Single white female

25

ALLIE didn't leave the apartment for days. She ignored her temporary job at the camera store. The Iranian brothers must have called, she was sure, but she didn't bother answering her phone. By now they'd probably replaced her and not thought much about it. People did strange things in New York. People came and went for their own reasons, and life continued its raucous, zigzagging slide toward eternity.

She didn't call Sergeant Kennedy about the orchid and note she'd found by her door; the thought of more contact with the police repelled her. She wanted only to escape from unpleasant reality.

It scared her finally, the possibility that she was withdrawing completely from everything human, so she began to go out and take long walks, for the exercise, she told herself. But she knew it was really for the tenuous contact with people. In one way the press of Manhattan's humanity made her feel less alien, but in another it made her feel more lonely. Often she had the sensation she was invisible. Locked inside herself and invisible.

During one afternoon walk, on impulse, she stopped in at Goya's for lunch. It would help to talk to Graham; he at least thought she was real. She sat at her usual table. The restaurant was crowded with a mixture of neighborhood people, office workers on their lunch hours, and a few tourists who'd stopped to eat after wandering around the Upper West Side. The mingled, spicy scent of a kitchen going full tilt added to appetites. A grayish haze from the smoking section hovered close to the high ceiling, swirling ever so gently with the lazy rhythm of the two large and slowly rotating paddle fans. Goya's employees in black slacks and red shirts glided swiftly and efficiently among the tables, holding trays level above their heads and out of harm's way; the nonchalant balancing act of waiters and waitresses everywhere.

Allie expected Graham to appear any second, dodging tables and diners with his lanky sideways shuffle, wearing his lopsided grin and exchanging comments with regular customers. Her glance kept darting reflexively to the kitchen's swinging doors, like a reformed smoker's hand edging toward an empty pocket.

But a tall girl with wet-look red lipstick and dark hair in a frazzled French braid took Allie's order. The plastic tag pinned crookedly to her blouse said her name was Lucy. She was tentative and seemed new to the job. "Is Graham Knox working today?" Allie asked.

"I don't think so," the girl said. "I mean, I just started and don't know everybody yet, but the guy I think is Graham isn't in today." Allie thanked her and watched her walk away.

Since Goya's was crowded, about twenty minutes passed before Allie's food arrived. Lucy smiled with only her glossy lips and said she was real sorry about the delay. As she placed the white plate on the table, Allie noticed her fingernails were long and painted to match her lipstick. About half the bright red nail polish had been chipped or chewed away.

Allie fell into a somber mood as she sat munching her pastrami-on-rye and sipping Diet Pepsi. A different waitress, this one middle-aged with hair going to gray, asked if she wanted her glass refilled, but Allie declined. She left immediately after finishing her sandwich.

For a long time she walked the crowded, noisy streets of the city, until her feet were sore and the spring was gone from her legs. Around her, steam rose from the sidewalk grates; the monster breathing. She sat for a while on a bench in Riverside Park before smelling rain in the air and starting for home.

The phone was ringing when she let herself into the apartment. She hadn't been using her answering machine because she dreaded having to deal with the kind of messages that might be left, so the phone kept ringing. She ignored it.

The ringing continued as she slipped off her blue blazer and draped it over the sofa arm. She sat down in the wing chair and stared at the ringing phone. She didn't move. Finally it stopped ringing.

Allie walked into the kitchen and got a glass of water, then sat again in the wing chair and stared at the dusk closing in outside the window. The noise of the city was beginning to lessen with the advent of night and the threat of rain. The phone began ringing again. Shrill and insistent.

It rang twenty-one times before it stopped. Someone wanted very much to talk to Allie.

Whoever it was, they kept calling back. Finally, on the third ring of the fifth call, she lifted the receiver and held it to her ear. Hedra's voice said, "I know you're there, Allie."

"Yes, I'm here," Allie said. She wasn't even curious about why Hedra had called. Nothing about Hedra could surprise her now.

"Sam's going to be mine forever," Hedra said. "I've seen to that." Her voice sounded odd, flatter than usual yet with an undercurrent of excitement.

Allie almost laughed. "Don't try to tell me the relationship has only just been consummated."

"I wouldn't tell you that," Hedra said. "Anyway, I never liked that word 'consummated' when it was used to describe people. It sounds too much like soup, don't you think?" Allie held her silence.

Hedra said, "Okay, crabby appleton, I know you're still on the line." A little girl's voice. Taunting. But still flat. "Listen, I didn't mean to hurt you, Allie." "Then why did you?"

Instead of answering, Hedra said, "Are you lonely, Allie?" "Yes," Allie said, "I'm lonely." Hedra said, "I'm not."

"You have Sam," Allie said. "You deserve each other. You're both contemptible."

"He's contemptible. Otherwise he wouldn't have put his hands on both of us. He wouldn't have done what he did to us." "He didn't do it alone, Hedra."

"He didn't have to do it at all, did he? What if I promised he'd never do it again?"

"I don't want your promises," Allie said. "I don't care anymore about either of you. Can't you understand that? There's no reason for us to have anything to do with each other." "I hope you're right, Allie." "Don't call me again, Hedra." "I won't."

The connection broke with a click, and the empty line sighed in Allie's ear until the dial tone buzzed.

