LITMIR.BIZ

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Mom.”

      “You must be laughing about something.”

      “I’m just a little excited. I mean, it’s only hitting me now, everything that happened.”

      “Delayed reaction,” my father said.

      My mother hesitated. “So tell me about their apartment.”

      She would never admit it, but despite her fears she’d wondered all her life about what it would be like to live in the big town.

      “Amazing place,” I said. “Huge windows looking out over Central Park.”

      “Noisy?”

      “Seemed pretty quiet to me. You hear the traffic sounds, but they’re pretty faint from the sixth floor.”

      She was fascinated, and at the same time she needed to find a way to be better than the Robinskis. At last it came to her.

      “Did you eat anything while you were there?”

      “No.”

      “Drink?”

      “Mom, I played my song twice and I left.”

      A dark gleam came to her eyes. “See that? These Manhattan big shots don’t even offer you a glass of water. No class.”

      She turned to my father in triumph before going upstairs to take a bath. My father lit up a Camel, considerately blowing the smoke toward the ceiling.

      “Play me the whole song,” he said when I finished eating.

      So I did. The song was two days old, but I felt as if I’d been playing “Sweet Days” for years, and when I finished he was smiling.

      “Son of a bitch,” he said. “It’s about Lynn, isn’t it?”

      I felt myself redden. “Yeah, I guess so. Hadn’t really thought about it.”

      “Not much you didn’t.”

      He knew I was lying, right through the teeth he’d paid so many thousands of dollars to have straightened.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Lynn Mahoney. My love. My life. My obsession.

      I was fifteen years old and as shy as a boy could be without actually disappearing. I had an after-school job that seemed just right for a kid with my temperament—delivering the New York Daily News to families all around Little Neck.

      I shouldered a big canvas bag filled with rolled-up papers and went from house to house, leaving the papers in front of doors. I was conscientious about it. I never threw them from the sidewalk, because that could tear the front page. I had more than fifty regulars on my route and every one of them got their newspapers in good condition Monday through Saturday, rain or shine.

      I was quick on my feet and it didn’t take more than an hour to run the route each afternoon. It would have been the perfect job for me, except for one thing—collecting day.

      Every Friday I had to bang on the doors and ask to be paid for the week’s papers. Nobody was ever happy to see me.

      “Collecting,” I’d murmur. That was my whole speech. Bob Piellusch, the kid who’d turned over his newspaper route to me (in January, right after he’d collected Christmas tips from his customers), said it would help to smile when I said it, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Often I’d wake people from naps, or interrupt them while they were preparing dinner. They acted as if I were being rude and unreasonable for expecting to be paid.

      I wasn’t. This was the deal. I had to lay out my own money each week to buy the newspapers. The profit margin wasn’t huge, so I couldn’t afford to carry any deadbeats.

      And one family on my route had become the worst deadbeats of all.

      I was nervous as I walked up the path to the Mahoney house that chilly Friday in April. Funny thing was that for a long time, this had been one of the best stops on my route, because Mrs. Mahoney had always taken good care of me. She answered the door promptly, had the money in hand, tipped me half a buck, and even offered me cookies.

      But one Friday, she didn’t answer the door. Nobody answered it. I made a red check mark next to the Mahoney name in my record book and moved on.

      The next week, no answer again. Another red check mark, to be followed by two more. The Mahoneys were a month behind. You were allowed to phone your customers if they were real deadbeats, but I didn’t dare do that. I was actually willing to take the loss, if it came to that.

      The following Friday I almost didn’t bother knocking on the Mahoney door. The only reason I did was because the newspapers weren’t piling up on their porch. Somebody was taking them inside, so somebody had to be home. Maybe my luck would turn this time….

      And it did. The Mahoneys had a very creaky door, and it was opened that Friday afternoon by the most terrifying man I’d ever seen. His shoulders seemed as wide as the door and his angry blue eyes stared out of a massive skull with a gaze that seemed determined to melt me into a puddle.

      I’d obviously awakened him from a nap. His steel-gray hair was flat on one side, his socks were halfway down his feet, and loose red suspenders dangled from his hips.

      “What the hell do you want?” he growled.

      I swallowed. “Collecting.”

      “Collecting for what?”

      Instead of answering I handed him a folded newspaper. He took it from me and rubbed his face with his other hand.

      “Paperboy…what do I owe you?”

      I steeled myself for the outburst to come. “Fifteen dollars, sir.”

      “Fifteen bucks! Are you kiddin’ me?”

      “It’s for five weeks, sir.”

      He cocked his huge head at me, narrowed one eye. “You sure about that?”

      “Yes, sir. It’s three dollars a week. Nobody was home for the last four weeks. See?”

      I showed him my notebook with the red check marks beside his name. That didn’t seem to appease him. He clearly didn’t trust me.

      “Wife’s been sick,” he murmured.

      “Oh. I’m sorry.”

      “Did you say fifteen?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      He dug into his pocket and pulled out a twenty. “You got change, kid?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      So much for a tip. I took the twenty and handed back a five. He took it and slammed the door without another word.

      I got out my blue pen and conscientiously made a line through the red check marks, clearing the Mahoney account. Those few moments I lingered there for that bit of bookkeeping changed my life forever.

      Because while I was doing it the door opened again, and there she stood in cut-off blue jeans and a red T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, staring out at me with the biggest, greenest eyes I’d ever seen.

      Maybe it’s not possible to love a stranger at first sight, but it is possible to be hit so hard by a girl’s beauty that you feel as if your heart might explode, and that’s pretty much what happened to me that day on the Mahoneys’ front stoop.

      “Hold on,” she said, “this is for you.”

      She held out three dollar bills, but I was so blown away by the second thing, the sound of her voice, that all I could do was stare at her. If a brook could speak, it would sound like that, soothing and cool and tranquil.

      The sight and the sound would have been enough, but then I caught a whiff of whatever perfume she was wearing. As it turned out, she wasn’t wearing perfume at all. It was the smell of the girl herself,

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