by John Lutz
Then she realized it was a perfume she often wore. Someone wearing the same scent had just passed, or stepped into the other elevator to go up.
She walked on through the narrow lobby and exited on West 44th Street.
Chapter 22
HEDRA had taken the news of her eviction with surprising calm. A tremor of her lower lip, a brief and oddly different cast to her eyes. That was all.
She’d told Allie she understood and she’d move out the next day, which astounded Allie. How could Hedra have someplace to go on such short notice? In New York?
The next morning the phone woke Allie. She lay for a few seconds, listening. Between rings she could hear Hedra moving around in the apartment, gathering her possessions.
The phone was relentless, sending chilling, vibrating knives into her brain. She groaned and shot a painful glance at the clock; God, there was sand under her eyelids! A few minutes till nine. Allie wrapped the pillow around her head to deaden the shrillness of the persistent phone. She waited. Wasn’t Hedra going to answer it?
Finally she realized Hedra was going to ignore the phone; she was moving out, after all, and she received very few calls anyway.
Allie released the pillow, scooted to the cold side of the bed, and dragged the receiver over to her. Each ring of the phone was like an electric shock; she didn’t want a headache this morning.
For a panicky moment she suspected another obscene call. Then she realized the odds were against it at nine in the morning. There was a time for everything under the heavens—even sexual perverts. Nine A.M. wasn’t it. She blinked at the brilliant slanting light and said, “Hello,” in a strained, husky voice.
“Miss Allison Jones?”
Allie cleared her throat. She said yes, she was.
“Detective Kennedy here. Remember me?”
She sat up straighter in bed, her back against the pillow and headboard, and tried to focus her sleep-fogged mind. She felt a wary elation. “You found the credit cards?”
Kennedy laughed gently. “No, I’m afraid not. It’s not actually the missing cards I’m calling about. I wondered if you’d received any more obscene phone calls.”
“Since I’ve talked to you, not really.” There was no point in stirring up the law; Hedra was the reason for the calls, and she was moving out. Allie briefly considered telling Kennedy about the man accosting her on the street, but there was an explanation for that, too. Hedra. Allie didn’t want to get Hedra in serious trouble; that would only prolong the mingling of their lives. It was hardly wise to make any of this police business.
“Good,” Kennedy said. “I thought we might need to put a tap on your line, find out who the weirdo is. But if he’s not bothering you anymore, I guess that won’t be necessary.”
“Guess not,” Allie agreed.
After a pause, Kennedy said, “You okay, Miss Jones?”
“Uh, sure. Why?”
“You sound … I dunno, different from when you were here at the station. A little depressed or something. You want me to come over there and we can talk?”
God, I must sound terrible, Allie thought. Or maybe Kennedy was simply doing his job and following up on a complaint, serving the public. She said, “It’s because I just woke up.”
“Ah. The phone wake you?”
“Yeah, but that’s okay. I’m glad you called. Glad you cared enough to take the trouble.”
“Like I said, usually an obscene phone call doesn’t develop into any worse problem. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions. You did the right thing in coming to the police, dear.”
“I know I did. Thanks.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Any more calls like before, though, and you contact me personally. That a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
“Sorry I woke you.”
“That’s okay, I had to get up anyway. You were my alarm clock.” She tried to put some airy brightness in her voice, like a TV game-show contestant, to show Kennedy she was just fine. “Bye, Sergeant. Thanks again for calling.” It was fun even though I lost.
He told her good-bye and hung up. The broken connection crackled in her hear.
Allie stretched out her arm and replaced the receiver.
After lying there motionless for about fifteen minutes, listening to Hedra scraping and thunking things around in the apartment, she got up, put on her robe, and left the bedroom. The floor was ice against her bare feet.
In the living room, Hedra had just set down a cardboard box of paperback novels by the door. Dust was stirring in the air from her activity; it tickled Allie’s nose and almost made her sneeze. Hedra glanced at her and didn’t change expressions. She said, “A cab’s on the way. I’ll have everything outta here by tonight.”
