September 10, 2001
New York City
7:19 P.M.
Allison Taylor has lived in Manhattan for three years now.
That’s long enough to know that the odds are stacked against finding a taxi at the rainy tail end of rush hour—especially here, a stone’s throw from the Bryant Park tents in the midst of Fashion Week.
Yet she perches beneath a soggy umbrella on the curb at the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, searching the sea of oncoming yellow cabs, hoping to find an on-duty/unoccupied dome light.
Unlikely, yes.
But impossible? The word is overused, in her opinion. If she weren’t the kind of woman who stubbornly challenges anything others might deem impossible, then she wouldn’t be here in New York in the first place.
How many people back in her tiny Midwestern hometown told her it would be impossible for a girl like her to merely survive the big, cruel city, let alone succeed in the glamorous, cutthroat fashion publishing industry?
A girl like her . . .
Impoverished, from a broken home with a suicidal drug addict for a mother. A girl who never had a chance—but took one anyway.
And just look at me now.
After putting herself through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and working her way from an unpaid postcollege internship at Condé Nast on up through the editorial ranks at 7th Avenue magazine, Allison finally loves her life—cab shortages, rainy days, and all.
Sometimes, she allows herself to fantasize about going back to Centerfield to show them all how wrong they were. The neighbors, the teachers, the pursed-lipped church ladies, the mean girls at school and their meaner mothers—everyone who ever looked at her with scorn or even pity; everyone who ever whispered behind her back.
They didn’t understand about Mom—about how much she loved Allison, how hard she tried, when she wasn’t high, to be a good mother. Only the one girl Allison considered a true friend, her next-door neighbor Tammy Connolly, seemed to understand. She, too, had a single mom for whom the townspeople had disdain. Tammy’s mother was a brassy blonde whose skirts were too short, whose perfume was too strong, whose voice was too loud.
Tammy had her own cross to bear, as the church ladies would say. Everyone did. Mom was Allison’s—hers alone—and she dealt with it pretty much single-handedly until the day it ceased to exist.
But going back to Centerfield—even to have the last laugh—would mean facing memories. And who needs those?
“Memories are good for nothin’,” Mom used to say, after Allison’s father left them. “It’s better to just forget about all the things you can’t change.”
True—but Mom couldn’t seem to change what was happening to them in the present—or what the future might hold.
“Weakness is my weakness,” Brenda once told a drug counselor. Allison overheard, and those pathetic words made her furious, even then.
Now Mom, too, is in the past.
Yes. Always better to forget.
Anyway, even if Allison wanted to revisit Centerfield, the town is truly the middle of nowhere: a good thirty miles from the nearest dive motel and at least three or four times as far from any semi-decent hotel.
Sometimes, though, she pictures herself doing it: flying to Omaha, renting a car, driving out across miles of nothing to . . .
More nothing.
Her one friend, Tammy, moved away long before Mom died seven years ago, and of course, Dad had left years before that, when she was nine.
Allison remembers the morning she woke up and went running to the kitchen to tell her mother that she’d dreamed she had a sister. She was certain it meant that her mom was going to have another baby.
But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In the kitchen, she found the note her father had left.
Can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. Good-bye.
God only knows where he wound up. Allison’s only sibling, her half brother, Brett, wanted to find him for her sake after Mom died.
“Well, if you do, I don’t want to hear about it. I never want to hear his name again,” she said when her brother brought it up at the funeral.
It was the same thing her mother had told her after her father left. Mom considered Allison’s deadbeat dad good for nothin’—just like memories. True as that might have been, Allison couldn’t stand the way the townspeople whispered about her father running off.
The best thing about living in New York is the live-and-let-live attitude. Everyone is free to do his or her own thing; no one judges or even pays much attention to anyone else. For Allison, after eighteen years of small-town living and a couple more in college housing, anonymity is a beautiful thing. Certainly well worth every moment of urban inconvenience.
She surveys the traffic-clogged avenue through a veil of drenching rain, thinking she should probably just take the subway down to the Marc Jacobs show at the Pier. It’s cheaper, arguably faster, and more reliable than finding a cab.
