People Who Knock on the Door Read Free

hands. “Move over, would you?” Gus said to a fellow on Arthur’s right. “You didn’t call me yesterday,” Gus said, sitting down.
    “I got hung up. Sorry, Gus.”
    “Still interested? Thirty bucks?”
    “Sure!”
    They agreed that Arthur would come that afternoon at 5 to Gus’s house to pick up the bike. Gus had to go directly from school to work for at least an hour at someone’s house. A repair job. Gus even did some housecleaning sometimes, Arthur knew. There were five children in Gus’s family, of whom Gus was the oldest, and those old enough had to do odd jobs to bring in some money. Arthur had a lurking admiration for that, even though it was just the thing his father would praise: old-fashioned hard work and knowing the value of a dollar. If Arthur had ever done odd jobs for neighbors, he had been allowed to pocket the money. Arthur envied Gus his height also, though otherwise Gus was plain enough: lank blond hair, an unremarkable face with a rather gentle expression, and he had to wear glasses all the time. Physically, Gus was strong, but Arthur knew that girls never looked at him twice. In that last respect, Arthur felt better off than Gus Warylsky. Impossible, really impossible, to imagine Gus with a girl!
    Arthur was at the Red Apple, called the drugstore by everyone, just after 3. Maggie had not arrived as yet, but the other old standbys were here—certain dumb fellows like Toots O’Rourke, who was a football player, and of course Roxanne, flouncing around the counter stools, showing off a pink ruffled skirt that looked appropriate for Carmen . Fellows guffawed and pawed at her, and silly Roxanne laughed as if she were listening to some joke that never stopped. Neither Arthur nor Maggie, he was sure, came often to the drugstore. The ice-cream sodas cost a dollar, a slab of apple pie eight-five cents, though it was good and homemade. The coffee was weak. The Red Apple was shaped like a round apple, painted red outside and topped with a stem, in a painful effort to be cute, which was why everyone called it the drugstore. Finally Maggie came in, carrying a book bag, wearing a denim jacket.
    “How about here,” Arthur said, indicating a corner table that he had been guarding. He took her order, a strawberry soda, and asked the counter boy to make it two, though he did not care much for strawberries. “You’re looking very pretty today,” he said to Maggie when he had sat down.
    “Thanks for your note.”
    Arthur shuffled his feet under the table. “Oh, that!—”
    Maggie looked at him as if she were pondering something, as if she might be about to tell him that she wanted to break it off.
    “Something happen?” Arthur asked. “With your parents?”
    Maggie took the straw from her lips. “Oh, no!—Why?”
    A girl’s shriek rose over the jukebox music. Arthur glanced over his shoulder. A boy was hauling Roxanne up from the floor, where she’d evidently fallen.
    “That Roxanne!” said Maggie, laughing.
    “She’s nuts.” Arthur felt a pang of shame. Several months ago, he had been quite hung up on Roxanne—for a couple of weeks. The town whore! Arthur cleared his throat and said, “Are you free Saturday night? There’s a film—maybe not so great. Or we could go to The Stomps.” That was a disco.
    “No.—Thanks, anyway, Arthur. I need some time to—by myself to—”
    Arthur took it as a rejection. “Maybe you just don’t want to see me anymore.”
    “No, I don’t mean that. It’s just that yesterday—Nothing like that ever happened before. To me.”
    How was he to take that? She was sorry? Shocked somehow? Nothing like that had happened before to him either, but he wasn’t going to say that . “So—well—doesn’t matter when I see you, but it’d be nice to know I can see you again. I mean, to go out.”
    “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you.”
    That sounded even more ominous to Arthur. “Okay.”

2
    O n Tuesday of the following week, Robbie came down with (of