Allie was suddenly ill at ease. She didn’t know what to say to Hedra. She felt guilty and hated herself for it. Finally she decided to make small talk to hold back the silence. “You had breakfast?”
“Coffee and a couple of Danish,” Hedra said. “I went out and brought it back from the deli. There’s some left in the kitchen, if you want it.”
“Thanks.”
Hedra didn’t answer. She walked back to her bedroom and returned with an armload of clothes from the closet. Then she draped them over the arm of a chair. Allie couldn’t help thinking the pile of clothes looked as if they were from her closet. Clothes aren’t really as personal as we think, or as distinctive or recognizable. Thousands of this, thousands of that, often tens of thousands, sewn on assembly lines. Unless you were into Paris originals, everyone’s basic black dress was like someone else’s.
Allie said, “You still working at that place over on Fifth Avenue?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there awhile longer,” Hedra said. Allie wasn’t sure she believed her, but Hedra was getting money from somewhere. Maybe she dealt dope; Allie wouldn’t be surprised. Not anymore.
Hedra put down her clock radio on the pile of clothes and looked at Allie. “If you don’t mind my asking, how do you plan on making the rent here alone?”
“I won’t be alone,” Allie told her. “Sam’s going to move back in.”
Hedra nodded. “I kinda thought so.”
There were three firm knocks on the door.
Hedra and Allie exchanged glances. Hedra said, “I’ll stand over where I can’t be seen. No point in giving ourselves away as roommates this late in the game.”
Allie thanked her again. She waited until Hedra had stepped around a corner. Then she yanked the sash of her robe tighter around her waist, walked to the door, and opened it.
Graham Knox stood in the hall.
He had on impossibly baggy pleated black slacks, and his woolly gray sweater with the leather elbow patches. He was so thin he looked lost as a child inside his clothes. His unruly hair was damp and combed more neatly than usual, and he was sporting his lopsided grin. Graham was so obviously glad to see Allie that she felt cheered just looking at him.
She moved in close to the partly opened door and stood so he couldn’t see Hedra’s possessions piled nearby.
He said, “I thought I better drop by and explain about the tickets.”
“Tickets?”
His face sagged like a sad clown’s, then lifted again to hide his hurt. “You know, my play …”
Allie had forgotten he’d promised her free tickets. To … what was it, “Dance” something? “Of course,” she said. “I’ve been waiting, wondering.”
She was sure she hadn’t fooled him, but he obviously appreciated her effort and forgave her. He held out two tickets he’d been squeezing in his right hand. Allie accepted them. They were damp from his perspiration and faintly warm. They felt good between her fingers; a friend’s gift that meant something and required nothing in return other than her presence.
“They’re center orchestra seats for the third performance. By then most of the kinks should be ironed out and the play should go smoothly. I wa
nt you and Hedra to see it at its best.”
Without thinking about it, Allie tilted forward on her toes and gave him a peck on the cheek. It surprised him and surprised her. “Thanks, Graham. Really. I’ll be there. I doubt if Hedra can make it, though.”
He was grinning almost maniacally. “If you have to come alone, that’s okay. Maybe we can go out for some coffee or something after the performance.”
“Maybe,” Allie said. He’d read something into that innocent kiss on the cheek. Too bad. “I’ll be there either way, Graham.”
Inside his baggy clothes, he shifted his weight awkwardly from one leg to the other; he wasn’t a graceful man like Sam. Dear Sam. “I better go down to Goya’s,” Graham said.
“Okay. See you.”
“Drop in sometime when things slow down after the lunch rush. We can talk.”
“I’ll do that. Bye, Graham.” She eased the door closed and heard his faint, retreating footsteps outside in the hall.
When she turned from the door, she found that Hedra had moved back into the living room and was glaring at her. There was an irrational kind of fierceness in her stare that frightened Allie. Hedra had gone into the kitchen and was holding half of a cheese Danish that had become mush in her clenched fist. “He mentioned my name.”
