Strange Sisters by Fletcher Flora Read Free Book Online Page A

coke. Would you like a coke, Kathy?"
    "No."
    "Oh, come on. Give a guy a break, can't you?"
    "Why should I?"
    "Well, damn it, just to see what it's like. You could just try it once."
    She hesitated. She was tempted to concede again, and she didn't quite know why. Not, God knew, because she anticipated any pleasure from it. Except, perhaps, the pleasure of extending her manipulation of his emotions a little longer, of seeing him humbled and debased in the silly pursuit of something he'd never get. Of something that didn't even exist, although there was no possible way for him to understand that. She herself hardly understood it yet.
    "All right," she said. "If you want to buy me a coke, I guess I can drink it."
    So they turned at the next corner and went down to Tinker's. It was a small clapboard building with a flat roof. Inside, there were plywood booths around three walls, the fourth wall being reserved for the counter. There were stationary stools before the counter and a few tables with chairs scattered in the central area. There was also a garish juke-box of many colors with golden bubbles rising soundlessly through visible tubes. There was always a spinning platter, an amplified voice or the overwhelming collaboration of strings and reeds and brass and percussion, the fiat five-cent can of what passed for music. Tinker's was one of those places which, for no apparent earthly reason, catches on and hangs on and will not die. Its short orders were bad, its accommodations were inferior, its attitude was indifferent; but in spite of these things it was popular, a congregating place, and trade was brisk in dimes and quarters primarily.
    Kathy sat in a booth and sipped her coke and tried to avoid looking at the face of Kenny Renowski across from her. The juke-box blared, there was a heavy smell of greasy hamburger and onions in the stagnant afar, and all around her were students she didn't like engaged in an awkward mass flirtation with a function she abhorred. She choked on her coke and set the glass unemptied on the table of the booth.
    Standing, she said, "I'm leaving."
    He also stood. "Already? Be a sport, Kathy, and stick around. We have lots of fun in this joint. Stick around, you'll see."
    "I don't want to stick around. I want to leave. Thanks for the coke."
    "Wait a minute. I’ll go with you, then."
    "You don't have to come. You can stay and have some of the fun you were talking about."
    "Damn it, Kathy, I said I'd come, didn't I? Why do you have to be so antagonistic about everything?"
    "I'm not antagonistic. I just don't care whether you come or stay. You can suit yourself."
    He took hold of her arm and said desperately, "Don't be like that, Kathy."
    They were outside again by that time, and she wheeled to face him, jerking her arm furiously from the grip of his fingers.
    "That's the second time you've said that. Please don't say it again." "What?"
    "That silly stuff about my not being like that. I am like that, whatever that means, and if you don't like it, you can get away from me. Just get the hell away."
    She turned again and began walking, and he fell into step beside her. "I didn't mean to make you sore, Kathy. It's just an expression. Would you like to take a walk?"
    "A walk? Where?"
    "Oh, out in the country a little way. It's a swell day for walking, don't you think? You can actually smell the earth, wet as it is, and there's a kind of feeling in the air. It would be nice outside of town today. We could walk out to West Creek and back. It isn't very far. How about it, Kathy?"
    Again she hesitated, and again, for what obscure reason she would never be able to say, she made the concession. And though it seemed afterward to have been a great mistake, the cause of intense suffering, perhaps it was not a mistake after all, but rather a necessary traumatic experience that had to come sooner or later and was better to have come sooner.
    "All right," she said, and they walked in silence along the wet street under