She hung up the phone and sat for a while thinking about the call, watching a large bluebottle fly, later along in life than it thought, drone and bounce off the window, trying to escape into the drab, cool evening. The sky was darkening quickly now; it was getting dark noticeably earlier each day. Seasons changing.

What was Hedra trying to do? Why had she virtually taken over Allie's life, sapped Allie of herself and somehow become another Allie? She'd lived in Allie's apartment. Wore duplicate clothes, jewelry, and perfume. Sometimes wore Allie's clothes and jewelry. Used Allie's identity. Even some of her gestures and speech habits. Slept with Sam. Envied Allie. Had no identity of her own.

"She's ill," Allie said to the bluebottle fly. Hedra had mentioned being hospitalized as a young girl. Possibly she'd been kept in a mental institution, and she was still very, very sick. So gradually had the situation made itself evident that the seriousness of Hedra's problem had never registered on the unsuspecting Allie. Allie had misjudged the intensity of Hedra's inner fire and envy. It was clear now why she'd wanted Sam so desperately, and why she flaunted the affair in front of Allie. It was as if she were letting Allie know that now she, Hedra, had finally supplanted Allie, and Allie no longer was quite real. Allie had become the inhabitant of an empty life, the shadowy subleasing roommate in her own existence.

The terrible part was that Allie felt that way. She'd bought it. She'd been so involved with other problems in her life that she hadn't noticed danger creeping up from an unexpected quarter. And then it was too late.

It was Hedra, Allie realized, who must have stolen her credit cards and driver's license, so she could be Hedra outside the apartment as well as inside. Hedra, the thief who stole so much more than property.

Why had Hedra called tonight? What had she meant about making Sam hers forever? And why the strange tone of her voice? There'd been an odd, deranged quality to the way she'd sounded. On the other hand, why shouldn't there be? She'd certainly been behaving that way.

Allie remembered the blueberry cobbler recipe she'd found in the shoe box in Hedra's closet, and the murder news item on its reverse side. There had been other newspaper clippings in the box, but she hadn't looked at them, assuming they were other recipes or cooking columns. But maybe the grisly homicide story on the back of the recipe didn't simply happen to be there. Maybe it was the recipe that happened to be on the back of the news item. Maybe the other clippings were about murders.

No, Allie told herself, don't let your imagination make a fool of you again.

But the longer she sat there, the more a kind of pressure built in her. Things Hedra had said and done over the months seemed to click into a pattern and became meaningful. Ominous. Imagination? Maybe. Only maybe.

Allie walked to her purse and dug in it until she found the card Sergeant Kennedy had given her. Then she untangled and stretched the phone cord so she could rest the phone in her lap while she sat in the wing chair.

Listening to her own harsh breathing, she punched out the number on the card. She waited while the phone on the other end of the line rang, unconsciously twirling a lock of her hair around her left forefinger. It was a nervous habit she'd had as a teenager, and she wondered why she was doing it now. God, was she regressing? She jerked her hand away so abruptly she pulled her hair. Then she hung up the phone.

She had to give this some careful consideration before talking to Kennedy. For all she knew, her call would result not in a quelling of her fears, but in a uniformed officer knocking on her door within minutes, then a ride to the precinct house, where events would be dictated by emotionless procedure. One phone call, and the blue genie of police power would be out of the bottle and out of control. The police would want something more substantial than the anger and dread of a spurned lover. And that was how they'd see Allie. Even Kennedy would see her that way.

Allie thought again of the news item on the back of the recipe clipped from the paper.

Right now, whether she liked it or not, she cared a great deal about Sam.

She shouldn't care, but she did. And if Sam knew what she knew about Hedra, he'd feel differently-not only about Hedra, but about Allie. He'd have to feel differently.

She phoned the Atherton Hotel and asked the desk to ring Sam's room. Then she waited while the phone rang eight, ten times, until she was positive it wasn't going to be answered.

Allie hung up and glanced at the clock. It was quarter past eight, but sometimes Sam worked late. She remembered the number of Elcane-Smith Brokerage and pecked it out with her finger so violently she bent a nail.

Someone answered at Elcane-Smith, a harried-sound-ing man who told her Sam had left at five o'clock.

So where was Sam? Possibly on his way to meet Hedra for dinner. Or in his room and not answering his phone. Maybe because Hedra was with him and they were making love.

Reason left Allie. Only fear for Sam remained. Sam, who was in her blood forever.

What she really wanted most was to have him back. She didn't like knowing that about herself, so she shoved that sticky bit of knowledge to a dim corner of her mind where she could let it lie for a while before coming to terms with it. She heard again Hedra's little-girl taunt on the phone, and she understood the great truth: What we wanted, whom we needed, was wound and set like clockwork in us when we were children, infants perhaps, and after a while there could be no denial.

If Sam wasn't in his room, she'd find him no matter where he was and convince him Hedra was sick. Maybe dangerous. A woman who had no self, and who might be the collector of news stories about gruesome murders. The police would be interested. She and Sam could go to the police together and substantiate each other's stories, and Kennedy would listen. Together she and Sam could awaken from the nightmare.

She wanted to be real again. To be the only Allie Jones. She was sure she wasn't imagining things. She strode to the hall closet to get her blue coat.

It wasn't there. Wearing only the blazer over her jeans and blouse, she rushed out into the cool night, risking rain.