Allie said, “He lives upstairs. He knows we share—shared—the apartment.”
“You told him?”
“No, he saw us together and overheard us talking in the hall one day. He guessed.”
Hedra suddenly noticed she’d mutilated the rest of the Danish. She went into the kitchen to throw it away. Water ran in the sink as she rinsed off her fingers. When she returned she seemed calmer. “So who is this guy?”
“His name’s Graham Knox. He’s a playwright. That was what he wanted to see me about, to give us two free tickets to the off-Broadway production of his play. I told him some time back that I’d go.”
“You meet him often at Goya’s?” What about Sam? was in Hedra’s eyes.
“He’s a waiter there, Hedra. For God’s sake, he’s just a casual acquaintance.”
“But he knows about me being here.”
“He won’t tell anyone. He’s promised. Besides, what difference does it make now?”
“None, I suppose. But do you believe him? I mean, his promise?”
“Yes, I do. Besides, he’s got no reason to inform on us. He’s no friend of the Cody’s management.”
“But what if he tells someone else? I mean, like one of the other tenants?”
Allie couldn’t understand this. “Hedra, why do you care? You’re moving out.”
“I care because I don’t wanna be tracked down by Haller-Davis and told I owe back rent.”
“I doubt if they’d do that.” But Allie wasn’t sure.
“They might, if this Graham guy tells the wrong person.”
“He won’t. He’s promised about that, too. He told me he might need a roommate himself one of these days.” Allie was getting irritated with Hedra’s intense concern over Graham when it wasn’t necessary. “Playwrights and part-time waiters aren’t exactly high-income bracket; he understands the arrangement we had and he approves of it.”
Hedra seemed to think about that. Finally she nodded. “Yeah, I guess I’m getting excited over nothing.” She smoothed her skirt and walked to the window, then gazed down into the street. “Anyway, it’s not life or death.”
Her body straightened and she turned away from the window, starkly silhouetted for a moment in the morning light. “My cab just pulled up downstairs.”
“Want me to throw on some clothes and help you carry this stuff down?” Allie asked.
“Why not?” Hedra said.
Allie made three trips with her and loaded the backseat and the trunk of the cab. Hedra said she’d be back that afternoon for the rest of her things, then slid into the taxi’s front seat alongside the driver. “Good luck, Allie.”
Allie suddenly felt as if she were betraying the trust of a helpless puppy; she told herself Hedra knew how to pull people’s strings, change their perceptions of her almost minute to minute. “Luck to you too, Hedra. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“It did for a while,” Hedra said with a flicker of a smile. She closed the door and waited for Allie to move away before telling the driver her destination. As the cab pulled away, she didn’t look back.
When the cab had been swallowed in traffic, Allie went back upstairs to the apartment.
She ate the Danish Hedra had left and drank a cup of coffee. Then she used the TV’s remote to tune in Donahue and curled up on the sofa. The program was about unreasonable ordinances in the suburbs, laws that said you couldn’t leave your trash can at the curb overnight. Or kiss in public. Or let your cat go outside without a leash and collar. That kind of thing. Donahue was outraged, stalking through the audience with his microphone and wobbling his head. Seeking soul mates or conflict.
It didn’t interest or concern Allie in the slightest, but she watched it anyway. It was something on which to fix vague attention while she blotted out what was happening in the suburbs of her mind.
Chapter 23
TWO days later Sam was living in the apartment. Their world within the four walls fell into place as if time hadn’t passed and Hedra hadn’t moved through Allie’s life. The first night seemed to Allie a fresh start almost from before the nighttime phone call that had prompted their first argument and Sam’s leaving. The crushing, painful call that had caused her to place the classified ad that had drawn Hedra to her.
Sam was across the breakfast table from her again, hurriedly dressed for work and spooning diet yogurt into the mouth that she loved, that had been on her last night.
