Stranger On Lesbos Read Online Free

world. Honestly I don't. I know you're doing all this for Bobby and me, but all we really need is to be the way we used to be. To share things, and go for walks together, and listen to records. To be together.
    The mature Bill, downstairs, rumpled a sheet of paper and threw it into the wastebasket. It landed with a soft plop.
    Men, Frances thought resentfully, pulling the pillow up around her ears to shut out the rustling of papers from downstairs. Never trust a man. They always let you down when you need them most.
    Like pain flowing back into an old scar, the memory of Freddie Fischer stirred in her. Freddie, the three-letter man and senior-class hero, the boy no girl ever said no to; Freddie, who sat in the back row of the senior English class not because he was shy, like her, but because he preferred not to catch the teacher's eye. Let other, less gifted men worry about Chaucer and the Lake Poets. He had glory and glamour, and he had women.
    He could have had her, any time. Homely little Frankie Kirby, with her stringy hair and faded cotton dressesand her straight A record. He had taken her home from school half a dozen times in his red convertible, letting her out at the corner so her father wouldn't know. Had kissed her casually, and let her write his term papers and book reports. Had invited her to the Homecoming Dance after his eligibility for the football team was finally secure, and had left her waiting half the night on the rickety front porch of her home, waiting for him to appear, corsage in hand. She still hoped that he had meant to go through with itthat it had been a fleeting generosity and not a crude joke.
    Because that night had cost her much. She had stolen the money for a formal, a permanent wave, high-heeled slippers and fancy earrings from her father's overall pocket while he slept, without a qualm except for the chance of his waking and catching her. Had been ready and eager to park with Freddie or go to a motel with him or, in short, do anything he wanted her to.
    Maybe, she had thoughtputting on the net dress with the sequined ruffles, teetering unsteadily on the tall heelsmaybe he'll even ask me to marry him. For it was 1941 and high school boys were marrying their classmates, marrying girls met in bars and dime stores, marrying anyone in their frenzy to experience love and leave children behind before they went off to be killed.
    She didn't know until the next day that he had patched up a fight with his real girl after the game, three hours before she changed into the net dress; that he was dancing with Patty Kelly, holding her tighter than the chaperones approved of and whispering into her ear, while she sat on the porch, until morning sun reddened the sky and she went inside and went to bed, but not to sleep. I'll never sleep again, she thought in her proud and hurt young ignorance. The sequins on her dress winked at her from the rough pine floor.
    Who cares how a miner's kid feels, a girl from Frisbie, that tangle of wooden cottages and slag heaps on the edge of town?
    The grown-up Frances turned restlessly between wrinkled sheets, dry-mouthed and tense, even now, under the memory of that rebuff.
    But Bill isn't like that. Bill's good and kind, and he loves me.
    Past tense. Used to be kind. Used to love me.
    (The small hotel room, small-town hotel at its worst, she knew now, had been blessed by his gentleness and patience. Even though he could not have known, that night of their hasty and ill-considered marriage, why she was afraid. She had started to tell him. "The night my mother died" and had faltered to a stop, with his eyes questioningly on her face.)
    Mixed with remembered shame, now, was the growing, insistent pressure of desire, a dim feeling of need at first, sharpening to a definite, insistent urge. She sat up in bed, hating herself for needing him, hating him for humiliating her this way.
    "Bill," she called.
    "What's the matter?" His voice was loud and cheerfula salesman's voice, she