Save Johanna! by Francine Pascal Read Free Book Online

the bike, he shoved it to Imogene who, while Avrum brushed the dust from his clothes, wheeled it to the side of the house next to the other Harley.
    On the bike, Avrum’s long, muscular trunk made him look taller than five six, but even at that unimpressive height he was powerful, his physique hardened by years of serious exercise with barbells and pulleys in all those foster homes he’d been in and out of, and isometrics and hard labor during the ten years he had accumulated in prisons. He had always taken great pride in his body; it was the one thing no one could take from him. They had sent him to some of the most miserable homes and jails over the years, but he’d always had the mental discipline to shut out the worst of it and concentrate on self-improvement, most of it physical. When it was possible, he took great care to choose clothes that accentuated those hard-won accomplishments. Today his upper body was sheathed in a thin, onionskin, nylon T-shirt of an iridescent blue that flashed with a silver sheen when the light caught the roll of his muscles.
    No one was certain exactly how old Avrum was. He claimed to be twenty-seven but looked closer to thirty-five. It was his starkness and intensity that aged him. His deep-brown hair hung almost to his shoulders and was dense and straight with a coarseness that made it stand out dramatically around his long, angular face. Except for his eyes, his other features were ordinary, but the eyes were remarkable. Large and almond-shaped, they were rimmed with dark, thick lashes that accentuated the huge, black-brown irises that seemed to be flecked with tiny red suns. In a relaxed state or even when he was stoned on drugs they were never quiet, always radiating a kind of electrical energy arresting in its intensity.
    It was that energy that had drawn Imogene to him the first time she saw him in Anna’s sandal shop off St. Mark’s Place in the East Village. She had known Anna Butler from her old neighborhood in Brooklyn and ran into her accidentally one day when she and Arnold were hanging out in Washington Square Park. Imogene greeted Anna like a long-lost sister and immediately confided that she’d been seeing Arnold for only two weeks when her mother found out that he was black and threw her out of the house. Now she said, she had to live with him, and she was very lonely and didn’t like him so much anymore because he was so mean to her. She told Anna how Arnold had made her have sex with some men and then kept all the money. He did that a lot now. One time when she’d made a fuss about the money he’d punched her in the neck, and she could hardly move her head for a week. That was when she decided to get a job. But it was really hard to find one because she couldn’t type or anything like that, and when she tried to work in Duane Reade the cash registers got her all confused and made her cry, and they said she couldn’t stay. But Anna was very nice to her and let her come to her shop almost every day, and pretty soon she was giving Imogene little things to do, like helping to soften the leather or running errands, and she even paid her when she could. Imogene loved Anna more than anyone else, even her mother.
    Anna used to talk a lot about her friend Avrum Maheely and how he was so special. She made him sound practically like another Jesus, and Imogene began dreaming about him at night, and she was dying to meet him. One time, around the end of the summer, Anna said that Avrum was coming in from upstate and if Imogene came to the shop that Saturday she could meet him.
    That Saturday morning she arrived at the shop well before Anna and had to wait outside. She sat on the warm cement stoop and watched every man who walked by, trying to guess which one was Avrum.
    It was one of those hot, gummy New York mornings, the kind that plasters your clothes against your skin and makes your thighs stick together, but Imogene made no attempt to move out of the sunlight streaming