But she’s wearing a brand-new pair of Gallianos, and her feet—after four straight days of runway shows and parties—are killing her. No, she doesn’t feel up to walking to Grand Central and then through the tunnels at Union Square to transfer to the crosstown line, much less negotiating all those station stairs on both ends.
Not that she much likes standing here in the deluge, vainly waiting for a cab, but . . .
Lesser of the evils, right?
Maybe not. She jumps back as a passing panel truck sends a wave of gray-brown gutter water over the curb.
“Dammit!” Allison looks down at her soaked shoes—and then up again, just in time to see a yellow cab pulling over for the trench-coated, briefcase-carrying man who just strode past her, taxi-hailing arm in the air.
“Hey!” she calls, and he glances back over his shoulder. “I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes!”
More like five, but that’s beside the point. She was here first. That’s her cab.
Okay, in the grand scheme of Manhattan life, maybe that’s not quite how it works.
Maybe it’s more . . . if you snooze, you lose.
And I snoozed.
Still . . .
She’s in a fighting mood. The Jacobs show is huge. Everyone who’s anyone in the industry will be there. This is her first year as—well, maybe not a Somebody, but no longer a Nobody.
There’s a seat for her alongside the runway—well, maybe not right alongside it, but somewhere—and she has to get to the Pier. Now.
She fully expects the businessman to ignore her. But his eyes flick up and down, taking in her long, blond-streaked hair, long legs, and short pink skirt. Yeah—he’s totally checking her out.
She’s used to that reaction from men on the street.
Men anywhere, really. Even back home in Centerfield, when she was scarcely more than a kid—and still a brunette—Allison attracted her share of male attention, most of it unwanted.
But as a grown woman in the big city, she’s learned to use it to her advantage on certain occasions.
Oh hell . . . the truth is, she made the most of it even back in Nebraska. But she doesn’t let herself think about that.
Memories are good for nothin’, Allison. Don’t you ever forget it.
No, Mom. I won’t. I’ll never forget it.
“Where are you headed?” The man reaches back to open the car door, his gaze still fixed on her.
“Pier 54. It’s on the river at—”
“I know where it is. Go ahead. Get in.”
She hesitates only a split second before hurrying over to the cab, quickly folding her umbrella, and slipping past the man—a total stranger, she reminds herself—into the backseat.
A stranger. So? The city is full of strangers. That’s why she moved here, leaving behind a town populated by know-it-all busybodies.
Anyway, it’s not the middle of the night, and the driver is here, and what’s going to happen?
You’re going to make it to the Marc Jacobs show, something you’ve been waiting for all summer.
After the show there’s an after-party to launch Jacobs’s new signature fragrance. It’s the hottest ticket in town tonight, and Allison Taylor is invited.
No way is she going to miss this—or arrive looking like a drowned rat.
She puts her dripping umbrella on the floor as the stranger climbs in after her and closes the door.
“I’m going to Brooklyn—take the Williamsburg Bridge,” he tells the driver, “but first she needs to get off at Thirteenth and West.”
“Wait—that’s way out of your way,” Allison protests.
“It’s okay. You’re obviously in a hurry.”
“No, I know, but . . .” Jacobs is notorious for starting late. She can wait for another cab.
“It’s fine.”
“Never mind,” she says, unsettled by this stranger’s willingness to accommodate her. What, she wonders uneasily, does he expect in return? “Listen, I’ll just—”
“No, I mean it. It’s fine.” He motions at the cabbie, who shrugs, starts the meter, and inches them out into the downtown traffic.
Alrighty then. Allison faces forward, crossing her arms across her midsection.
She tried to let this guy off the hook. It’s going to take him forever to get to Brooklyn with a West Side detour, but . . .
That’s his problem.
And mine is solved.
Allison leans back, inhaling the fruity cardboard air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror and the faint cigarette scent wafting from her backseat companion. Unlike some reformed smokers, she doesn’t mind it. In fact, she finds the tobacco smell pleasantly nostalgic, sending her back to college bars and rainy, lazy, coffee-drinking afternoons in Pittsburgh.
