Other Plans by Constance C. Greene Read Free Book Online Page B

are really tight, when my father doesn’t kick through the way he’s supposed to, she calls the lawyer and sings the blues. But he always cuts her off at the pass. Nada is what she gets unless the time is right for him to cough up some bucks. That guy’s got a heart of stone. Probably a good thing, too. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any dough left. When she drinks, the money disappears.”
    It was like a soap opera on TV. He’d never known anyone who had a trust fund. There was a world waiting out there of which he knew nothing. A world inhabited by people like Keith. And Keith’s mother and father. It excited him and, at the same time, frightened him. He wasn’t an adventuresome person. He wished he were, wanted to be exciting and daring. Wanting wasn’t enough. Wanting wasn’t being.
    Keith’s mother hadn’t looked rich to him. Although what rich people looked like he had no idea, except for what he’d seen in the movies and on TV. He imagined rich people climbing in and out of long black cars driven by chauffeurs. They were constantly suntanned and spoke in foreign tongues, to keep poor people from understanding what they said. A lot of poor people spoke in foreign tongues too, he knew, but they didn’t have their own planes and ski at St. Moritz. Rich people dressed differently, too: either shabbily, in old clothes, or elaborately, with diamonds and furs. Like royalty, and like poor people, too, they never carried cash. They used credit cards, or a guy with them shelled out. This interested him. He almost never carried cash either. So they had something in common, he and the very rich.
    â€œWho’s this Keith that John talks about all the time?” he’d heard his father say shortly after he and Keith had become friends. He’d been lying on the floor reading the Sunday comics and had discovered, to his immense pleasure, that if he stayed absolutely still, unmoving, they forgot he was there.
    â€œHe’s new in school,” he heard his mother say. “I think the parents are divorced. At any rate, the father doesn’t live with them.” How did she know that? Not from him. “He lives in Florida,” his mother continued. “Palm Beach, Gertie said.” Gertie was a gossip, he knew. His father called her a female Walter Winchell. His mother said that, unlike most gossips, her friend Gertie had her facts straight most of the time.
    â€œPalm Beach?” his father said.
    â€œYes, Palm Beach.” His mother rolled the words on her tongue as if tasting something tart and vaguely unpleasant, something she was loath to swallow.
    â€œI’ve never laid eyes on the mother. But Keith has nice manners,” she who was big on manners admitted reluctantly. Still, he detected something in his mother’s voice that told him Keith hadn’t passed her inspection. How could nice manners be bad? It was important to him that his mother like Keith. He would never let her know how important. She was too critical of his friends, and he wanted her to like Keith.
    â€œHe’s a good-looking boy,” his mother continued. “Almost too good-looking.”
    Too good-looking for what? he asked himself. He admired Keith’s looks, thought him extraordinary in all ways. No one else looked like Keith. He recognized a certain truth in what his mother had said about being too good-looking. And began to notice and take notes.
    Girls collected at Keith’s approach, voices shrill and strident as they clamored for his attention. They milled about, pushing and shoving one another in mock combat, hoping, no doubt, to fall wounded at Keith’s feet; wounded and swooning, in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. If they’d asked Keith for his autograph, he, John Hollander, wouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe that was the way it was to walk down the street with Woody. To walk side by side with a luminary whose light obscured