Punish Me with Kisses by William Bayer Read Free Book Online Page B

catching up on work."
    "Job OK?"
    "Sure. Nothing new."
    She felt so stupid with nothing to say, hated the limpness in her voice. She could just imagine him, the crinkles around his mouth and eyes, his smile, his squared-off jaw. And of course the shock of hair that hung across his forehead and made him look so boyish, light-brown copper hair like Suzie's, now slightly grayed around the ears.
    "Want to play some squash this week?" He hadn't asked her in months.
    "Sure."
    "Still running?"
    "Yeah."
    "In great shape, huh?"
    "I guess."
    "Well, I'd better watch out, kiddo. Call me Wednesday. We'll set something up."
    It was small talk, empty, inane, but still she was touched because he tried. Things between them had been difficult the last three years. He'd been angry when she told him she was going to change her name. He said that wasn't "right," that she couldn't run away from things, and in the soft hushed tone he used when he was truly furious said: "I don't think she would have changed her name if things had been reversed." She'd been nearly crushed by that, had turned away, felt tears rising to her eyes. Then he'd put his arm around her, held her close. "It's your life, kiddo. Do what you have to do."
    Things had gotten a little better after that. At least now he seemed to want a relationship: occasional squash games, lunches at his club, father-son type stuff. She went along with everything he suggested, never turned him down. She wanted desperately to get to know him, break through the aura of coldness and self-absorption which always surrounded him and made her feel cut off. If only she could be like Suzie, she thought; if she could be fascinated by his business dealings, turned on by his power plays; if only she could take Suzie's place and give her father back the daughter he'd loved the best. But it was impossible. She didn't know how to be like that, wasn't interested in business, couldn't have faked interest if she'd tried. She sometimes thought that if he'd had a choice of which of his daughters he must lose, he would have chosen her.
    After the call she stared out the window for a while. Then, annoyed at herself, she decided to go out. The city seemed to be full of young people in tank tops and track shorts wandering hand-in-hand. There was a black kid standing on the corner of Lexington and Eighty-Sixth. "Smoke, smoke, smoke," he whispered again and again under his breath.
    She wandered into a discount bookstore, prowled the tables, picked up novels, speed-read dust jacket copy, glanced at authors' photographs. All the male writers under forty sported beards; all the women stared out defiantly as if to say that their pens were mightier than the men their novels flayed.
    After a while she felt dizzy—too many books, too many covers competing for attention, most of them second-rate, a waste of energy and trees. Like a lot of English majors she'd gone into publishing because of her love for literature. Publishing, it turned out, wasn't about literature at all. It had to do with a product—"books."
    Back on Eighty-Sixth the black boy was still purveying dope. Gimbels was open; a Labor Day Sale was on. She went in, rode the escalators, looked at tennis rackets and jogging shoes and close-outs on designer sheets. She stayed in the store until it closed, then walked over to Carl Shurz Park where she stood by the balustrade, watching the scows go by and the holiday traffic jam up on the FDR. When the sky turned dark she looked for a restaurant and settled on a coffee shop, where she ate a hamburger and drank a glass of milk.
    When she wandered back to Eightieth Street, she found a dark van parked in front of her brownstone and a small group, whom she recognized as patients of Dr. Bowles, standing around on the sidewalk amidst a heap of boxes and sacks. They stopped talking when she came close, nodded cautiously. There was something cliquish about them, something smug, as if they possessed special knowledge, knew the