Here's Looking at You, Kid

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID

HUGH COX

n the classic movie Casablanca, police captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) has a nice side-line providing exit visas for attractive female refugees in return for sexual favours. The premise of this short story is that another `poor corrupt official' does something very similar but in this case the man is a pederast and is therefore interested in boys rather than women. None of the movie characters appear in this story, although there are occasional references to people and locations from it.

⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣

Casablanca, French Protectorate of Morocco, October 1941.

he ceiling fan fought a losing battle against the stifling heat; it was a warm day for the time of year and there were four people packed into the small office, raising the temperature within it beyond what was comfortable. Pierre Rimbert, the official of the French Interior Ministry responsible for travel documents in the city, had reached and passed his boredom threshold some time previously and there was only one thing preventing him from asking the Dutch banker to leave. You would've thought that a man of his profession would have ensured that he had plenty of cash before fleeing from the invading Germans but the fool had instead brought a letter of credit which had, following the Nazi takeover, been revoked and was now worthless. With his limited cash reserves now seriously depleted, his chances of obtaining exit visas for him and his family were remote but that hadn't stopped him from coming to Rimbert's office and wasting his time.

"We must get to America," the man said yet again, speaking in their common language of English. "There are rumours that Jewish people are going to be rounded up and deported back to Europe, God knows what will become of us if that happens." He was a tall man in his late forties, once well-built but now rather haggard thanks to spending over a year as a refugee from the Nazis, although still handsome, if you were into adult males.

"I'm very sorry," Rimbert replied, although his tone implied little sympathy. "There are hundreds if not thousands of people in the same situation as you but Vichy only allows me to issue a limited number of visas each week and at present there are others ahead of you in the queue." By this he meant people who still had reasonable quantities of cash in their possession, with which to oil the administrative cogs. "I regularly provide visas to people on the recommendation of Captain Renault," he added, looking pointedly at the banker's rather attractive, younger, thirty something, American wife who was sitting to his right.

"That man made the most despicable suggestion," the Dutchman responded angrily, obviously his desperation to get to America hadn't yet reached the level where he would be willing to meet Renault's price. He seemed about to say more but then appeared to remember the presence of the third member of his family and looked to his left, where his twelve year old son was sitting, even more bored than Rimbert by the look of him.

The boy was the only reason Rimbert had allowed the meeting to last so long, as to call him attractive would be a huge understatement; slender, dark haired and brown eyed he was nothing less than beautiful and the French official had spent most of the last quarter of an hour looking at the lad's smooth, creamy thighs and trying to see further up the legs of his shorts. The boy bore a strong resemblance to his mother, from whom he had inherited his good looks but Rimbert could see no such resemblance to his father. It was the easy availability of young Moroccan boys which had led Rimbert to volunteer for this posting but after a three year diet of brown skin he was hungry for white again and this kid was driving him crazy. Thankfully his parents were too concerned with their own problems to notice but eventually the boy did and his reaction surprised and delighted Rimbert.

Most boys are oblivious to a pederast's interest in them, while the majority of those who do notice and recognise it for what it is, tend to react with embarrassment and try to avoid eye contact; others respond with anger, sometimes telling the man to get lost, though usually in stronger terms than that. In a very few cases the boy gives a positive response and indicates that the attention is welcome, opening up the possibility of a sexual liaison. That was what happened now; Rimbert raised his eyes from the lad's legs and saw that his preoccupation had not gone unnoticed. The boy gazed back at him with a knowing smile, licked his lips slowly and deliberately before lowering a hand to adjust his dick, pulling at his shorts and moving his left leg as he did so, providing the man with a spectacular view of the lad's thigh and a first glimpse of his underpants.

A now fully aroused Rimbert tore his eyes away reluctantly and returned to the boy's father. "Have you considered the black market?" he asked. "I shouldn't really tell you this but there are visas for sale at places like Rick's and The Blue Parrot."

"I'm not sure that our finances will extend to black market prices," the man replied glumly. "I don't even know how long we'll be able to keep two rooms at the hotel."

"Where are you staying?" Rimbert asked, making eye contact with the boy again, signalling to him that this wasn't just a casual enquiry. The hotel the man named was certainly downmarket for the family but perfectly situated from Rimbert's perspective, being only a short distance from his own, government provided, accommodation.

"It's a dump," the boy grumbled, speaking for the first time.

"Willem!" the boy's father scolded. "There's no need for that."