Sometimes—wrong as it is, weak as it is—she finds herself craving a cigarette, even now.
When she first got to New York three years ago, she quickly went from mooching happy hour butts to a two-pack-a-day habit. Smoking helped mitigate job stress, city stress, love life stress—and kept her thin. In her industry, that’s crucial.
Then her old college roommate Becky came to New York for a job interview and they got together—Becky’s idea, of course. Though they’d been friends in college, Allison had closed that chapter of her life and wasn’t anxious to revisit the past. Nothing against Becky, but for Allison, moving on meant leaving people behind. It was an old trick she’d learned from her childhood friend Tammy, who certainly had the right idea. Life was just easier that way.
As they caught up over drinks, Becky watched Allison light a fresh cigarette from the stub of another, and said, “Wow, I always thought you were too much of a control freak for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean chain-smoking. Cigarettes can kill you, you know.”
Allison shrugged. “We’re all going to die someday.”
“Maybe, but—”
“Maybe? Not maybe, Becky! Everyone dies. It’s a fact of life.”
Becky gave her a long look, then shrugged. “Whatever. All I know is that you’re an addict if you smoke like that, Al. And addicts aren’t in control.”
She was right, of course. Jesus. The moment she heard the word addict, Allison made up her mind to quit.
But she waited until after Becky had flown home to Pennsylvania. Waited because she hates I-told-you-so’s, and waited because, yes, she likes to be in control. Likes, wants, needs . . . she needs to be in control.
Who’d blame her? After all she’s been through in her life . . .
“So . . . I’m Bill.”
She turns to look at the man who commandeered her cab—or vice versa, depending on how one chooses to look at it.
“Allison.”
“Nice to meet you, Allison. What do you do?”
“I’m a style editor at 7th Avenue magazine. How about you?” she asks, noting that he has green eyes. Nebraska-field green eyes.
“Finance,” he tells her. “I’m an investment banker.”
Ah—forget the field. Those are money green eyes.
This guy couldn’t be more not your type.
Allison has nothing against money, of course—but she’s completely clueless about finance. Then again, she also knows nothing about science, yet she was head-over-heels in love with a biologist for almost a year.
And look how that turned out.
Justin was the one person in New York who got to know the real Allison—at least, as much of herself as she’s ever shared with anyone. She’d dated here and there in college, but those relationships were superficial and physical.
With Justin, she eventually learned to let her guard down a bit. She shared things with him she’d never shared with anyone. Yes, and as soon as she was comfortable with the idea of someone having access to her past, her apartment, her innermost thoughts—bam. It was over.
Their June breakup was abysmal. Cheating, lies, accusations . . .
Thank God she’s finally over it. Over it, and moving on.
Just yesterday, while folding dryer-hot clothes in her building’s laundry room, she mentioned to her chatterbox neighbor Kristina that she’s ready to meet someone new.
“Yeah? Good luck with that.” Kristina, an aspiring Broadway actress, shook her mop of dark curly hair. “Do you know that it’s been almost six months since Ray and I broke up? Half a year. I figured I’d have replaced him by now—not to mention all the stuff he took when he moved out. But I’m not having any luck getting a new boyfriend, or a new espresso maker or CD player or—”
“Um,” Allison cut in, “it can’t be that hard to get a new CD player, can it?”
“It’s impossible when you’re flat broke. I can’t even afford a new Walkman. I haven’t had music in my apartment for months now, and it’s killing me. Meanwhile,” she went on, clearly following her own unique brand of logic, “I’ve figured out that the only available guys in this city are married.”
“Doesn’t that mean they’re unavailable?”
Kristina leveled a look at Allison. “Not necessarily.”
Allison didn’t know what to say to that. For all her eagerly embraced big-city sophistication, the Midwestern farm girl in her occasionally stirs with disapproval.
Anyway, Kristina certainly had a point about the scarcity of eligible men in New York. The fashion industry isn’t exactly crawling with straight guys, and where else—when—is Allison supposed to meet someone? She works too hard and late to have much of a weeknight social life, and on summer weekends, the city becomes a ghost town. Pretty much everyone who’s anyone leaves for the Hamptons—which she definitely can’t afford.
