Chances Read Free Page A

all, he had had the best, the crème de la crème: movie stars, showgirls, society dames. Yes, he knew a thing or two about women.
    “I… I can’t take all this bumping about,” she confessed. “I absolutely hate it.”
    “Move over here and I’ll hold your hand if it’ll make you feel any better,” he suggested.
    The woman jumped at this chance of reassuring physical contact and undid her seat belt. She hesitated for only a moment, a tentative, “Are you sure?” And without waiting for an answer she was next to him, strapped in, digging long tense fingernails into the palm of his hand.
    He didn’t mind. Hell—if it made her feel better.
    “You must think I’m awfully stupid,” she said, “but just holding on to someone makes me feel so much more relaxed.”
    “Yeh, I know what you mean.” He looked out the window at the sea of lights spread out below. New York City. What a beautiful sight. “Hey!” he exclaimed suddenly.
    “What?” asked the woman tensely.
    “Nothin’.” Gino kept his voice nonchalant. He didn’t want her any more nervous than she already was. And Christ—would she be nervous if she’d just seen what he had!
    New York had vanished before his very eyes. One moment a dazzling fairy city of lights, the next—nothing. A sea of blackness. Jeeze! He had heard of homecomings, but this was ridiculous.

Gino
    1921
    “Stop it!”
    “Why?”
    “You
know
why.”
    “Tell me again.”
    “Gino,
no.
I mean it—
no.”
    “But you like it….”
    “I don’t, I don’t. Oh, Gino! Ooooh!”
    It was always the same story.
No, Gino. Don’t do it, Gino. Don’t touch me there, Gino.
And the story always had a happy ending. As soon as he found the magic button they stopped protesting, the legs opened, and they hardly noticed when he removed his finger and replaced it with his fine upstanding Italian prick.
    Gino the Ram was his nickname—and it was true that he had screwed more ass than any other boy on his block. Not bad for a fifteen-year-old.
    Gino Santangelo. A likable boy. A fast-talking boy now rooming with his twelfth foster family and looking to get out. He had arrived in New York at the age of three, in 1909. His parents, a young Italian couple, had heard reports of the fortunes to be made in America and decided to try their luck. His mother, Mira, a pretty eighteen-year-old. His father, Paolo, barely twenty but ready with innocent enthusiasm for all that America had to offer.
    Work was hard to find. Mira got a job in a garment factory. Paolo did whatever came his way—which wasn’t always legal.
    Gino gave no trouble to the various women who looked after him while his parents worked. Every evening at five thirty his mother would collect him. It was the moment he looked forward to all day.
    When he was five years old she failed to arrive. The woman who was caring for him got annoyed when nobody came. “Where’s ya momma? Eh? Eh?” She kept on screaming at him.
    As if he would know. He held his tears in check and waited patiently.
    At seven o’clock his father turned up. A worried, pinched-looking man, his face white and older than his years.
    The babysitter was enraged by this time. “You pay extra, you hear me? Five thirty I want the kids out of here.
No later.”
    There followed a short sharp argument between his father and the woman. Insults were exchanged, then money. Even at five Gino had observed that his father was not one of life’s winners.
    “Where is momma?” Gino asked.
    “I don’t know,” Paolo muttered, swinging his son onto his shoulders and hurrying to the one room they called home, where he fed him and put him to bed.
    The dark was not comforting. Gino wanted his mother desperately, but he knew he must not cry. If he didn’t cry she would be back before morning. If he did…
    Mira never returned. A manager at the factory where she worked disappeared also, an older man with three children—all girls. When Gino was of an age he sought those girls out,