"Well it is," the lad continued, "and room 207 is tiny, I think it's meant to be a cupboard." He smiled at Rimbert as he said it, pleased with himself for having passed on this important piece of information.

"Well, it's just a few minutes' walk from Rick's," Rimbert said, "Why don't you and your wife go there for a drink or two tonight? You can ask around and, if there's nothing affordable, you won't be any worse off than you already are."

"What time would you suggest?"

"Oh, about nine I would think. If you stay for a couple of hours you shouldn't miss anyone of any importance." Another smile from the boy indicated that the message had been received and understood. The family stood up to leave and Rimbert shook hands with all three, holding on to the boy's for a few moments longer than was necessary; an unmistakable if unspoken, `see you later,' passing between them.

⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣

rom his vantage point across the street, Rimbert watched the couple leave the hotel a little before nine and, once they had passed out of sight, he crossed and entered the building. He knew the night porter and greeted him as he walked past and up the stairs, making no attempt to inform the man where he was going; this hotel was a regular meeting place for men and boys and no questions were asked so long as rooms were paid for in advance. Once on the second floor, he had no difficulty locating room 207, where he knocked on the door and waited for only a few seconds before it was partially opened and the boy's pretty face appeared around it.

"Have they gone?" he asked nervously.

"Five minutes ago," the man replied. "Can I come in?"

Willem opened the door fully, stepped aside to allow Rimbert to enter and then closed and locked it behind him. The boy was wearing a dressing gown over what appeared to be traditional, striped, flannel pyjamas, "Did you bring the visas?" he asked.

The man reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the three documents. "You seem to be very sure of yourself," he said.

"You know what I need," the boy replied, indicating the visas, "and you made it very obvious this afternoon what you desire."

"What will I get for these?"

"Anything you want."

"Do you understand what that means?"

"Sure, I've been doing stuff with older boys since I was seven and I've even had sex with a grown man."

"What if I leave afterwards and take these with me?"

"Then I'll kick up a fuss and tell people that you molested me, you'll find it difficult to explain why you're here."

"Talking about explanations, how will you explain getting the visas?"

"I've already thought of that," Willem replied. "I'll tell my parents that someone you were providing with visas got them from another source and, since you had three spare, you took pity on us and decided to let us have them. I'll say that you tried to catch them before they went out tonight but, as you didn't want to be seen handing them over in public, you left them with me instead of following them to the café."

"Do you think they'll believe that?"

"Why not? They certainly won't want to believe the truth; I'm their sweet, innocent little boy after all."

Rimbert laughed, "Well, that's partly true," he replied, "you're certainly sweet." He tossed the documents onto the bedside table, put a hand under the boy's chin and raised it so that he could have a closer look at the mesmerising, dark brown eyes. Then he lowered his head and kissed the full, rosy lips; his tongue moving between them and coming into contact with the boy's; the wet, sloppy kiss continuing for several seconds before they broke apart. "Can you suck?" the man asked.

"Of course," the boy replied, sinking to his knees, opening the man's fly and releasing a hard, uncut, seven inches of thick cock. It was the Jewish boy's first experience of a foreskin and he took a few moments to accustom himself to it; moving it back and forth over the man's glans and realising that beneath the extra skin the cock was just like any other that he'd previously encountered. Finally he peeled the foreskin back, licked a droplet of pre-cum from the man's slit and took the cockhead into his mouth, where he sucked it and worked it with his tongue before taking a deep breath, relaxing his throat muscles and moving his mouth down the length of the shaft until his nose was pressed against the man's pubic hair and the glans was lodged in his gullet.

"Merde, c'est fantastique," Rimbert groaned, reverting to his native language.

Willem, the twelve year old who already had five years of sexual experience under his belt, pulled back and started to work the man's cock to the best of his ability, bobbing up and down, sucking and licking the man's glans and shaft and occasionally switching his attention to the large, heavy balls in their hairy scrotum. For his part, Rimbert took the boy's head in his hands, rubbed his hair and began to face fuck the lad, slowly at first but gradually speeding up until his cockhead was moving rapidly in and out of Willem's throat and his balls were bouncing against the boy's chin. He felt the feelings grow within those twin orbs as his climax approached and made no attempt to delay the orgasm, confident that he could easily cum more than once with this little cutie. He grunted as he ejaculated; pumping his load into the boy's throat and then pulling back a little in order to fill his mouth with thick man cream. The boy swallowed most of it but kept a little in his mouth, which he then shared with the man when he stood up and they kissed again.

