Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 07:40:46 PDT
From: Graham Day <g_day@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Balcony

The Balcony
Graham Day
Story Code/s: T/b (youngfriends/intergen)
Publication History: First Appeared in: The Twelfth Acolyte Reader 
Published By: Acolyte Press Publication Date: June 1996
Publisher Contact: Not Available

Comments/suggestions to: g_day@hotmail.com 

NOTES & WARNINGS: 

1.  This story may contain descriptions of sexual acts between boys and/or
men and boys. If this is not to your tastes, please leave now. If you are
under 18, or if it is illegal in your state or country to read or possess
material like this then it is in your own interest's to leave now.

2.  This story has been posted in order to keep alive the work of Frank
Torey of the Acolyte Press who died in June 1996. This story is dedicated
to Frank who took the time and trouble to help a beginner with his first
stories but died before all but the first one could be printed.

3.  The story is copyrighted by the author. A single copy has been placed
in the Nifty archives for your enjoyment. Please do not distribute it to
any news groups and/or other web-sites without permission of the author.
You may, however, send it to your friends as long as payment is neither
requested or received.

4.  This story is fiction. Any resemblance to any individual, real or
fictional, living or dead is purely coincidental.

5.  Finally this story is drawn from the early chapters of a complete
novel. If there is sufficient interest I will post the rest of it you can
e-mail your constructive comments to me at g_day@hotmail.com

The Balcony
by Graham Day

I was eleven when I found out that Captain Clay wasn't my real father. It
was like this: I remember following a ragweed, blown in off the Texas
plains. It goes tumbling down dusty, deserted, Main Street - me running
after it - past the small granite courthouse and it stopping before a
posterboard announcing that The Kid From Texas is playing in double feature
with an old '34 Tarzan picture. The sand stings the backs of my legs, naked
below where my khaki shorts leave off.  I go in to get out of the November
cold. I normally make enough nickels and dimes, to pay for the pictures
once a week by clearing tables at the Captain's Saloon, while Ma sings sad
songs for the morbid customers.  The picture show provides the only real
entertainment alternative in Shady Grove to the Captain's Saloon at the
other end of town. That is if you don't count the Methodist and Baptist
churches, that square off against each other across Grove Street.  Well,
that and small-town gossip.

It is Thursday. On Fridays one set of lame, old films replace another- so
the Roxy is real quiet. Shady Grove is generally so quiet that a gathering
of four boys on a street corner makes a pretty lively assembly. Folks would
say: "Apache-Springs is 150 miles from us and there ain't nothin' nearer."

I sit alone in the front row. In the 'fifties and 'sixties, in our town,
there is an accepted social code to where you sit at a picture. The necking
couples kiss and cuddle in the back rows, kids like me sit in the front and
families and the rest in the middle. Then, there was the balcony.
Delinquent looking boys with ducktails would look belligerently at anyone
coming up there without their blessing. The farther back you sit, the
tougher you have to be.

I'm kinda bored with the old Audie Murphy Western and I need to take a
leak, so I made my way up the darkened aisle. Stavros, the owner, is
changing the glossy black and white publicity pictures for the following
day's program. He calls it his Galaxy Of Stars. He has cut five pointed
stars out of colored pasteboard, coated them with glue that made the points
twist and curl, then covered the treacle-glue with sparkling
glitter-dust. I remember spending hours in front of his Galaxy, coveting
one of those stars. If I stare at them real hard, I'd see my sandy-brown
burr- hair and freckled nose. Those stars and the Hollywood variety in the
black-an'-white glossies, together seemed to represent a whole new world of
excitement and opportunity beyond the sand-blasted buildings of Shady
Grove.

"H'lo Clay junior," he smiles, gap-toothed.  "How's business at the
cat-house?"

"Aw, okay, Mr. Stavros..." The Sheriff tolerates the goings-on back home as
long as the Captain and the girls keep it discrete. When Belle, his best
girl, proposed renaming the place "The Lonesome Pussy" and putting up a
pink neon sign to drum up business, this had promptly been dropped to the
joy of the Sheriff and both the town's Reverends who heaved a collective
sigh of relief.  No one wanted to cross the Captain.  He'd been a
professional wrestler before settling in Shady Grove and buying up the
saloon.  At fifty-eight, he was still in formidable shape. Apart from that,
he was the meanest manipulator I have ever seen operate.

