Peril

SARA

She sat at the window, the skyline of the city so close she could almost touch it. It was the phone that seemed far away and deadly silent. Perhaps she’d get a call, perhaps she wouldn’t. The guy had said he liked her singing and taken her number, but an odd look had come into his eye when she’d told him that she was living in a hotel. Maybe at that moment he’d figured her for trouble, a woman at loose ends, a drunk, maybe, or worse-anyway, undependable.

She tried to put the bar and the open mike out of her mind, along with whatever hope she’d briefly harbored that she might actually get the job. She couldn’t even be sure that she’d sung all that well. It didn’t matter anyway, because the guy who owned the place had no doubt noticed how jittery she was, the way her eyes darted around like a frightened little bird. Who would want a singer like that, nervous, strung out, probably on the run?

On the run.

She recalled her first days in New York, how she’d waited by the window as she did now. The only difference was that now someone could show up suddenly, Labriola in his big blue Lincoln, pounding on her door, kicking it open, dragging her down the stairs and through the lobby while the little bellhop looked on, aghast, but ready to take the fifty Labriola slipped him, along with the icy command, Keep your fucking mouth shut.

She had no doubt that the bellhop would do precisely that. After all, it was what she’d done years before. In her mind, she saw Caulfield standing above her, zipping up his pants, telling her to keep her mouth shut. She’d known instantly that she would do it, let him just walk away, back to his car, and after that go home to the little shack she lived in with her father, hoping somehow she could put it all behind her.

She’d almost done it too, she thought now, almost gotten clear of it. She’d come to New York, landed enough work to keep a roof over her head, married Tony, moved to Long Island, where, despite the little nagging problems and disappointments that plagued any life, she’d almost made a go of it.

In her mind she heard the heavy thud again, a beast closing in upon her from behind.

Almost, she thought, but not quite.