows his kid’s a dirty little queer?”
    Angela pulled back her free arm and slapped him, openhanded.
    The man shook her. “Damn slut.” He looked at Jefferson then. “I know who you are. I guess it wouldn’t do any good to let him know about the chip off his own block.”
    The man watched her reaction. “Or didn’t you know? He’s not the only good family man in this town who finds the boys at the railroad station more interesting than his wife.”
    What was he saying? She had a flash of a scene from the musical Guys and Dolls of the guys playing craps in an alleyway. She pictured Jarvy crouching against a wall, tipping back a bottle. Her straitlaced father? Did this have something to do with why Jarvy and Emmy drank more and more?
    “And I don’t mean he’s out playing poker with them either. Like father, like daughter—or are you really a son? Maybe he does it to you too.”
    Jefferson had been feeling helplessly small compared to the janitor’s bulk, but at that moment she understood what the man was saying and her whole world opened up in a way that was bewildering and painful and freeing all at once.
    No! she thought. The monster cloud was coming, dropping over her like a hooded cape. She’d never be able to think her way out of this situation if she gave in to it. Her trusty body reacted on its own; she kicked his shin viciously. His grip loosened and they ran.
    Normally it was exhilarating to run, but she was crying, embarrassed to be such a weakling. She should be the strong one, but how could she stand up to that man? He might as well be the supreme