The place was darkly paneled, with a lot of high shelves lined with fancy beer mugs. Spicy cooking scents wafted in from the adjoining restaurant. Half a dozen people were perched on stools at the long bar. About a dozen more sat at tables. Allie’s gaze drifted back to the mugs. A few of them looked like antiques. She wondered if they were worth something to collectors. The bar owner might not know, might be ignorant of such things.
Not likely, she told herself, not in New York. Everybody but tourists seemed to know the price of everything in the city. Except for the slowly exacted price they were paying for living here.
A tired-looking barmaid plodded over to their table. She stood poised with her order pad, waiting, looking indirectly and dispassionately at them as if she didn’t know or care if they were genuine human beings or cardboard cutouts. She finally said, “Yeah?” then took their order.
Allie had two martinis. Hedra drank a Tab, then a martini. She seemed to enjoy the olive more than the drink. A matched pair of guys in gray business suits interrupted their loud conversation about the Jets long enough to size up the two women. One of the men had bad teeth and appeared drunk. Allie looked away before Hedra did. She saw in the mirror that the other man winked at Hedra.
Swiveling in her chair to face Allie, Hedra said, “No thanks.”
“They didn’t offer,” Allie said.
“They would if we gave them encouragement.”
“Most likely.”
Football talk began again. Louder. Then the subject was changed abruptly to the stock market. Probably to impress anyone who might overhear. Be a bear, said the guy with crooked teeth. The one who’d winked at Hedra was bullish on more than America.
Hedra glanced again in the men’s direction. “Couple of creeps.”
“Maybe not,” Allie said. “You never know.”
“Nobody knows for sure about anything,” the philosopher Hedra said.
That was the truth. When they got back to the Cody Arms, Sam had just come out and was jogging down the steps.
Chapter 11
SAM saw Allie and Hedra and took the last few steps slowly, then came to a complete halt outside the Cody Arms and stood still, like a wind-up toy that had run down. He was wearing gray sweatpants, a blue pullover shirt, and his maroon Avia jogging shoes. He needed a haircut badly. Allie thought he might have lost a few pounds. Not in a healthy way, but as if he’d been sick. She stifled a thrust of concern for him, watching his eyes dart from her to Hedra and then back.
He said, “I was out for a run, and I thought it might as well be in this direction so I could see you.”
Allie said, “About what?”
He frowned. “Is that where we are? It has to be about something?”
“‘Fraid so, Sam.”
He stared at Hedra until silence began to build on itself and someone had to speak.
Finally Allie said, “This is Hedra Carlson. Hedra, Sam Rawson.”
Allie saw him give Hedra a quick up-and-down glance, show mild surprise as he recognized the beige dress. She’d worn it one weekend they’d spent in the Catskills; he’d removed it from her in a way she couldn’t forget. Sam shook Hedra’s hand gently. “You an old friend of Allie’s?”
Ill at ease, Hedra said, “Not so old. I mean, we haven’t been friends all that long. But we’re friends.”
Sam showed his amiable smile. “Wait a minute! We met the other day when I came by the apartment to see Allie. You were visiting. Waiting for her inside. Remember?”
“Sure. Now I do.”
He adjusted an elastic sweatband on his right wrist. It was blue and white, lettered Yankees. “I told you my name, but you forgot to introduce yourself.”
“I’m, uh, sorry.”
“Anyway,” he said, “I think it’s great Allie’s got a close friend like you. Wear each other’s clothes, that sorta thing. New York’s not the kinda place where you usually have somebody close.”
Allie’d heard enough. “Sam, we’re in kind of a hurry.”
“Oh?”
“I thought you were out jogging.”
“On my way to run in the park, actually. So I thought I’d drop by But you weren’t home. You are now.”
“Not quite, Sam, but I’d like to be. Nice seeing you.”
She moved around him and started up the steps.
Suddenly he had her elbow in a firm grip. Desperation flowed like electricity through him into her. “Allie, listen, please!”
Hedra said, “I’ll just run on upstairs.”
Sam said, “Pleasure meeting you, Hedra. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Allie yanked her elbow free, sending a jolt of pain up her crazy bone. She wasn’t the crazy one here. “I’m going with her, Sam.”
He shuffled in a half-circle and blocked her way. There was an agonized look on his face. “Allie, I only wanna talk.”
“And I don’t.” But she knew she did. Goddamnit, she did! “Wait for me, Hedra.”
Hedra was standing at the top of the steps, a confused expression on her face. In the beige dress and high heels, her legs looked very shapely from the sidewalk. Sam stared at her for a moment, as if he were seeing Allie in the dress. His teeth were clenched and his breath hissed like steam escaping under great pressure. Allie could smell liquor on his breath. Had he seen them in the bar? Beaten them back to the Cody and set up this scene?
No, she decided, it was possible but unlikely.
It began to rain then, slanting under the entrance canopy. Not hard, but steadily enough so another few minutes of standing outside and they’d all be soaked. Windshield wipers on passing cars started their metronome action. Some of them had their headlights on, wary yellow eyes lessening the chance of collision in the lowering gloom. The wet street became opaque glass, reflecting the late-afternoon traffic in muted colors.
A trickle of rainwater broke from Sam’s hair and ran down his forehead. Finally he stood aside and gave Allie room to go up the steps. She moved past, barely brushing his arm.
She took each step with deliberation, keeping the sway of her hips to a minimum, knowing he was watching. Behind her, the swish of tires on wet pavement was like harsh and secret whispering. Hedra reached out a firm hand as if to help her achieve the final push of a climb up a mountain. And maybe that’s what it was—climbing up out of Sam’s influence. Maybe.
She grasped Hedra’s hand, squeezed it as if to say “Thank you,” and pushed ahead of her, through the door into the cool, dry lobby. Sanctuary.
“We’ll talk later, Allie!” Sam called up the steps.
She didn’t answer. A raindrop clung to her eyelash; she brushed it away impatiently with the back of her hand.
As they were rising in the elevator, Hedra said, “An awkward situation, but you handled it fine, Allie.”
Fine? Allie interpreted it differently. “Did I?”
“I mean, you seemed so calm. So in control. More so than I coulda been; that’s for sure.”
“Didn’t seem that way to me, Hedra. I wasn’t so calm on the inside.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re here, and you and Sam aren’t having the conversation he was demanding. You didn’t let yourself get bullied. That’s the important thing.”
“No, it isn’t,” Allie said. “The important thing is that now Sam’s sure we’re living together.”
“Huh? How could he be? He only saw me in the apartment that one time, and he supposed I was a friend waiting for you to get home.”
“Don’t believe what he says.”
“But what could he prove?”
“I don’t mean he could prove anything,” Allie said. “But he doesn’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he wanted, he could notify Haller-Davis I have a roommate and get us both evicted.”
“Would they believe him?”