Memories of Willem's smooth, white thighs returned to Rimbert and a desire to see him naked overwhelmed the man; without breaking the kiss, he reached down, untied the cord which held the boy's dressing gown closed and pushed the two sides apart and back until the garment slipped from the lad's shoulders and landed on the floor. The buttons on the pyjama jacket were next and it soon joined the dressing gown, giving the man an unhindered view of the boy's pale, smooth, unblemished torso. Rimbert sat on the narrow, single bed and gazed in awe at the beautiful sight, "Tu es un beau garcon," he whispered, before taking the lad by the hips, pulling him closer and planting a kiss on his flat belly.

The man's hands moved upwards, caressing the boy's flanks and then in towards his impossibly small nipples, which he tweaked, eliciting a moan from their owner. Then it was back down to the waistband of his pyjama bottoms, which were lowered slowly, bringing a few sparse pubic hairs into view followed by the base of the boy's penis, which was hard and pointing downwards, being restrained by the waistband. When it was pulled clear, four inches of cut boy cock sprang upwards to a forty five degree angle, "Mmm, c'est magnifique," Rimbert said, before engulfing the stiff rod to its root.

He applied suction and moved up and down the length of the boy's shaft, swirling his tongue around the uncovered glans as he did so. Just as Willem had done before, he switched occasionally to the lad's hairless ball sac, taking first one, then the other and finally both of the boy's nuts into his mouth before returning to his cock. Now it was Willem's turn to face fuck his partner and, even though his penis didn't penetrate as deeply into the man's throat as the other's had into his, he was still able to bring himself to an orgasm in a relatively short space of time; squirting a few drops of sweet, clear boy juice into the grateful pederast's mouth.

Rimbert moved the boy onto the bed, placing him face down with a pillow below his body, in a parody of the missionary position, which had the additional effect of raising his little bum for the man's attention. He stripped quickly, sat next to the boy and began to caress his back, buttocks and upper legs, eventually concentrating on the second of these; squeezing the firm globes and fingering the lad's crack and perineum. After a few minutes of this he knelt on the bed behind the boy, took a buttock in each hand and parted them to reveal his anus; not the puckered entrance usually to be found on a twelve year old boy but a dark ringed hole, which was obviously accustomed to taking a cock.

He leaned forward and breathed in the musky aroma of sexually aroused boy which he loved so much and which now got him hard again, before running his tongue all the way from the lad's scrotum, up his perineum and through the narrow valley between his buttocks. He kissed and licked around the boy's entrance, causing him to squirm with pleasure and then pushed his tongue through the lad's unresisting anus and into the welcoming warmth of his rectum. Rimbert's oral stimulus caused Willem to wriggle in ecstasy, his still hard cock rubbing on the pillow at the same time to heighten his enjoyment of the man's expert rim job, which continued for several minutes.

The withdrawal of Rimbert's tongue brought a little sigh of disappointment from the boy but his frustration didn't last long. The man leaned down to where his clothes lay on the floor, took a small tub of Vaseline from one of the pockets, used a finger to rub a small blob of the stuff into the boy's anus and then applied a liberal coating to his own cock. He told Willem to spread his legs, knelt between them, lined his cock up with the boy's hole and pushed it in fairly easily; only the point at which his glans pushed through the lad's sphincter providing any real resistance and bringing a slight gasp from the boy.

Once he was fully in, Rimbert settled into position, leaning across the boy's back and taking his weight on his arms. When he was comfortable he began to move his cock in and out, varying the depth, speed and angle of his thrusts, while kissing Willem's back and neck to accompanying moans from the boy together with the occasional whimper when his prostate got some attention. Having already cum once, the man was in no desperate hurry to do so again and he settled down for a long fuck, which was no hardship for the cock-hungry boy either. After several minutes they switched positions, the boy moving onto his back with the pillow being turned ninety degrees and placed below his lower back. Now Rimbert could look at Willem's pretty face as he fucked him, while the boy was able to jerk himself in time with the man's thrusts, although he was experienced enough to know when to stop and prevent himself from cumming too soon.

