Read Online Spare Change by Bette Lee Crosby - Free Book Online Page A

with us.” 
    Susanna laughed a nervous little twitter that sounded somewhat like a
gasp, “Of course I do,” she said, “a joint account, with my husband Benjamin.”
    “Oh, Benjamin Doyle’s account!”
    Susanna breathed a sigh of relief.
    “He closed that out, a week ago last Tuesday.”
    “Impossible.”
    “I waited on him myself. Mister Doyle withdrew the money and said he
didn’t see any reason for holding onto an empty account, so I closed it,” she
pushed a small card beneath the bars of the teller window. “See, right there, that’s
his signature.” The face of the card was stamped with bold black letters that
read—account closed.
    “But…”  Susanna’s eyes welled with tears.
    “He took the money in cash,” Bernice called out as Susanna fled through
the door.
    For a long while Susanna sat in the car and cried. After all those
nights of working, every cent of her tip money was gone. There would be no New
York. No New York, no singing career. For the rest of her life there would be
nothing but soy beans and the dry dust of summer. She could picture her heart
being torn from its rightful place and shoved into a graveyard of dreams; a
place where singers were impaled on the shards of broken records and the only
sound to be heard was that of sobbing. It was one thing for Benjamin to grab
hold of her breast and pinch until a purple spot in the shape of his thumb
appeared, but it was quite another to rip away the flesh of her hopes, piece by
painful piece. After almost two hours Susanna dried her eyes and drove to the
diner.
    As soon he caught sight of her face, Scooter said, “What’s
wrong?”      
    By that time, her eyes had puffed to the shape and color of an overripe
tomato. “Did you mean what you said?” she asked, “…about us running off
together?” Without waiting to hear his answer, she hurled herself up against
his body and stretched her arms around his waist for as far as they could
reach.
    “Course I did, Sugar,” Scooter answered. “There ain’t nothing I
wouldn’t do for you, I done told you that.”
    “What if I was to ask you to take me to New York City?” Susanna pushed
her mouth into the folds of his neck and suckled them. “Would you do that?” she
asked in a breathy whisper.
    “I suppose,” he answered a bit hesitantly. “You mean for a vacation?”
    “Un-uh,” She slid her hand along the mound of his stomach and reached
for the bulge in his crotch. “I’m talking about forever,” she sighed, “You and
me, pleasuring each other, night after night after night.”
    Scooter, a man who fought hand-to-hand combat in the war and came away
unscathed, was no match for Susanna. Once she ran her tongue along the edge of
his ear, he forgot he had a wife at home; he no longer cared about the
customers who would line up at the diner door looking for their morning coffee,
and he never gave Benjamin a thought. Susanna could do that to a man. “When?”
he asked. 
    “Tomorrow morning,” she answered, edging her hand toward his crotch.
“I’ll come to work tonight, like nothing’s wrong, then tomorrow morning we’ll
drive over to Norfolk and catch the ten-thirty train. Ethan Allen can meet us
here.”
    “The boy? He’s coming?”
    “Well sure. You can’t expect me to leave him on the farm with
Benjamin.”   
    For a fleeting moment, Scooter remembered his own son who would indeed
be left behind, but when Susanna pushed her tongue inside his mouth, the
thought was quickly forgotten.

Benjamin Doyle
    I suppose I always
knew a woman like Susanna could be trouble, but there wasn’t a damn thing I
could do to hold back from falling for her. 
    She’s a woman who drives a man crazy with that body of
hers; and she can please you in ways other women ain’t even dreamt of. The
first time I laid with Susanna, I knew right then, I’d be craving her till the
day I died. Maybe I should’ve realized such a woman wouldn’t ever settle down,
but I figured once