Bitter Bronx Read Online Free Page A

smear, when she was the Scarlett O’Hara of her elocution class. He offered her the white rose.
    â€œCarlton,” she said, never even bothering to shake his hand, “that’s rather daring of you.” Her voice had the same old fiddler’s ring. That sound fired up his loins. He was her prisoner after a single sentence.
    â€œHoney,” Mr. Hugo said. “Don’t talk in riddles. You’ll scare Howell away.”
    â€œBut it’s not a riddle, Papa,” she said, thrusting the rose into her hair, with its thorns. “The white rose is the symbol of love as everlasting war.”
    Smilin’ Jack scratched his mustache and stared at his daughter. “That sounds a little like real estate . . . and we have nothing to sell Howell.”
    â€œWe have plenty to sell, Papa,” she said, while the old man used his corkscrew as some kind of tourniquet to suck that cork right out of the bottle of Bordeaux.
    â€œAnd what are we selling tonight?”
    â€œMe,” the little duchess said.
    The old man sat down and started to pour the wine.
    â€œPapa, you’ll cause a scandal. You have to let that bottle breathe.”
    She lurched in her wheelchair and took the bottle out of her father’s hand.
    â€œSit,” she said to Howell. “And take off that tie. I can’t really bargain while my suitor’s wearing such an elegant rag.”
    Howell laughed deep within his throat and shucked off his paisley tie. A few more minutes of her patter and he would have given all his bank accounts away.
    She was the one who served the salad, who raced into the kitchen and raced back in her wheelchair. The old man never moved from the table. Naomi poured the wine after twirling the cork once or twice.
    â€œPapa,” she said, wiping some salad oil from her mouth. “You shouldn’t have broken our courtship.”
    â€œI didn’t,” he groaned.
    â€œI might have married Carl.”
    â€œYou were thirteen—a child. Isn’t that right, Howell?”
    â€œFifteen,” she said. “With Bronx millionaires breathing down my back. I wanted Carlton.”
    â€œBut he was the super’s boy. He couldn’t even play the fiddle.”
    â€œHe would have fiddled with me.”
    She served the baked potatoes and the salmon steaks in their tinfoil. She refilled her father’s glass.
    â€œIf you had really loved me, you would have taken Carl in as a junior partner.”
    â€œPeople would have laughed at me . . . a cellar rat selling real estate.”
    She swiped her father’s cheek, softly, with her silk napkin, but it was the same as a slap.
    â€œYou were jealous of him,” she said. Then she turned on Howell. “Look at you. You never even crawled out from under my father’s shadow. A pair of Smilin’ Jacks.”
    Howell was in misery. She’d robbed him of whatever little thunder he had left.
    â€œWell,” she said, “you brought the white rose. What does it mean?”
    â€œLove as everlasting war.”
    â€œDidn’t I tell you?” she said, rocking in her aluminum throne.
    â€œMiss Naomi, I never loved another living soul.”
    â€œAnd how long have I been waiting, huh, Carl?”
    â€œAs long as it took me to crisscross the country a dozen times, romancing widows and a couple of old maids who couldn’t even hold a candle to you, swindling them out of a little of their life savings . . .”
    â€œWell, I’m the oldest maid you’ve ever met. Why haven’t you swindled me?”
    Suddenly Howell was getting into the hang of talking to this hellion in a wheelchair. All her elocution lessons were just a mask. She was a chiseler from the day she was born.
    â€œI think I’m the one who was swindled, miss. . . . You knew all along the hold you had on me.”
    â€œAnd what if I did?”
    â€œYou sent me howling into the wind. I’m lucky to be all in one