Free A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) by Harold Robbins Page A

something about some dames in slacks!”
    “Who looked at the slacks?” I asked carelessly. “I’m strictly a blouse man myself.” I started to lock up the concession while they were still laughing. These waiters and bus-boys never spent a dime. They were up here for the few bucks and the tail. They weren’t even good at their work, but the hotel didn’t care. All they wanted them for was to keep the guests happy, and the guests were mostly dames, so everybody was happy with the arrangement.
    The boys drifted out on the porch and I watched them go. Most of them were older than me, but I thought of them as kids. I felt old. Maybe it was my size—I was five eleven—or maybe it was just because I was a veteran of three summers. I picked up the daily receipts reportand began to make it out. Sam liked to have his reports in order.
    I remembered my first summer up here. I was real green then. That was right after my Bar Mitzvah. I was just a punk kid sucking after Gottkin, hoping it would get me into the football team in the fall. But Gottkin never came back to school. The first night up here he cleaned out the concessionaire in a crap game. The next day he was in business. Before the first week had passed, he knew he wasn’t going back. “This is for me,” I remembered him saying. “Let some other shmoe wet-nurse a bunch of kids.”
    I helped him instead of working for the hotel, and he did all right. Hit the Miami Beach route in the winter, and the next summer he took over the concession at the next hotel along the road as well as this one. This summer he had five working. A couple of boys in each place and all he did was come around once a day and pick up the dough. No more Ford for him; he drove a Pierce roadster with the top down now.
    But that first summer had been rough. I guess the green stuck out of my ears. I was the butt of every joke the boys could think of, and all the girls teased hell out of me. Sam finally had to tell them to lay off. He was afraid I would lose my temper and belt one of them.
    I didn’t want to go back the next summer, but when Sam came over to the house and told me that he had picked up the second spot and I would run this one, I had gone with him. We needed the money. Papa’s business was really up the creek. I picked up five hundred dollars for my end of the summer.
    I remember Mamma’s face when I put the dough on the kitchen table and told her to keep it. There were tears in her eyes; she turned to Papa, trying to hide them from me. Her lips were quivering, but I could hear what she said: “My Blondie.” That’s all.
    Papa came close to tears himself. Each day in the store had become more frustrating than the one before. The money would go a long way. But his lips had tightened with stubborn pride. “Put it in the bank, Danny,” he had said. “You’ll need the money to go to college.”
    I had smiled. He wasn’t kidding me, I knew better. “We can use the dough now,” I had said with undeniable logic. “I got two more years before college stares me in the face. We can worry about it then.”
    Papa had looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. Then he reached out a trembling hand and picked up the money. “All right, Danny,” he had said, “but we’ll remember it. When things get better, you’ll get it back.”
    But even as he spoke we all knew the money was gone. Business wasn’t getting any better, it was getting worse. It went the same way everything else did, down the drain.
    But that was last summer and I had already kissed the dough goodbye. This summer Sam had promised me an extra hundred if I beat last year’s take. I finished the report and summed up the season’s business thus far. All I needed was a break during these last few weeks of the season and I was set. I looked at my watch. There was just time enough for me to grab a swim before lunch.
    I finished locking up the concession and went out on the porch. The new broad and the boy with