Single white female

2

Allie lay quietly and listened to the night push through the open window: the low, ocean sound of traffic that never ceased in Manhattan. The irrational and impatient blasting of a car horn. A woman's high laughter from nearby down in the street. A distant shout demanding an answer. No answering shout. More laughter. The singsong wail of a siren that seemed to be getting nearer, then faded.

Beside her Sam was sleeping, snoring lightly. They'd made love less than an hour ago, and the stale scent of their coupling still permeated the sheets and wafted occasionally into the fresh night air that was cleansing Al-lie's bedroom.

She lay very still, not wanting to break the magic of time and contentment. Loving Sam had opened doors and windows in her mind, showed her depths of herself she'd never suspected existed. With it had come the need, the dependency on him that she'd fought so hard against. That, dammit, was something she hadn't expected, at least not in its intensity.

Finally she'd realized he needed her as much as she had to have him, and it was all right to be human, to risk-because he was risking too. The past six months of total commitment to Sam had been fantastic, but nothing like the last two months, after he'd given up his apartment and moved in with her. Those two months had been perfect, a confirmation of their love. It was the kind of thing she used to laugh at in lurid romance novels. Until she found romance.

Sam Rawson was a broker's representative for Elcane-Smith on Wall Street. He'd made a few clients wealthy, and had some of his own money invested and was waiting for it to build. He wanted to be rich; he'd smiled and told Allie it would be for her, however rich he became. She liked to let him talk about options and puts and calls and selling short, and technical graph configurations that foretold the future and seduced its followers with an accuracy and superstition arguably as potent as voodoo. Allie remotely understood what he was saying.

Each day they'd kiss good-bye after breakfast and he'd cab downtown and merge his soul with the markets. Allie, who worked freelance as a computer programmer consultant, would go to her latest job and help to set up systems that would make someone's business easier and more profitable. It often struck her as ironic that she and Sam were both in occupations that helped to make other people rich, while each of them needed to juggle their finances to pay their bills.

Outside in the night, the woman had stopped laughing. A man yelled, "Hey, c'mon fuckin' back!" Allie couldn't be sure, but he sounded drunk.

The woman screamed shrilly (if it was the same woman). Something glass, probably a bottle, shattered. In a softer but vicious voice, the man said, 'Teach you, bitch!"

Careful not to disturb Sam, Allie climbed out of bed and padded barefoot across the hard floor to the window. She looked down at the street. A few cars passed, gliding and ghostly. A cab with headlights shimmering and roof light glowing. Other than that, there was no movement on West 74th. No one in sight. Down the long avenue and on receding cross streets, strings of moving car lights traced through the night like low-flying comets in mysterious lazy orbit. Allie stared at the cars, wondering as she often did where they were all going at this lonely hour. What darkside destinations had the people in that beautiful, never-ending procession? She knew where she was going-back to bed.

She retraced her steps across the cool, hard floor. Stretched out on her back, she laced her fingers behind her head and thought how violence always seemed to lurk near beauty, as if eager to balance the universe with its ugliness, like one of those fairy tales with underlying meanness. That was how it was in New York, anyway. Maybe everywhere, only not so close to the surface and evident, not breathing so deeply and not so bursting with corruption and raw life as in New York.

She left the sheet tangled around her bare feet and lay stretched out nude, her arms at her sides, as if waiting to be sacrificed in some primitive religious ceremony, letting the breeze play over her. The cool pressure seemed to be exploring her as sensually as a lover, softly brushing the mounds of her breasts, caressing the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. She felt a tension deep inside her, like taut strings vibrating, and for a moment thought about waking Sam.

But it was so timeless and peaceful lying there, and they'd made love violently, leaving her somewhat sore. Sleep was the more sensible course.

She reached down languidly and drew the light sheet up around her, deadening the night breeze's sexual caresses. And fell asleep. When she awoke the next morning she was cold. Sam was in the shower.

She lay and listened to the roar of pressured, rushing water, then silence when the shower was turned off.

A few minutes later he emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his dark hair wet and plastered against his forehead. He was average height and lean, with muscle-corded arms and legs. Thick black hair matted his chest and flat stomach. His face was lean, too, with nose and jaw a bit too long. Thin lips. It was an austere New England face except for his kind dark eyes. He carried himself erectly, with an oddly stiff back, and walked lightly as a dancer, as if suspended by a string attached to the top of his head. Allie knew he weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, but he gave the impression that if he stood on a scale, it would register less than twenty. He smiled and said, "Awake, huh?"

"What time's it?" Allie asked, not bothering to glance at the clock on the nightstand. "Ten after eight."

"Damn! I've got a nine o'clock appointment! Why didn't you wake me?" "Didn'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 pin-stripe 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.

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 attache 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?"

"If 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 lobby.

Neither of them spoke the rest of the way down. What needed saying had been said.