A second positional change saw Willem facing across the bed on his hands and knees, while Rimbert stood behind him, took a good grip of one hip and one shoulder and began to pound his hole with rapid, long strokes, on each of which the man's cockhead rubbed over the boy's sensitive inner gland, driving him towards another orgasm. No-one who happened to listen at the door would've been in any doubt as to what was taking place in room 207, the grunts, groans, squeaks and squeals together with the slap, slap, slapping of skin on skin were the unmistakable sounds of sex. Finally Rimbert announced that he was getting close and the boy began to masturbate again, bringing himself to a sphincter tightening climax which pushed the man over the edge as well. He gave one powerful thrust as he came, followed by several lesser ones as his second load of the evening filled the boy's rectum and then the shattered pair collapsed onto the bed, the man holding the boy in his arms, his cock still lodged within him.

Rimbert's cock softened and then slipped out of Willem's hole and he gave the lad a final kiss before wiping the mess from his cock and dressing. The boy watched him to make sure that he didn't attempt to take the valuable documents that he'd worked so hard for but the man had thoroughly enjoyed the experience and had no intention of trying to double cross him; the fuck had been well worth the three visas in his opinion. Once dressed, he bade Willem goodnight and left, while the boy put on his dressing gown and went down the corridor to the bathroom to clean up.

⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣

amuel and Judith Rosenthal returned to the hotel from their fruitless visit to Rick's Café about half an hour after Rimbert had departed and their actions when they arrived on the second floor would certainly have raised a few eyebrows had they been observed. They paused outside room 207, where Sam kissed his wife on the cheek and said goodnight, before she then entered what was ostensibly her son's room, her husband continuing down the corridor to the adjoining double one. Room 207 was empty, as she had expected it would be and once inside she began to get ready for bed, thinking over the twists and turns that her life had taken to bring her to this place.

Judith de Vries had been born in New York City in 1908, into a Jewish, Dutch-American family and had married a stockbroker in 1927. Their son, Willem, had been six months old when the man took his own life after losing everything in the crash of 1929, leaving his widow and child penniless and soon to be homeless. She was the only child of an older couple and her parents were already dead, so it was a huge relief when an aunt in Amsterdam offered her a place to stay, so rescuing her and her son from destitution.

Despite having been married and bearing a child, Judith was in fact a lesbian and she soon discovered that the Dutch city had a very relaxed attitude towards alternative sexualities and went on to have several relationships. During this time she became friendly with a neighbour of her aunt's, Samuel Rosenthal, a banker fifteen years her senior, who described himself as a confirmed bachelor and who she assumed was gay, although she never actually saw him with a man who appeared to be anything more than a friend. Sam began to act as something of a surrogate father to her son, the boy clearly liked the man and the pair became close. When Judith's aunt died in 1936, leaving everything to her two children, Rosenthal suggested a marriage of convenience; she would gain a home and financial support from him and he would adopt Willem and gain a son and heir in return; something he'd always wanted but had been resigned to never having. The marriage worked out very well for all three, as the relationship between Willem and his stepfather developed into a loving one, while Sam and Judith lived their separate lives.

The evidence was there all along but her discovery on the morning of September 1^st 1939 still came as a shock to her. She'd been up early that Saturday, reading the newspaper accounts of the German invasion of Poland the previous day and how it was expected that France and Britain would now declare war; she rushed to Sam's bedroom to discuss how this might affect them, entering with only a cursory knock and without waiting for a reply. Her husband was sitting up in bed, nude, with her equally naked ten year old son impaled on the man's impressive eight inch cock; the boy raising and lowering his body and moaning in apparent ecstasy as he did so.

Her first instinct was to leave with Willem but, oddly, it was the boy who dissuaded her from doing so. He explained that he was gay, had started having sex with teenage boys three years before, although he actually preferred older men and that it was he who had seduced his stepfather rather than the other way around. Sam at least admitted that he hadn't taken much persuasion and that it was his attraction for the boy that had led him to propose in the first place. She took a day or two to think things over, before agreeing to stay for Willem's sake and he and Sam had been sleeping together ever since.

As it only seemed a matter of time before the Germans invaded and neither of them considered that they had much of a future under Nazi rule, they decided to emigrate to her native America, planning to sail from Cherbourg to New York as Sam had some business to conduct in Paris en route. Unfortunately, Willem contracted chickenpox and they were delayed for two weeks in the French capital, still being stuck there when the German blitzkrieg began. Taken by surprise at the speed of the enemy advance, they found themselves unable to reach Cherbourg and had to flee south to Marseille instead, from there crossing the Mediterranean to French North Africa, eventually reaching Casablanca, where they'd remained for over a year now.