"There he is again" says Stavros, nodding his head towards the twin front
doors where Jimmy-Bob Weaner, the 14-year-old preacher's son, stands, nose
pressed against the glass peering into the portals of iniquitous
temptation.

"Aw what's he doin' here?" I ask.  "He should be home reading his bible or
playin' with his dick." Poor Jimmy-Bob Weaner read the Old Testament to get
his mind off his member and played with his cock to get his mind off God's
wrath.

"I reckon that stupid-ass kid would take his chances in hell just to be in
here just once." Stavros laughs and tells me how he'd caught Jimmy-Bob
riffling the trash cans for photographs of Ester Williams.  Among his other
prohibitions Jimmy-Bob Weaner is not allowed to speak to me. Come to think
of it, a lot of the kids have been told the same thing, yet their
disapproving dads all enjoy the Captains hospitality from time to
time. Stavros chuckles as he pins up the last picture.

"You're a good kid, Clay junior." He hitches his pants up over his big
belly and returns to his usual place behind the popcorn machine, which he
nurses like a temperamental mistress.

I make my way across the foyer and round the corner to the boys' rest
room. Billy Kane one foot hitched up against the red velvet wall behind
him, his palm on the opposite wall, is barring the doorway.

"Howdy, Clay junior."  He raises his head slightly, showing me his blue
eyes.  At eighteen, Billy is already a local legend.  He was the first kid
in town to wear skintight faded jeans and a leather jacket. He's always in
this plain white T-shirt that shows his ample shoulders and V-shaped
torso. Billy Kane just exudes sex, as a skunk secretes a bad smell. The
young boys idolize him and there's not a girl in town who hasn't eaten her
heart out or wet her panties for Billy. Word has it that a year ago
Charlene Jones even cut her wrists and bled all over the Jukebox in the
Springs Soda Fountain, when he dropped her. Tales of Billy and his
brother's battles with broken bottles and stiletto blades at the Apache
Springs Drive-in are legion. The two boys are down at the County-Sheriff's
Office almost as often as they're over at the Captain's, and that's often,
too.

"Howdy, Billy."

"You here by yourself, Clay junior?" He combs back his thick brown wavy
hair and smoothes it into a luxuriant duck-tail at the nape of his muscular
neck.

"Oh sure."

"An' where you off to kid?" He shoves the black comb back into his hip
pocket.

"To the john, I gotta take a leak."

"Well goddamit if it ain't busy in there just now."

"Busy? How busy? There ain't practically no-one here today?"

"Well, piss-ant it's busy, so drop it." Those dark blue eyes of his are on
the offensive.

When you are eleven it's not easy to stand up to a beefy 18-year-old
tough. He vaguely resembles this new actor, James Dean, that I've seen in
the girl's movie magazines, but he looks less vulnerable. Now his face
softens and he gives me this square-jawed smile.

"Tell you what, why don't we find Stavros an' drink us a little cherry
cola?"  Billy was one of the Captain's Favorites. Favorites get to wrestle
with the Captain in his back room where he keeps in shape, and if they win
it earns them certain privileges like a drink or a girl when they got no
money.  Billy mostly has no money.

"You ain't never bought me a drink before, Billy." Maybe he's paying me
back for all the times the Captain let him win. He guides me, one big hand
on my shoulder, round the corner to Stavros at the counter and orders me a
cherry-cola. Stavros raises a quizzical eyebrow at Billy.

"Yer playin' with fire, boy!" Stavros says to Billy in his funny
Greek-Texan accent.  I'm impressed. I wonder when my generous friend plays
with fire. I looked up into his startlingly blue eyes. Just then the
Pontiac salesman, who is always goofing-off work, makes his way over to the
can.  Billy does something real odd- he rushes over and kicks twice on the
men's rest room door, before the fella can reach it.

"I guess you're tellin' them all to make room in there," I say.

"Enjoying your drink?" He gives me his thick-lipped smile. Billy's older
brother, Hank, rounds the corner from the men's rest room, closely followed
by a man I recognize as the bank manager.

I greet him politely - "H'llo Mr. Jeffrey." - but he looks scared and
rushes out the front doors. Stavros laughs and says something about that
being worth an extension on his overdraft.

"Clay junior," Hank greets me. He is still buttoning up his Levi's and
tucking in his plaid shirt. I figure it's really busy in the john if poor
Hank has to fix himself up out here.

