Read Online This Old Man by Lois Ruby - Free Book Online Page A

glimpse of Jo running around in her baby-doll P.J.’s. It was a night, all right.”
    â€œSomebody must have wound you up all of a sudden.” Mr. Saxe smiled. His smile was so warm and yet so temporary. In five minutes he would have forgotten me and gotten lost in some other kid’s crazy, complicated life.
    With Old Man, nothing changed, not for centuries.

7
    By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I’d worked myself up into quite a frenzy over this date with Mr. Saxe. I’d folded and refolded the slip of paper with the address on Sutter Street, for proof that I was actually meeting him After Hours. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. He must have had a legitimate reason to leave his office on county time and meet me on Sutter Street for—for what?
    â€œWhat’s that? ” Jo asked, as I came down the stairs at my usual elephant’s clip.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWhat you’re wearing.”
    I was well aware of what I was wearing. It was a wraparound denim skirt that tied in a prim bow at the waist, and a red-and-green plaid western shirt Pammy had outgrown. I was even wearing pantyhose (a pair Darlene had left in the hamper), and Sylvia’s low-heeled brown sandals. I thought I looked rather, as they say, put together.
    â€œMy God, witness this. Greta Janssen is wearing one of those things where both legs come out of the same hole.”
    â€œIt’s called a skirt,” I said coldly. Jo was wearing a long Styx T-shirt and some navy shorts. The five guys from the group were evenly distributed across her chest and were jumping around a lot while she laughed at my outfit.
    â€œWhere’re you going, got up like that?”
    â€œOut.”
    â€œOh.” She nodded. “That explains it.” Jo pulled her arms in through the sleeves of her T-shirt and crossed them behind the rock group. The guys stretched across her, from elbow to elbow, while she looked like a war casualty. “Have fun,” she sang. One elbow waved lewdly. “You know, your legs aren’t really too ugly. A shave would help.”
    Well, I never needed to shave them, under the overalls. Suddenly I was aware of prickly hairs poking through the nylon fibers. I wished I’d worn knee socks.
    â€œEh, who cares? It makes you look earthy,” Jo said, with a shrug that sent either Chuck Panozzo or his brother John flying over her shoulder.
    I waited for the bus at the corner. Wraparound skirts blow in the wind, I discovered, and the wind funnels up the skirt, too. How could girls stand wearing such things to school?
    The bus left me off right in front of the Wainwright Building. I stood there waiting for Mr. Saxe and pinching my skirt around me like an old movie spinster. I spotted Mr. Saxe before he saw me, or before he recognized me dressed in such an undignified way. As for him, he was in a light blue three-piece suit. His thick heels tapped the street. He seemed almost jaunty, like a man openly cheating on his wife in midtown, midafternoon San Francisco.
    My heart began to race as he drew closer. Why were we meeting this way? What did he have in mind? Then I felt a chill run through me. He knew about my mother. Did he think it ran in the family? He carried a scratched-up briefcase. A man did not go out for monkey business with a zippered briefcase, did he? I searched my memory for anyone ever coming to my mother with a briefcase. There was no one that I could remember. But Mr. Saxe’s face showed flashes of monkey business, all right. I lifted my fingers for a tiny wave; they seemed so heavy, all of a sudden. As soon as I caught his eye, the carefree expression slid away from his face like a fan.
    â€œOh, hello there, Greta. You’re right on time.” He checked his watch against a clock tower across the street, and I knew with a noxious mixture of relief and disappointment that it was to be Business as Usual.
    We rode up to the fifth floor