Sam had fully expected to be in New York before the German attack and had therefore brought only a limited amount of cash, considering a letter of credit to be safer but that had proven to be an error of judgement, as the Nazi takeover had made such a document worthless. They had initially rented an apartment, expecting their stay in Morocco to be a brief one but, when it became clear that they would have to remain here for a lengthy if indeterminate period, they had moved into a cheap hotel. Now, even following the sale of her jewellery and other property, their money was almost gone and, to make matters worse, rumours had begun that the Nazis were pressuring Petain's collaborationist government in Vichy to repatriate Jews back to Europe, to who knew what fate.

Had they attempted to purchase the necessary exit visas when they first arrived, they might well have been able to afford them but they were law abiding citizens and had spent most of the year waiting in vain for legitimate documents to become available. Now that the threat of deportation had raised its ugly head, it was too late and they lacked the cash to buy them either through the black market or by bribing corrupt officials like Rimbert. Judith wasn't yet desperate enough to pay Renault's price and dear Sam hadn't attempted to persuade her to do so but she was afraid that the time would come when he would and the mere idea of it nauseated her.

⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣

amuel Rosenthal said goodnight to his wife and continued on to the room which he shared with Willem. He thought the charade of pretending that the small room next door was the boy's to be tiresome but it was also necessary, as there were other refugees resident in the hotel and a scandal was the last thing they needed when they were attempting to gain favour with French officials. Not that man-boy sex was unknown in Casablanca; boys were easily available in the city, with the hotel in which they were staying a popular location for such liaisons and Sam had made contact with several other boy lovers over the past year.

It was through one of these acquaintances that he discovered that Pierre Rimbert also shared his tastes, so he arranged a meeting with the man, taking his family along with him in order that his fellow pederast could have a good look at his pretty stepson. Rimbert had practically drooled over the boy and Willem had played his role to perfection; frustrating and encouraging the man in equal measure before revealing where he could be found, along with a tacit invitation to join him there. Now, as he returned to his room, he hoped that Willem had successfully achieved his objective and secured the travel documents they needed in order to leave Casablanca and continue their journey to New York.

The room was dimly lit by a turned down gas lamp, electricity not yet having reached this particular establishment and the boy could only be made out as a shadow on the double bed. Sam closed and locked the door, crossed to the lamp and turned it up, then looked towards the bed and took a sharp intake of breath. Willem was sprawled upon it, hands behind his head, one leg bent at the knee and standing upright, the other also bent but flat on the bed; he was naked except for a skimpy pair of lacy girl's panties, a gift from his stepfather which he only wore on special occasions and which he knew turned the man on.

"Haven't you had enough for one night, Kid?" Sam asked breathlessly, already becoming aroused.

"I've never had enough," the boy replied, with a giggle. "Anyway, we've got some celebrating to do," he added, indicating the documents on the bedside table.

"Well done, Willem!" the man exclaimed, striding to the bed, taking the boy in his arms and kissing him passionately.

"I hope that's not all you're going to do," Willem said, when they finally broke apart.

"Didn't Rimbert satisfy you?"

"He was quite good and I enjoyed it but he isn't you and it's not the same with someone you don't love."

Sam gave Willem another quick kiss, stood up and began to undress, allowing his eyes to wander over the boy's beautiful body as he did so. He'd liked the kid from their first meeting and by the time he was seven years old he'd fallen in love with him; recognising very early in their relationship that he was probably gay and suspecting that he might be one of those rare pre-pubescent boys who genuinely enjoy sex with a man. In order to confirm this he introduced the lad to one of his lovers, a thirteen year old, who was instructed to encourage Willem participate in sex play but not to pressure him into doing anything he didn't want to. He needn't have worried; his stepson responded enthusiastically, so Sam moved things to the next level by adding an older boy, a sixteen year old, to the mix. Young Willem had soon expressed his preference for the more mature lad, while also admitting to his new friends that he harboured a desire for adult males in general and his stepfather, whom he adored, in particular. The teens, knowing full well how the man felt about the boy and acting on his behalf, had suggested to Willem that he try to seduce Sam and had given him tips on how to do so; the boy followed these instructions immediately and very successfully, unaware that the man had orchestrated the whole thing. They'd become lovers shortly after the boy's eighth birthday, the man taking his stepson's virginity a few months later and had been openly sleeping together since Judith had discovered their secret two years earlier.

