Single White Female Read Free

asked, not bothering to glance at the clock on the nightstand.
    â€œTen after eight.”
    â€œDamn! I’ve got a nine o’clock appointment! Why didn’t you wake me?”
    â€œDidn’t ask me.”
    True enough; she’d forgotten. Last night hadn’t been conducive to reminding one’s self about morning business appointments. God, last night . . .
    Enough about that.
    She swiveled sideways on the mattress to a sitting position, shivered in the column of cold air thrusting in through the window. Sam had removed the towel from around his waist and was using it to rub his tangled hair dry, studying her nakedness with a bemused expression on his dark features. She wondered, if she sat there long enough, would he get an erection?
    No time to find out. She stood up, trudged to the window, and forced it shut with a bang that rattled the pane. Someday the glass would fall from the ancient window, shatter on the sidewalk three stories below, and maybe kill someone. She remembered the shouts and the sound of breaking glass last night. No one had died. But even if they had, it probably wouldn’t make the news. Things like that happened all too frequently in New York. All those people. All that desperation. Fun City. Nobody seemed to call it that anymore.
    Sam said, “You got goose bumps on your butt. It’s still beautiful, though.”
    She turned. He was smiling at her. That narrow, tender smile. She loved him enough just then to consider forgetting about her nine o’clock meeting with the representative of Fortune Fashions. At times it was almost painfully obvious what was and wasn’t most important in life.
    But Sam had stepped into his jockey shorts and was slipping into his blue pinstripe suit pants. White shirt and red tie waited on a hanger. Working duds. A time for everything, she thought. Was that the Sunday school Bible of her youth echoing in her mind? To everything there is a season? Or campus concerts? Bob Dylan, borrowing from scripture? Whatever the source, the sentiment applied. She hurried into the bathroom to shower.
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    Allie scooped up the tailored jacket that went with her gray skirt. She wrestled into the jacket, wondering if it was tighter on her than the last time she’d worn it. She picked up her small black purse, then her matching black briefcase.
    After working the array of chain-locks and sliding bolts on the door, she stepped into the hall first, the procedure she and Sam followed out of habit whenever they left the apartment together. Subleasing and apartment sharing were strictly forbidden and a flagrant lease violation in the Cody Arms. It was essential that no one in the building get a hint of their living arrangement, and they’d worked this knowledge into the fabric of their everyday lives. Apartment space in Manhattan had a scarcity and value that could bring out the worst in neighboring tenants as well as management. In the minds of those around them, there must be no connection between Sam and Allie.
    The long, angled hall was empty. She moved ahead, and Sam followed and edged sideways while she did a half-turn and keyed the three locks on the door. It was almost like a dance step they’d perfected. He drifted along the hall to the elevator, punched the DOWN button with the corner of his attaché case, and stood waiting for her to catch up.
    She was almost beside him when the elevator arrived. It clanked and growled in hollow agony, groping for the floor level like a blind creature. When its doors slid open it was empty.
    Allie and Sam stepped into the elevator and Sam punched the button for the lobby. After the doors had slid shut, he kissed her passionately, using his tongue. When he drew away from her he said, “I love you. Know that?”
    â€œIf I didn’t,” she said, “I do now.” She felt a little breathless and disheveled, and was afraid it might show when the elevator doors opened on the