Probably because you know nothing about finance and investments, right?
Maybe it’s time to learn. People seem to keep talking about the flat economy, and here she is with no nest egg and very little to show for the fairly decent salary she’s finally making—other than the overflowing contents of the closet in her one-bedroom apartment, which, incidentally, is decorated with a lot of really great furniture.
Then again, is that so wrong? What else in this life—including a beach house share—can possibly guarantee the immediate gratification of an Alexander McQueen dress or Dolce & Gabbana bags?
Not even just immediate gratification. Unlike summer, or relationships, a good purse can last forever.
“So you’re coming from work?” Bill asks, and she steals a glance at his left hand. Aha! Ring finger bare. A good sign.
Marital status might not matter to Kristina. It might not matter to a lot of women.
Memories are good for nothin’. . .
Well, it matters to Allison. Single is essential.
“Actually, I was at the BCBG show.” At his blank look, she adds, “Max Azria.” Still blank. “The designer. It’s Fashion Week.”
“Oh.”
He might as well have said, Whatever.
“How about you?” she asks, to keep the conversation going. “Coming from work?”
He shakes his head. “My office is downtown. I had a client meeting up here after the market closed.”
“Oh.” Whatever.
So much for scintillating small talk.
Whatever . . .
Story of my life.
Allison leans her head back wearily, gazing through the rain-spattered windshield at lower Manhattan’s distant skyline, the twin towers shrouded in misty twilight gloom.
Stepping off the elevator on the fifth floor after a long, hard day of secretarial temp work, Kristina Haines immediately spots the large box sitting in front of her door.
What on earth . . . ?
Someone left her a gift. Wow.
A gift wrapped in white paper stamped with red hearts, topped by a big red bow.
Hearts. Kristina breaks into a smile. Her downstairs neighbor Mack finally made his move. It’s about time.
She unlocks the door, then holds it open with her foot as she contorts herself to lift the box. It’s heavy—but not too heavy.
The wrapping is clumsily assembled, to say the least. Uneven seams, and too much tape—almost as though a child wrapped it. Or a guy. Most guys probably aren’t very good at wrapping presents.
She wouldn’t know. The only thing her lousy ex-boyfriend ever gave her was an occasional bouquet of flowers from the Korean deli on the corner. Usually only when he guiltily came home late—from God-knows-where—and the flowers were half price and wilted.
Giddy, Kristina puts the gift-wrapped box on the table and tilts it around, checking all six sides for a card, but finds nothing. It must be inside.
She tears off the paper . . .
A CD player?
That’s what the box says.
She smiles. It’s so sweet. She’s mentioned a few times to Mack how much she misses having music in the house.
There’s a shrink-wrapped CD stuck to the top with Scotch tape: Songs in A Minor by that new R&B singer Alicia Keys.
Hmm. R&B is not really her style. She’s kind of surprised Mack didn’t give her a collection of show tunes or something—he knows, after all, about her musical theater aspirations.
Maybe he figures she has all the Broadway cast albums—which she pretty much does— and wants to introduce her to something new. He’s really into music—not that he’s ever mentioned this particular artist.
Oh well—maybe she’ll like it. Maybe the songs will have special meaning to her.
To us. Me and Mack.
Her heart is pounding. This is the turning point. This means there actually is going to be a me and Mack.
She pulls the CD off the package and sets it aside. Still no card, she notes—and the flaps are sealed with thick manufacturing tape, meaning it’s not inside the box, either.
Okay—so he obviously wants to be her secret admirer for the time being. She’ll play along.
Smiling, she opens the silverware drawer and searches for a blade. A butter knife won’t cut it—literally—and of course Kristina, being a vegetarian, doesn’t have steak knives.
She jerks open another drawer. Ah, there—it figures Ray didn’t take the paring knives when he left; he never did any cooking. Not that Kristina does, either.
