Cloud Nine Read Free Page B

I won’t want to keep it myself. Then I’ll take it from there. It won’t be easy, and I don’t care for the honor of being one of those girls who had to skip a year at school. But—”
    “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Has it occurred to you that what Burl is supposed to say is that he’ll pay for the Crittenton Home?”
    “Yes, Mr. Kirby, it has.”
    “Then suppose I offered to pay?”
    “Oh, Mr. Kirby, would you?”
    “Do you know how much it is?”
    “Yes sir, all the girls know. Eleven eleven.”
    “Eleven—?”
    “Eleven hundred and eleven dollars. What they do with the odd amount I never found out, buy the baby a rattle, perhaps.”
    I probably gulped, as it was more than I expected. But I made myself sound cheerful as I yelped: “Fine! Now why don’t I call your father, and go over to see him at once.”
    “Oh, you’re sweet!”
    She came over and kissed me, a strange, virginal, young girl’s kiss that didn’t square at all with what we’d been talking about, the condition she was in. I asked for her father’s number, and when I called him and said who I was, he was most agreeable, saying: “Oh yes, Mr. Kirby—how are you?” quite as though he knew me, which it turned out later he did. He said he’d look forward to seeing me and gave me the address, which was in University Park, a few blocks away. She was standing by the phone, and her eyes shone when I hung up. I said I was on my way, and that she should stay in the house, “without answering the door or the phone, as I’m known far and wide as a bachelor, and I don’t want you to explain.” I said I had a luncheon engagement I couldn’t break, “but you’re my first order of business, and I’ll get back as soon as I can, I hope with some really good news.”
    “All right. I’ll stay put until you come.”
    “Raid the icebox when you get hungry, please.”
    “It’s the best thing I do, eat.”
    And then, grabbing my arm as I turned to go, and spinning me around: “Mr. Kirby, why don’t I say it? We’ve met before. Don’t you remember me?”
    “Sonya, I’ve been having a feeling—”
    “At Northwestern High, at Christmastime, when you addressed the school assembly, and said how wonderful it would be if the whole year could be filled with the Christmas spirit. And I fell for you. I really fell for you. And—”
    “You played the march? The Wooden Soldiers?”
    “And then sat down with you—”
    “And asked me to sign your program. And—!”
    She laughed, and I knew she knew what I suddenly remembered. Her dress had slipped up, while she was sitting beside me, to show those beautiful legs, the same ones I was looking at now. She kissed me again, this time not so virginal. I got out of there, but fast.

Chapter 3
    T HE LANGS LIVED ON Van Buren, in a frame house with shaded trees around it, and I had supposed them strangers to me. But it turned out I knew them both. He was a teller in the Farmers’ Trust, and had cashed my checks often, while she worked in a store at the Plaza, and had sold me my upstairs furniture. A plump, middle-aged woman, she let me in, and recalled herself to me. Then she took me into the living room, an airy place with slipcovers on the furniture, where he was waiting. He was a slim, tallish man, with a face not even a mother could be sure of, and one of those quiet, ‘Will-you-have-it-in-tens’ voices, like every voice in a bank. However, I placed him at once, and said: “Oh yes, Mr. Lang—we meet again!” She pushed up a chair, he waved me to it, and we all three sat down. And at once a pause ensued, or whatever a pause does—or at least for a long moment, you could hear the clock on the mantelpiece. Then, pretty nervous, I got at it. I said I’d been talking to Sonya, and he said yes, he thought she’d be calling me up. I said I’d come to see if there wasn’t some way of “straightening this thing out.” He said: “Well that would be up to your brother—actually it was