Cream of the Crop Read Free Page B

quickly down the street, I was aware of the glances I was getting from men. I didn’t need to look in the reflection of the windows to know what I looked like. Long, bouncy strawberry-blond hair, pale Irish skin, likely still flushed from my heated imagination. Deep-blue eyes, almost indigo, set off by an array of freckles across my nose and cheeks.
    My body was poured into a deep-green wrap dress, accentuating my true hourglass figure. Rather than slouch my tall body around town, I kicked it up even higher by wearing ridiculously high heels, the higher the better. I’d learned to walk across the old cobblestones of Lower Manhattan, and I could walk in heels almost better than in sneakers. These golden peep-toe pumps weren’t practical at all, unless you wanted to make sure your legs looked fantastic. Which I did.
    Size-eighteen women weren’t supposed to show off their legs, which I did. They weren’t supposed to show off their cleavage, which I did. Size-eighteen women were supposed to wear trench coats in the winter, long sleeves in the summer, and somebody better cancel Christmas if they wore a dress that showed off some cleavage. Size-eighteen women were supposed to dress like they were apologizing for taking up too much space. Fuck all that noise. I took up space. I took up space in a city where space was at a premium, and I never apologized for it. And right now, I knew exactly how much space I was taking up, strutting down Fourteenth Street tothe song playing in my head, with a bag full of delicious and already fantasizing about my favorite pastime.
    Oscar the Dairy Farmer.

    I made the last turn onto my street, feeling the smile that broke over my face every time I did. I was incredibly blessed to be able to live where I did, the way that I did. Most gals in their twenties in this city were lucky if they shared an apartment with only two other girls, and I knew plenty who shared with more than that. I lived alone, a luxury, in an apartment I owned, an unheard-of luxury.
    Well, technically my father owned it. But it was in my name. So according to my own version of the rules, I owned it . . .
    I grinned back at the pumpkins and gourds that peeked merrily over the brownstone stoops. Halloween was only a few weeks away, and decorations were going up all over town. As I clicked up the stairs to my own home, a gaggle of white Lumina pumpkins glowed in the twinkle of the streetlights. Juggling my purse and bags, I unlocked the front door, then paused to gaze up at my building. Three stories with an attic, it was three separate apartments, with my own on the first floor, or parlor floor. The other tenants had been here for years, and helped me take great care of the building. We shared the garden out back, and the fourth-floor attic was a shared storage space.
    It was converted from a single-family residence back in the fifties, and much of the original woodwork and detail was still intact. The main central staircase had been preserved when it was closed in, making each apartment a self-contained unit sharing the same stairs. Beautiful honeyed wood shone brightly in the entryway, with an original period mirror poised just inside.A bronze umbrella stand, complete with antique parrot-head parasol, stood proudly in the corner, another shared item.
    I let myself in my own front door, which had been rescued from a salvage yard when my father renovated the building years ago. The original renovation had been done on the cheap, with ugly flat steel doors. My father had scoured antique shops and architectural salvage dumps until he found beautiful mahogany doors, likely pulled out of another brownstone in the city. Replacing them throughout the building made it feel more homey, and certainly more fitting for a house built in the late 1870s.
    I carried my bags through the living room with its shiny pocket doors and eighteen inches of intricately carved crown molding, in through the dining room and its