Free A Man for the Summer by Ruby Laska Page A

little too familiar.
    “Who are you?”
    Griff forced himself to frown, and looked into all the expectant, wide eyes. The gazed back steadily, curious. With a start Griff realized that none of them were afraid of him, and had to remind himself that most kids didn’t get in trouble every time they went out to play, as he had.
    “I’m a customer,” he said. “A paying customer of this hotel, who’s trying to get a little rest. And do you know why I’m not getting any rest?”
    The kids shook their heads.
    Griff pointed to them with exaggerated menace. “Because you all are creating an ungodly racket.”
    “My uncle owns this motel,” one of the boys said, a hint of defiance in his young voice.
    “What are you doing sleeping in the middle of the day anyway?” another demanded.
    “None of your business,” Griff growled, and gave the door a harder than necessary shove to close it.
    He’d been rude, he knew, and the kids would probably rat him out to the owner of the motel, but he couldn’t help it. He had to get some rest or he was going to lose his mind. How the hell did parents ever get any sleep, anyway?
    None of his friends in the city had kids. Oh sure, sometimes a couple of them would get married, move to the suburbs, and then there’d be an announcement in the mail a little while later. Griff was pretty sure they all re-used the same photo of a red-faced, wrinkled newborn. After that he didn’t hear from the friends much.
    His own parents had somehow skipped the part about moving to suburbia. Maybe things would have been better if they had. But his father liked being so close to his law office, so he could spend most of his time there, and his mother loved their ritzy address in the middle of the Chicago social whirl. She fielded visits from her rich friend. She shopped and hired decorators and threw parties, and it was Ruby who fixed his sandwiches and Ruby who kept his baby teeth in an old baby food jar.
    Outside he heard an adult voice, low, chastising, and then he heard the distinct sounds of the troops packing up and leaving, the plywood being dragged away, a few desultory shouts of goodbyes.
    Well. Maybe he’d been a jerk, but at least now he had silence. Blessed silence.
    This time when Griff went back to bed, he fell asleep right away. But his dreams were filled with red-headed kids riding bicycles through the streets of Chicago.
     
     
    Junior was stacking coffee cups in the sink when she heard the front door creak, and then thunderous footsteps in the front hall. She smiled to herself, despite the gloom that had settled on her after Griff left.
    “Aunt Junior!”
    Two boys skidded to a stop in the kitchen.
    “Hi, Joe. Hi, Trevor.”
    She automatically reached to run her fingers through her nephew Joey’s shock of red hair, but he ducked and held up a hand, grimacing at her.
    “Oops, sorry,” she said. Nine was a sensitive age. If Trevor wasn’t there, she probably could have gotten a hug out of him. Oh well, she’d wait.
    “What have you all been up to?” she asked, as Joe went to her pantry and started poking around. Trevor flopped his lanky body into one of her chairs and leaned back in a position that looked terribly uncomfortable, but didn’t seem to bother him a bit.
    “Well, we were just messing around down at the Sunrise Motel,” Trevor said. “Then Mr. Costello came out and yelled at us.”
    “He wasn’t the only one,” Joe added, coming out of the pantry with a package of cookies and a box of kids’ cereal. He helped himself to a couple of bowls, while Junior got out the milk and spoons.
    “Hey, get me a bowl too,” she said.
    She kept the rainbow-hued cereal around for the kids, but once in a while it tasted pretty darn good. Today was a day, she decided, when she deserved a few treats.
    “There was this guy?” Joe continued. In the way of kids his age, many of his statements came out like questions. “At the hotel? Well, he came out of there hollerin’ at us to