"I had to buy Clay here a cherry-cola."

Hank is a scrawny version of Billy with a bad case of acne that spreads
down under his collar.  He nods slowly and peels off a dollar bill from a
small bundle in his shirt pocket and hands this to his brother. I've never
seen the Kane brothers with money and certainly never seen them sharing
anything except for that time they were fighting over Viola-May, our five
dollar whore. Belle said at the time, "There ain't no reason that fucker
need ever pay for it. Love - it's all a game to Billy Kane. He does it
'cause it's there."

" Where you sittin' Clay junior?" Billy is giving me unheard of attention.

"Front row, as always." I give him my best tough-to-be-a-kid sigh.

"Kids stuff! I was just fixing to go back in, you wanna sit with the big
guys?" I blush - the balcony! I nod my eager agreement, not trusting the
words to my mouth. Hank takes up Billy's old place at the rest room door
but he lounges casually, like he's waiting for a friend. He starts
whistling "Your Cheatin' Heart" and Billy land him one hell of a thump on
the arm. These are two real peculiar brothers.

Billy hustles me ahead of him, up the stairwell's carpet that's sure seen
better days. Behind the curtains, in the blackness of the picture show
balcony, I stop to let my eyes adjust to the dark. What's showing is the
end credits of the western. I spot a young curly-headed Mexican kid, about
thirteen, and he's flashing me a big white-toothed smile. He yanks a
five-inch prick out and waves it at me in a friendly way.

"Fifty cents?" He asks with a smile.  Why would he want to give me fifty
cents? My heart beats hard. Then he notices Billy with me: "Aw, sorry
Billy, me amigo!" The kid sheepishly re-covers his pecker.  Billy places
his large hand on my shoulder and we climbed the stairs right to the back.

"Can you believe that? Mixicans! I reckon Stavros would let niggers in here
if we had any here abouts." Billy sure ain't no liberal. He stops me in the
very back row.  I suppose you'd have to kill someone to get a seat this far
back. We try to squeeze by a fattish man who is sitting next to Jordan
Mosey, another one of the Captain's favorites. The fat man seems to be
wrapping up a parcel on Jordan's lap.

"Done caught yourself a chicken, Billy?"

"Shut it, Jordan, or your trashy john here can take it home with him in his
pocket and you'll be outta business.  You like to have his pecker mounted
above the mantle?"

This makes both Jordan and the fat man real obliging and they stand
politely for us. Jordan pats my butt as I pass him.  The balcony is turning
out to be much friendlier than I imagined.

Billy pushes me right to the end of the back row against the side wall and
there we are very much alone.  This is living!  The Western has finished.
Now we watch Johnny Weismuller, Tarzan, King of the Apes. Billy slowly
stretches both his arm along the top of the seats on either side of him,
including mine. He takes his bubblegum out of his mouth, like there is
something real important he has to say.  He presses the wet gum on the back
of the seat in front of him.

"You think he has a good body?" Billy asks. His arm sags around my
shoulder, like I was his kid brother... or his girl. I am having difficulty
hearing him over my excited heartbeat.

"Oh Yeah."  My bladder reminds me that I never did make it to the men's
room.

"Reckon he's got him a big pecker under that there loincloth?"

The cherry-cola didn't help much either.

"Yeah I reckon it's pretty big."  I laugh nervously. The excitement and the
cherry-cola are definitely swelling my immature bladder to the bursting
point.

"Yep." He stretches his legs. Our knees touch. I squirm back in my seat to
give him more legroom, but it seems the more space I give him the more he
needs.

"Sit still, will yeah?" He seems restless. His big hand holds my knee
still, and, pressed so firmly against him, I can feel the taught muscles
through the denim.

"You done seen a grown man's pecker?"

"No," I lie. I mean, this is a pretty piss-ignorant question - I live in a
goddamn brothel, after all.  I suppose Billy Kane would also ask Dwane, the
butcher's son, if he'd ever seen a side of beef!

Back on the screen Tarzan seems to be deciding what to do. He strikes a
muscular pose on a rock then raises his fist to his forehead - it's all
pretty dumb stuff but, maybe, if I concentrated on the movie for a spell,
my piss will subside.

