Full Stop Read Free

and by craning her neck she was able to get a view of distant treetops which might, she thought eagerly, be her first glimpse of Central Park.
    â€˜Loretta! How was your flight?’ Toni surged forward as Loretta turned the corner from the lift, hugging her and firing off half-a-dozen questions without giving her time to answer. She looked just as Loretta remembered her, slender and elegant with dark blonde hair pulled back from a face which was just too gaunt to be beautiful. Toni’s paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants from Reggio-Calabria who arrived in New York at the turn of the century; her father, who was born in the city, still ran his own restaurant in the East 20s. Loretta had never eaten there but she had read a carping review of it in her guidebook, which complained that the food was old-fashioned and the portions too large.
    â€˜Did you take a cab from La Guardia? You didn’t have a problem with the traffic? I didn’t expect you yet’ — she glanced down at the watch on her bony wrist — ‘butit’s fine, come inside.’ She slipped an arm round Loretta’s shoulders and walked her towards the open door of apartment 15G. ‘You’ve never been here before, huh? I warned you it was small. Down, Honey,
down.
’
    This last remark was addressed to the ugliest dog Loretta had ever seen, a thick-set animal which appeared, at first sight, to be made of concentric circles of bulging doggy fat.
    â€˜Honey,
’ Toni exclaimed, pulling the dog away from one of Loretta’s shoes which it had begun to worry with ferocious growls. ‘It’s OK,’ she went on, hauling the animal into the apartment by its collar, ‘she has a thing about leather. She’s only a pup and she gets kind of over-excited.’
    Loretta followed nervously, not at all reassured, and hovered just inside the door.
    â€˜Honey, on the couch,
good
girl. Come on in, Loretta. Are you in a hurry to go somewhere?’
    â€˜No, course not.’ Loretta put down her weekend case and glanced round the L-shaped room, immediately perceiving that there was nowhere to sit. The room looked like a simulacrum of her own the night before, with clothes everywhere and a dress spilling out of a brown paper bag which Loretta recognised as from Bloomingdale’s. The dog lumbered up on to the sofa, collapsing on to a green silk blouse and panting with its jaws gaping open. Toni pulled the blouse from under the dog, not before the soft fabric had become spattered with saliva, swept a pile of clothes off the only armchair in the room and motioned to Loretta to sit on it.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said distractedly, ‘I haven’t finished packing.’
    Loretta surveyed the room, taking in the wide double bed which filled the alcove formed by the short bar of the L. It was at least cool in the flat, although the air-conditioning unit set in the bottom of one of windows was irritatingly noisy. Toni seemed to be feeling the heat, flopping down on the bed and brushing back wisps of hair from her face. ‘What a
day,
’ she exclaimed.
    â€˜I thought you weren’t going till tomorrow,’ Loretta said, wondering why Toni was getting ready for her trip to Long Island a day early. She had already noticed that the sofa’s deep red cover, an oriental design which echoed the rugs hanging on the walls, was thick with dog hair and crumbs of soil; it was just as well, she thought, looking down at her chair, that she had travelled in jeans. Suddenly the dog sat up on the sofa, apparently taking a slight movement on Loretta’s part as an invitation, and Toni murmured its name warningly. Shooting her a reproachful glance, it subsided into panting rolls of flesh.
    â€˜She’s so affectionate,’ Toni assured Loretta, still sounding distracted. ‘Are you OK with dogs? I recall you kept a cat in Oxford. She’s a full English bulldog, I wanted one for years and Jay