Allie had found part-time work as a computer programmer for a small camera store on Sixth Avenue. She was busy during the day setting up a program that would keep a running inventory on thousands of lenses, filters, and accessories. She hadn’t realized there were so many ways for a professional photographer to change and shape what appeared in the viewfinder, so many ways to bend reality to a purpose.
She’d finished her coffee and was about to leave with Sam. An old sensation was back; it gave her a secret thrill, the way they were lovers inside the apartment but had to act like strangers the minute they stepped out into the hall. Was that the sort of emotion that might disappear with marriage?
He’d stood up and was shrugging into his suit coat. He scooped up his attaché case. Prince of commerce in a hurry. She smiled and placed a hand on his chest to stop him, then kissed him on the lips. She didn’t mind the taste of yogurt.
“What brought that on?” he asked.
“I love you. I’m happy. I want you to know.”
He gave her a quick hug. “I’m happy, too, Allie, but neither of us’ll be quite as happy if I’m unemployed.”
“You leave first,” she said.
He nodded, then opened the door to the hall and glanced in both directions. He blew her a kiss and stepped outside and closed the door, all in one nimble, graceful motion.
Allie counted to fifty, listening to the humming silence of the apartment, then followed.
By the time she reached the lobby, he was nowhere in sight.
A shipment of Nikon accessories hadn’t arrived at the camera shop that morning as scheduled, and the shop’s owners, two implacable brothers of Iranian descent, gave Allie the afternoon off rather than pay her for doing drone work.
The weather was glorious, so she walked up to Central Park, past the lineup of bored and patient horses waiting to pull tourists in carriages along the congested streets. She entered the park and sat in quiet coolness on a hard concrete bench near the lake. Beyond the trees she could see the reach of skyscrapers, the newer ones with squared-off tops that seemed to flatten against the sky, the older ones piercing the blue like needles, or curving gracefully in Art Deco elegance. A trio of young men pedaled past on the new, thick-tired bicycles known as mountain bikes. Chains clinked against
metal guards, and gears ticked and whirred in the quiet afternoon. On the grassy slope near the lake, a man and a woman lay on a blanket with their heads close together, talking. The woman had red hair and was rather stout. The man looked younger and was wearing a white shirt and red tie. A business type, like Sam. Every once in a while the woman would laugh and grab the tie and flick it in his face. The musical sound of her laughter floated on the bright, clear air. Allie watched them for a while, thinking about Sam and the way the fragments of their shattered lives had so seamlessly fit back together.
The breeze picked up and carried exhaust fumes from nearby Central Park South into the park, reminding Allie that she’d been sitting for almost an hour and her world waited just beyond the trees.
She surrendered the park to pigeons, dope dealers, the homeless, cyclists, joggers, and lovers, and got up and walked back to the street. Vital and diverse New York, she decided, maybe wasn’t such a heartless place after all.
If she and Sam were frugal, money should be no problem. She rode a subway instead of a cab back to West 74th. As she walked past Goya’s toward the Cody Arms, she peered in the window but didn’t see Graham Knox.
When she entered the apartment, the living room window was open and a cool breeze was sluicing through. Allie didn’t remember leaving the window raised but was glad that she had. She slipped off her high-heeled shoes, sat down in the wing chair, and massaged her feet. Concrete against flesh, separated only by a thin slice of leather, could take its toll. She was getting a blister on the bottom of her left big toe. A bandage wouldn’t be a bad idea.
She stood up and padded barefoot toward the bathroom, limping slightly and carrying her shoes.
She was five feet from her closed bedroom door when she heard a noise. A soft creaking sound. Then another.
Another.
A rhythm old as time.
Her heart expanded painfully in her chest. Her throat tried to close, and she was having difficulty breathing.
Silently, she edged forward.
She heard a soft, regular moaning. What she’d known in the back of her mind leaped like something uncaged to the front. She stepped forward and pushed open the door.