"You ever wanted to take a look inside a grown man's fly?" Billy has run
his warm hand up the inside of my leg and it's resting on my inner thigh.
He smells of Brylcreme and leather.

"Aw, I don't know."

"You Mind?" He asks in a gentle voice near my left ear. I can feel his
breath on my neck.  His smell is real masculine.

"Nope."  I don't mind. In truth, I find all of this very exciting. Too
exciting!  But I know he is going to mind when I piss on his hand, which is
going to happen real soon.  I squirm in my seat, trying to clamp down on my
bladder.

He misinterprets my discomfort. "You also feeling horny?" I see him knead
the front of his Levi's where there is a howling great bulge that I've
never notice before.  Oh God, if only I could get rid of that re-processed
cherry coke - then he can pull these moves on me all day, if he likes.

" I... I gotta piss, Billy," I stammer in confession. If I run I might just
make it to the men's room in time. I try to squeeze past him. He catches me
around my waist.

"Hey kid, yer goin' chicken-shit on me? Piss right here against the wall."
There is a rough sound in Billy's voice.

"But....  Please, Billy." I am trembling. I can feel the pressure brimming
up and prickling the very slit at the tip of my cock.

"No one is gonna see nothin'. Here, I'll help yer..."

He drops my shorts and guides my little prick out of my Jockeys, just as
the first drops are escaping and points it towards the wall to our
right. Then comes the hard, hot spray. God, what a relief! But what a
racket it makes! Everyone in the entire hall must be able to hear my pee
splashing and splattering up there high in the balcony. Are they afraid
it's going to drip down and get them?  I'm grateful for the jungle noises
coming out of the speakers.

"That' a real nice pee-pee you done got there... real neat!" Billy says.

He holds my cocklet like I'm some three-year-old boy who needs help. His
finger and thumb slipping back my foreskin that has been causing the piss
to spray. Now the jet makes even more noise. His fingers explore the
surrounding flesh. This is weird. I have heard about guys that want to do
stuff to harm your butthole. Is Billy (the heart-breaker) Kane, one of
them? His face is near my yellow jet, as if he actually doesn't find it
dirty. Without my wanting to or even knowing why, my cock starts to
stiffen.  "Real smooth, no hair at all." He says softly. "You just fixin'
to throw yourself a boner, aren't you, little buddy?"

My bladder relieved, I reach down for my pants and underwear but Billy has
somehow spirited them away. I don't know if I should yell in fear or give
in to pleasure. I turn to face him and see in the gloom that he's opened
his fly and while the fingers of one hand stroke my little two-and-a-half
incher, his other is fisting this real big erection. His nips show off
through his white T-shirt. I stroke one of them with unsure fingers and he
groans. He spots the last droplets of pee shining in the reflection off the
screen and milks them onto his index-finger which he then puts to his lips.

"Yep, cherry cola." he says. This makes me giggle. "Come take a look here,
Clay junior. You ever seen such a beauty?"

I tighten my butthole and make my little worm springs to attention and
clicks three times between his fingers. I suppose I'm letting him know I'm
no longer scared at what he is doing to me.

Until this moment I've never given any thought to sex. Well never thought
of myself in doing sex stuff.  I know that it happens all around me at
home.  I know that at school you sometimes see those girlie magazines that
do such profound thing to guys like Jimmy-Bob Weaner, but they've always
just left me unmoved. Sometimes when I'm scared or lonesome I'd play with
my cock like any other kid or I'd take the pillow between my legs at night
and fuck that for a while. This is different - very intensely different.

"Yeah Clay, you likin' it all right?" He slumps back in the cinema seat and
guides my small bare ass onto his lap. I straddle his strong legs, facing
him, belly to belly, cock to cock. His large rough hands seem to be
everywhere. He rubs my chest and my nipples tingle to his touch. I have
always figured I had a good body for a kid. Now he is milking my pee-pee
between thumb and two fingers. He manipulates its slightly pointed tip
wrapped up in its long, crinkled, foreskin.  He massages my scrotum which
is still a firm, oval-shaped thing, not the loose, separated sac where a
man feels his balls.

This sure beats fucking ten pillows.

Now he is stroking my ass, fingertips dangerously close to my
butt-hole. "Them's some nice young buns you got, buddy-boy!"

I ignore his praise, hoping he isn't planning a rape today, and scoot
further up onto his lap.

