Bad Love

MIDSUMMER. A WARM AND HUMID NIGHT ON CONEY ISLAND. A man of medium build, with plumpish face and soft effeminate features, strolls aimlessly along the boardwalk. It’s late, nearly midnight, but the boardwalk is still crowded. His eyes can scan the sea of faces, darting here and there, searching hungrily. Suddenly they light on an approaching figure and pause. The man gives a little inaudible gasp of pleasure.The boy wears a blue polo shirt and a pair of gray cotton trousers. He is eighteen, at most nineteen, but his ease of carriage, his dignity, and the cynical curve of his lips, seems to belie his youth. Unless you look close, he might pass for twenty-five. He is tall, broad-shouldered, sturdily built. His mouth is rather large and sensuous, his eyes are alert, and clear and penetrating. He does not search, but he misses nothing. He is dark complexioned, and his skin is tan.He walks

THE PHONE RANG AT SIX-THIRTY SHARP. Helen, standing at the far side of the room, stared at it and shuddered. She knew it was Henry Kohl ringing her, for he always rang at precisely this time of the night… just fifteen minutes after she returned from the office. She started across the room. She must reply, though she dreaded hearing the sound of his voice just now. The dry, monotonous voice, chiding, reprimanding, scolding… trying to make her see the light. It would probably be true, all that he would say, but that would make it no easier to take. She lifted the phone.He began to scold at once. Why had it taken her so long to answer? Did she suppose he had nothing else to do than stand in a phone booth and listen to the ringing of a phone? He was a busy man, she knew that. An instant of silence; then, accusingly: “You were out with the boy last night, weren’t you?”“Yes,” she admitted in a h

LATE OF A CHILLY AFTERNOON IN OCTOBER. Rudy sat on the rail of the porch, watched Joe carry his suitcase down and toss it into the back of the red convertible. Joe was leaving, and he regretted seeing him go. It wasn’t every day you found a friend like him… a guy who loved to swim as much as you yourself did and wasn’t afraid to go out, all the way out. He was mysterious, this guy Joe… hard to figure out. You couldn’t tell when he would laugh or get sore; and when he did laugh it was nearly always at someone’s expense, often yours. There was something not quite right about him.He was pushing towards something… but what, Rudy could not have said. He wondered if Joe himself could.Joe returned to the porch and they shook hands. “Well, Rudy, so long.”“You’re off to Florida? I’m sorry to see you go.”They lit cigarettes and sa

WHEN JOE ARRIVED IN MIAMI BEACH he did not go looking for the hard-eyed girl named Frances who had danced for him that pre-dawn morning. In fact she had slipped from his thoughts as soon as he parted from her, by the time he got to Miami Beach he had completely forgotten her.He fell in love with the town at first sight. He liked the semi-tropical weather, but he had expected this. It was the excitement that got him, the chrome and the glitter. Stream-lined cars and pink hotels; flashy men, tan and handsome, strolling arm in arm with gaudy, smiling women who wore pedal pushers by day and gaudy, backless, low-cut gowns by night, carried metallic purses and tripped about on glided shoes. And the palm trees on’ the streets, the crowds, the taxicabs, the elaborate storefronts, the showy nightclubs, the quaint bars and cafes which sent the muted sound of laughter and the faint strains of jazz out into the balmy summer atmos

HELEN HEARD THE CAR PULL UP IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE, but thought nothing of it. The time was three-fifteen, too early to be expecting Joe. Besides, he always came on foot and she heard his footsteps from afar.Then suddenly she heard his voice, muffled but unmistakably angry. He was talking to someone… it seemed… a woman. A woman whose voice rose and fell bitterly. They were arguing, Joe and a woman!Dread gripped Helen’s soul, but she took hold of herself, steeled herself for what must come. It had happened: the other woman had come into the picture. She had been hoping, offering up silent prayers, that the Fates would delay this moment; but deep in her heart she had all along known that sooner or later it must come. She had vowed to fact it calmly, to hold on, to fight with every fiber of her physical, every wile of her mental being; and if at last she must give him up, why then she would see! She could no longer conceive o