Bleeding Hearts Read Free

released it and the door slid closed. Her head felt stuffed with cotton and very floaty. It was as if she had had a good strong cocktail to drink. Hannah never had anything to drink except a glass of wine at Christmas. Her mother hadn’t approved of drinking, and her father had done too much of it.
    The elevator cab slid upward, silent. Paul Hazzard studied the pattern of the wallpaper on the cab’s sides.
    “Here we are,” he said as the cab bounced to a stop. “Why are all the foyers in this building dark? It isn’t safe.”
    “Cavanaugh Street is always safe,” Hannah told him. “I don’t think there’s ever been a crime here, not really, except one Halloween we had an attempted robbery.”
    “Only attempted?”
    “Somebody coshed the thief with a—I don’t remember what it was. But it was all right, you know. Nobody got hurt and they caught the thief and we didn’t even have to go to court because there was a plea-bargain.”
    “Wonderful,” Paul Hazzard said.
    Hannah found her apartment key, wondering why her fingers were still stiff. She did not wonder why she still couldn’t breathe. Paul Hazzard was the handsomest man who had ever said two words to her in her life, never mind asked her to dinner, which he had done. He was the tallest and thinnest and most Wasp-looking man she had ever met.
    Hannah got her apartment door open and stepped into her own front hall. Paul Hazzard came in after her and Hannah found herself wincing. It all looked so—so stodgy. So solid and middle-aged and graceless. The big square club chairs in the living room. The hand-tatted antimacassars. The doilies her grandmother had made, badly, from spools of undyed thread. What had she been thinking of?
    She scurried quickly into the living room, to the little glass panel in the built-in bookshelves that hid what she had always thought of as her “bar.” Now that seemed pretentious as hell. It wasn’t a bar. It was a bookshelf with a couple of bottles of Scotch on it. They were probably the wrong kind of Scotch.
    “Well,” she said. “I don’t keep much in the way of liquor, but I do have some Scotch. If you’d like to have something to drink while I’m getting dressed…”
    “Do you have Perrier water?” Paul asked. “Or Poland Spring? Something like that?”
    “You don’t want a real drink?”
    Paul Hazzard shook his head. “I gave all that up years ago. You have to be so careful with alcohol. It doesn’t take anything at all to get dependent. But you should have something if you want…”
    “No,” Hannah said. “No, I don’t drink. I never have. I stick to diet soda and coffee.”
    “I’ll bring you some apricot herb tea. It’s better for you. Caffeine does terrible things to your intestines. And as for diet sodas—” He shrugged. “Chemicals,” he told her. “You know.”
    “Of course,” Hannah said, although she didn’t know. “I do have some mineral water.”
    “I’ve gotten really serious about taking care of myself these last few years,” Paul Hazzard said. “It’s so important when you pass fifty. If you don’t take control of your life, you’ll really go to pieces.”
    “Oh,” Hannah said again. “Yes.”
    “I’ve even started working out with weights. I’m not bodybuilding, you understand. At my age, that wouldn’t be appropriate, and it probably wouldn’t be healthy. But I’ve started strength training. You ought to try it. It does wonders for me.”
    “Weights?” Hannah was worse than bewildered. “I thought women couldn’t—I mean—”
    “Nonsense,” Paul Hazzard said. “There are lots of women in the class I take. Young ones and old ones and middle-aged ones. It’s a myth that women aren’t suited for exercise.”
    Hannah brightened. “That’s right. You’re a doctor. Mrs. Handley told me.”
    “I’m not that kind of doctor. I’m a clinical psychologist. A Ph.D.”
    “Oh.”
    “But I do know a lot about health and nutrition. I have to. It’s a