David Bishop - Matt Kile 04 - Find My Little Sister Read Free Page B

the ceiling fan. The room light was off, the gooseneck lamp at the corner of my desk on. It was a perfect setting for a vamp to walk in, plant the sole of one high-heel shoe on the edge of the chair between my legs, look into my baby blues, and smile. It had never happened, but who can say it won’t.
    A mild fog crowded the evening street, making things glisten and the trolley tracks spark now and again. Fog didn’t often make its way from the coastline into downtown LA, but it happened now and again, including tonight. The street lamps and scattered neon signs took on a frosty look, but visibility remained pretty good.
    My fantasy woman often walked by about this time and I didn’t want to miss her if she did so tonight. When things were quiet, like now, her image hung in my mind the way a dream lingers when you’re not quite sure you’re fully awake. With my window open, when she walked by, the rhythmic sounds of her heels on the sidewalk reverberated off the wood and concrete of the city, the way intimate whispers find their way around in a dark bed.
    I had first seen her in a restaurant two blocks down, a place where local office workers were known to have lunch—mostly women. I went there about once a week to window shop, I guess is a way of saying it. When she stepped inside, the yakety-yak stopped. She was the cool breeze on a hot night, or the warm breeze on a cold one, a society dame in a room full of everyday women. She just had that look. The one all women tried to reach for each time they stood in the doorways of their open closets or preening in front of a mirror. She seemed an office worker, yet she had the class of a gal you wanted to take home to meet mother.
    I didn’t approach her that first time. Figured she’d shoot me down in public. Not wanting that, I loitered with a cup of joe until she left. About a week later, I started noticing her comings and goings on Spring Street. Over the next couple of weeks, I got a feel for the times she came and went. On nights, like tonight, when I didn’t have a reason to be somewhere else, I watched for her.
    There she was. Not dreamlike, but real, striding along Spring Street halfway between Eighth and Seventh Avenues. She had beauty that would make Cleopatra look like a Cairo commoner. For some reason, tonight, watching from my office window would not be enough. I grabbed my hat and headed down to the street level. I wanted to see her from closer. Maybe tonight I’d approach her and introduce myself. For some unexplained reason, the elevator often ran slowly. I took the stairs down from my second floor office and eased into the shadowy corner of the doorway.
    W hen she crossed Seventh Avenue, her skirt briefly rose above her knee as she stepped up to the sidewalk. She eased her pace and glanced over as she passed Gus’s newsstand on the corner. Gus, who had started his closing down routine, forgot his magazines, newspapers, and candy to watch her go by. Each night I had watched her, she smiled at Gus. It gave her class, no snobbery, and let me know she was a regular Joe. A gorgeous woman being friendly to Gus, a retired cabbie whose eyes could still gather in an attractive shape, but could no longer work well enough to steer a hack through the challenges of city streets.
    The illumination from s torefronts cut paths here and there across the walkway in front of her. She moved through their lights as if they had come outside just to feel her legs and rub up against her.
    Maybe tonight I’d follow her. See if she walked home from downtown or if she had a car parked in one of the nearby lots a block off Spring Street. Then again, maybe tonight I really would approach her. I meant her no harm. I just didn’t know how to breach the lack of an introduction.
    The night had completed its conquest of the city. Cars with their windshield wipers whisking against the fog still passed, but fewer than at her usual time. She was a little late. I had even started to worry.