"Come here an' let 'em get to know each other."  He draws my prick to his
and sinks it into his testicles.  A tremor shudder through my body and
bewilders me. He lifts the front of his T-shirt over his head, keeping it
on like a shrunken waistcoat. Billy Kane is just about naked now and he is
built like on of those Greek statues in the art books at school that make
the girls giggle nervously. Except he beats those statues all to hell in
the prick department.

I play with his belly button from which a fine line of black hair that runs
down to the bush of pubic hair. At first I don't like all this hair but
pretty soon I'm thinking it's kind of neat. I bend to kiss one of his dark
silver-dollar-sized nipples.

 "You can touch yer big friend, you know.  Let me show you how...." My
hands flutter and fumble at first like I'm spastic or something. "A little
more squeeze... higher... yeah, that's a little better... Oooo, that was
good baby.... real good..."

I find my hands are learning fast.  I begin to sense what he needs. "There
you're getting the hang of it," he tells me. Man, the town's girls would
kill for this: Billy's prick is hot, iron-hard and I can make out thick
veins running along the sides. Its big plum-smooth head is spreading a
silky oil the makes jerking him off so much easier. I wonder where it comes
from. Billy drops his blue-jeans to the floor, but I don't miss a stroke.

"This thing is so big!" I say.  "It's just the most wonderful thing I've
ever did see."

He pulls me hard to his chest and I loose my grip on his pecker. He starts
rubbing it against my own little hard-on. The feeling is electric. Now he
lifts my bare legs inside his and squeezes them together with his
knees. His cock slips between my legs, just below my nuts.  He gently slips
it back and forth in its own goo, past my balls, close to my ass-hole. In
and out - his pace accelerates - in and out. I hang on for dear life, both
arms around his neck.  Sweet Lord, he is fucking me between the legs, his
pecker sliding back and forth so I can feel its head break into the open on
the other side. He kisses my face, he is panting and sweating. My tits have
started to prickle again and I feel so incredibly alive. He humps us up and
down on the picture show seat fit to bust it. He is bucking like a bronco
at a rodeo -then suddenly he breaks off.

"I reckon you can do the rest by hand..." Billy steers all ten of my little
fingers to hold its circumference. I don't exactly know exactly what he
wants, but this is the sort of shit I hear form the girls' rooms.  I do the
best I can, tiring my arms.  Next thing I know, the town idol is grunting
unintelligible stuff. I'm kind of glad that the jungle sounds on the screen
drown out the groans of "baby, baby, baby...".  Any second now I'm
expecting a blood-curdling "Ahawowawowawaaahh!" from Tarzan here below me.
And then from the head of his cock out spouts an impressive first jet of
cum that hits my shoulder; the second splatters onto his chest; and several
smaller waves spill over my hands.

"Oh my God..." he sighs. I run my hands over his chest, spreading the
pungent, sticky , unfamiliar goo. It has the same smell of the girls' rooms
after a busy night. I can draw out long, shiny strands of it with my finger
like a spider's web. I test a bit of it on my tongue. It's warm and salty
to taste.

I see his eyes gleaming at me in the dark. "That the first time you done
seen shootin' jizz?"

I smile and plant a kiss on his chin.

"Did I get you in the shoulder there baby? It's past belief what you done
to me."

He wipes the load of cum of me with the back of his hand.  Billy's cock is
softening - I cuddle it in my hand. Courses of sperm and sweat drain off
his body. My own cock is still rock hard. I wish he would touch it again
and he does.

"Yessir, that's just the cutest little piece you got there, kid, I ever did
see.  You gonna break some hearts with that, years to come, just like my
ol' lady-killer." He gently lifts me off his lap and lowers my butt onto
the top of the backrest in front of him. Then he lowers his head between my
open, thighs.

My sweet Lord, Billy Kane is actually sucking on my two-and-a-half-incher!
I He is using his tongue to move the skin back and forth over its tender
tip.  I close my eyes, throw back my head and groan in pleasure. He tongues
my crotch and moves down to my ball sack and takes my cock and nuts into
his mouth at one time while his hands fondle my butt. His large fingers
spread my little buttocks apart and I hear him sigh. "Lord, what a petite
ass you got there."

The strangest feeling is spreading through me now from my chest down and
from my legs up, converging ,wonderfully, where Billy's ducktailed-head is
bobbing up and down on my prick. Oh, I think, what's happenin' to me?
What's Billy doin'.

