Ladies and Gentlemen Read Free

rubbed her hip he grudgingly walked her to the top floor. They didn’t speak, nor did she thank him when they arrived at her door. And after starting back down, he promised himself, Never again.
    As he turned down the third-floor landing, he saw Marnie Kastopolis, his next-door neighbor, waiting for him below.
    “I heard you come in,” she said as he descended. She blinked once and smiled broadly, revealing her thick, white teeth. Marnie was tall, nearly six feet, and painfully awkward. She was wide-hipped and narrow-chested, a long-legged redhead whose odd proportions reminded Applelow of a Giacometti. She needed something from him now, but her efforts at sultriness were a caricature even more painful because she was wholly unaware of their effect. Or perhaps it was because he was still uncomfortablearound her. Several weeks ago, after sharing two bottles of wine in her apartment, Applelow had tried to kiss her. While she was laughing at something he’d said, he’d lunged forward and hit her teeth when he put his lips to hers. He was sure she’d wanted him to, but the moment he did it she put her hands on his shoulders and, with their lips still pressed together, told him no. “Not that I’m not flattered,” she said, pushing him back. He apologized profusely and stood up, so furious he could barely see, and left soon after. They hadn’t spoken about the incident since.
    “I need a favor,” Marnie said.
    Applelow waited.
    “Zach’s coming down from school tonight.” This was Marnie’s youngest son. “And I have to go to work.” A concierge at one of the luxury hotels near Times Square, she often worked nights. “Can you let him in?” She held up her key. “Just, please, be sure to take it back afterward.”
    “Just open the door and let him in?”
    “Yes.”
    “You don’t trust him with the key?”
    Marnie crossed her arms and looked down at the floor. “If he’s in, I want to
know
he’s in. If he’s going out, he has to let me
know.
”
    If the fact that she didn’t trust her son was going to be an evening-long obligation,
he
wanted to know
that
. “Has it been that bad?” he said.
    “No,” she answered, and looked up. “He’s getting it together, David.” She said this automatically, her tone aping conviction, and she must have noticed the doubt on his face. “I really mean it this time.”
    “Terrific.”
    “He’s joining the air force,” Marnie offered. “He’s doing basic training in California at the end of the semester. He says he wants to fly jets.”
    Who doesn’t? Applelow thought. “You must be relieved.”
    “Words,” she said, looking up, “do not describe.”
    “So trust him,” he said, though he regretted it immediately. He had no plans tonight. Helping her out wouldn’t cost him a thing.
    Marnie looked at her shoe for a moment, checking the heel, the leather’s shine. “I’ve left some dinner in the refrigerator for the both of you,” she said. “There’s even some cake.”
    “Lovely.”
    “I’ll put a note on the front door for him to buzz you. His bus gets in at seven.”
    “I’ll be here.”
    “Thank you,” she mouthed, and placed the key in his outstretched palm.
    The truth was that Applelow had always been curious about Marnie’s second child, whom he’d never met. He
had
met the oldest son, Aaron. “My little genius,” she called him. He was both: little and a genius. Exactly like her husband, she’d explained, who was a diminutive Greek mathematics prodigy. Aaron had inherited his father’s gift for cogitation and was on a full scholarship in philosophy at a university upstate, “admitted to the doctoral program at the age of seventeen,” Marnie liked to brag. (The brilliant husband had deserted the family long ago.) Applelow had met the boy at Marnie’s door last year; he was oddly attracted to her, so he’d feigned interest in the introduction. The boy was the spittingimage of his mother, though his head, which was enormous,