Once naked, Sam lay on the bed next to Willem, cradling the boy's head in the crook of his left arm while running his right hand up the lad's thigh. He gave the hard, cloth clad lump at the boy's groin a little squeeze before continuing upwards to caress his torso, eliciting a frustrated moan from his stepson which in turn brought a smile to his own face. He kissed Willem again, while playing with the boy's nipples, before moving down to lick and suck the little nubs, once again squeezing his stepson's package and bringing more moans from the lad. The panties were swiftly removed and discarded, releasing the rock hard boy cock for a few seconds before it was engulfed by the man's mouth, turning Willem's moans into those of ecstasy.

"Are you ready, Kid?" Sam asked, after spending several minutes fellating his stepson.

"God yes," came the urgent reply, the desperation in the boy's voice belying the fact that he'd already cum twice in the previous few hours, albeit not with the man he loved.

They moved immediately into their favourite position, no spoken communication being necessary; Sam lying on his back with Willem climbing on top to ride him, just as he had been when his mother had walked in on them two years previously in Amsterdam. To begin with the boy set the pace, moving up and down while working the eight inch monster with the muscles in his rectum; the days when he could only take the first inch or two now firmly in the past. After about ten minutes of this Sam took control; pulling Willem down onto his chest so that he could kiss the boy, while bending his knees and placing his feet flat on the bed in order to gain better purchase for the fuck to come.

He started slowly, his thick shaft moving in and out of the lad's obscenely distended anus, while his bulbous glans rubbed over the boy's sensitive prostate with each stroke. Once settled into his rhythm he began to speed up, increasing the pleasure for both of them, while also causing Willem's body to move on top of his, leading to the boy's cock being ground between their bellies and providing him with two sources of stimulation. His stepson's squeaks and squeals of joy increased his own excitement, inducing him to up the pace another notch and propelling him rapidly towards his climax. This occurred a few moments later, Willem cumming almost simultaneously; a plentiful load of thick man-cream pumping into the lad's rectum while a few drops of watery boy juice squirted between their tightly embraced bodies.

"Are you alright, Kid?" Sam asked when he'd recovered.

"Mmm hmm," being all the shattered but satisfied boy could muster in reply.

They remained in position for several minutes during, which the man's cock softened and slipped out of the lad's anus, while he caressed the boy's back and buttocks and whispered endearments in his ear. Eventually a pungent, wet fart emitted from Willem and he scrambled to his feet, grabbed his dressing gown and hurried out the door and down the corridor to the bathroom. When he returned they spooned together on the bed, the man holding the boy in his arms as they drifted off to sleep; neither having any desire to be anywhere else than with one another at that moment in time.

⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣ ⚣

New York City, December 1941

udith exited the elevator and headed for the small apartment, which they were only able to rent thanks to the largesse of the city's Jewish community, many of whom had donated money to aid the refugees who were coming over from war-torn Europe. All the talk in the shops that afternoon had been about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the fact that the United States was now at war with not only that nation but Germany as well. People seemed to have mixed feelings about this but she for one was pleased about it, as she was now more confident that the Nazis would ultimately be defeated.

As she entered the apartment she could hear the old piano in the living room being played rather badly, which meant that Sam was home from his job interview at the bank and she prayed that he'd been taken on there as she hated living on charity. Sam was indeed playing the instrument, with Willem sitting nearby with a pained look on his face; on top of the piano was an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne in it and her husband had a glass in his right hand while he played with his left. When he saw her, he put the glass down, began playing with gusto and also burst into song, something which was even more painful to hear than the piano playing.

Gone are my blues and gone are my tears

I've got good news to shout in your ears

The long lost dollar has come back to the fold

With silver you can turn your dreams to gold

Oh, we're in the money

We're in the money

"I take it you got the job then?" Judith asked, laughing.

"That and more my dear," her husband replied, pouring a second glass of champagne and handing it to her. "The president of the bank hates the Nazis with a passion, it seems; he's decreed that the bank will honour the letter of credit as well as offering me employment, we're not poor anymore."

"In that case I think I can put up with a little more of your dreadful singing. Go on, play it again, Sam."

"Before that, I think a toast is due to the young man who made it all possible," Sam responded. Then he turned to Willem, raised his glass and said, "Here's looking at you, Kid."

THE END

Author's note: I'm well aware that the line `play it again, Sam' was never spoken in the movie Casablanca but I couldn't resist putting it into this story, even though it is extremely corny.

If you enjoyed this story, then please show your appreciation by making a donation to Nifty at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html.

If you didn't like the story then why not donate anyway? Who knows, if your contribution is large enough, you might persuade the Nifty Archivist not to post any more of this rubbish.

My previous contributions to Nifty can be found in the authors list under Hugh Cox.