What he is doing was giving me for the first time in my life a beautiful if
dry, climax, my first ever orgasm. Billy feels my body convulse. There are
two savage spasms, followed by three clicks of my cock. I jack-knife,
trapping his head and shoulders between my thighs.  I stand up. rib-cage
and bare ass caught somewhere in mid-air above our row of seats.

Then I slip back on Billy's lap, panting like I'd run a mile, and Billy's
holding me close to him..

"That yer first time you done cum, Clay junior?" he asks.

"Yeah, Billy, I guess so."

"Proud of you champ. You done good." He caresses my chest.  "How'd yer get
a harmless face like that, when yer so hot?" He smells strongly of his
recent emission and he kisses me on the side of my head. We lie together
watching the cigarette smoke from the hall below twist and curl in the beam
from the projection booth above.

"Tarzan and Jane don't seem to have noticed what we was up to."  I say at
last. This makes him laugh.  After a while he says: "Clay you must never
tell yer ma and the Captain about this stuff, you hear?"

"Talk?  You gotta be kiddin'. My pa would kill me" I shudder at the
thought.

"Your pa...?" It seems Billy doesn't even know his own wrestling
partner. Maybe that cum damaged his brain. Come to thing of it, the cum had
to come from somewhere - maybe it was his brain that was liquefying.

"The Captain, dummy," I informed him. Billy lifts my butt off his lap,
reaches between my open legs, retrieves the stale cold gum from the seat
and pops it back in his mouth.  I think to myself: this guy is so handsome
but so dumb.

"The Captain? Your pa? Why that is just about the damnedest thing I ever
heard. The Captain is not your pa boy, the Captain is a...a homasexyule,
he's as queer as a two an' a half dollar bill, he can't get it up in front
of no woman no way." In his mind what he has just done to me clearly does
not make him a two and a half dollar bill.

"But...."  I stammer then fall to thinking. The Tarzan film is showing the
end credits. A part of my life is also coming to an end. Somehow it even
makes a twisted kind of sense. I don't know the phrase "rough trade" back
then, but I had a pretty good idea of the Captain's relationship with
Favorites like dumb Billy Kane. I feel my fear of the man who had dominated
all our lives is passing with this new understanding.

"Your ma was pregnant when she come here," Billy goes on. "Captain gave you
his name 'cause he always wanted a son, but he's no more your pa than I
am."

This is all a lot to think about. Everything is just happening awful
fast. I get off his lap.  He mops us off with some Kleenex he produces from
his Jeans pocket.

"I suppose you wanna get dressed now an' go home.  I suppose you're pretty
pissed with me."

I don't reply and dress in silence. So does he. He lights up a
Marlboro. The house lights are on once more. The fat man and Jordan must
have left earlier.  The Mexican kid is jacking off furiously as we passed
him - I reckon he'd been watching us.  The terrible thing about living in
Shady Grove was that the old folks seemed to know everything about us kids.
Even news of your most secret erections gets out.  Maybe there was
something different about this balcony that makes it safe for kids like
that Mex boy and Billy and well, yes, me too.

Stavros is pacing nervously behind the popcorn machine. Nobody fucks with
the Captain or his goods, and, "son" or not, I am his goods.

"You okay Clay junior?" I realize he knows dumb ol' Billy Kane better than
most and that I am probably not the first boy to be treated to a cherry
cola.  He hands me one of the pasteboard stars that I have coveted all
these years.  I experience this weird new sense of power.

"Well," I say, "that depends." I look at him then at a rather sheepish and
nervous Billy, "I ain't got no hard feelings." Then to Stavros: "Shall we
say a free ticket from you an' a cherry cola from Billy Kane every Thursday
from now on till I say when?"

Billy smiles; Stavros looks relieved. I reckoned there was a lot more I
could learn at the Roxy and I think dumb Billy Kane might be a handy
teacher.

"Thursday, it's a date, kid."  Billy Kane the town's heartthrob and trainee
desperado is in my power. I remember all the times that Stavros wasn't at
his popcorn machine and he came panting down the stairs after "checking on
what's up with the young 'uns on the balcony."

I give him my best innocent-kid grin. "Oh an' Stavros, Billy ain't got
money enough for buying cherry cola's for no other kids, will you see to
it?"  Maybe there was something of the Captain in me after all.