She grabs a nice big sharp knife from the drawer, idly wondering what Mack’s favorite meal is, whether it involves meat, and whether she can learn to prepare it if it does—or even if it doesn’t. Who knows? Maybe she’ll become a gourmet chef.
Oh, come on. Really? You?
She glances at the whiteboard attached to the kitchenette’s lone patch of wall space. Ray used it to keep himself organized. It was, ironically, one of the few things he left behind when he moved to his new apartment down on Warren Street.
The whiteboard was covered with his usual lists, reminders, and appointments.
Kristina took smug satisfaction in erasing it all. Then she wrote, in its place, Anything is possible.
Her neighbor Allison, who lives in the apartment below, once said that, on a gloomy day when Kristina really needed to hear it.
“Anything is possible—that’s my philosophy,” Allison told her, and Kristina decided to make it her own as well.
She looks at the words every day, and reminds herself that she believes them.
Especially now.
After hurriedly slitting the seams on the box, she tosses the knife aside, a little too carelessly. Oops—a momentary inspection reveals that she just nicked the countertop. Oh well. She’s not going to live here forever, and anyway, it’s cheap, crappy laminate.
She turns her attention back to the box, opening it and pulling out her Styrofoam-encased prize.
“Wow, Mack,” she whispers, thrilled. This is definitely the most romantic gift she’s ever received.
As the cab slows in front of Pier 54, Allison glances at the meter and fumbles in her bag for her wallet.
“Here’s my card.”
She looks up to see her backseat partner—was his name Bob? Bill?—holding out a business card. Surprised, she takes it, looks at it.
Bill.
William, to be exact. William A. Kenyon, of Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc.
“Why don’t you give me a call and we’ll go out sometime,” he suggests, and she’s even more surprised, considering he hasn’t said two words to her since midtown.
“I . . . I have one, too, somewhere in here.” She goes back to digging in her purse, feeling around for the small leather case.
“One?”
“A business card.”
“That’s okay,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Just call me.”
The cab pulls up alongside the curb. She probably should give Bill back his card with a thanks, but no thanks.
Instead, because it’s easier—and because she’s lonely, and it might be nice to go on a date some night, even with a Mr. Wrong who expects her to do the calling—she tucks the card into her bag. “Sure.”
Maybe she’ll call. Probably not, though.
She pulls out some cash, offers him a twenty. “Here—for the cab. I really appreciate it.”
“Not a problem. Keep it.”
“But—”
“Just call me,” he says again. “Maybe I’ll let you buy me a drink.”
Oh, ick. She opens the door and gets out with a wave. “Thanks again.”
“See you later.”
I highly doubt that, Bill.
Putting him out of her head, she moves on.
It’s taken Kristina quite some time to remove the packaging and set up the CD player. It’s a lot more complicated than her old one; it plays multiple CDs, and there are a number of different settings: shuffle, song repeat . . .
She figures she’ll learn how to work it all when she reads the instruction leaflet—which will have to wait.
Right now, she just wants to hear some more music.
Not Alicia Keys, though.
Sorry, Mack.
She did put on the CD he gave her, but wound up fast-forwarding her way through the album. It’s not really her cup of tea, and anyway, she’s anxious to hear all her old favorites. It’s been much too long.
Now she’s listening to Barbara Cook singing Sondheim—ah, that’s much more like it—and keeping a close eye on her watch.
Every weeknight at around seven forty-five, Mack gets off the subway over at the Canal Street station, then walks the couple of blocks to his apartment building.
Our apartment building.
Kristina prefers to think of it that way because she and Mack do, after all, live under one roof. Just not behind the same door.
But maybe someday . . . especially now that he’s made his first move, after all these weeks of flirting . . .
Anything is possible.
When the weather is nice enough for Kristina to perch on the fifth floor fire escape, she’s able to spot Mack in the distance, heading home. She discovered that by accident one evening about two months ago, when she was sitting out there to escape the heat.
This is an old building; no central air. Kristina used to have a small window unit, but of course Ray took it when he left her like the Grinch leaving Whoville.
The breakup was the first in a series of events that left Kristina wondering if she should just give up and move away, make a fresh start.
That was before she fell for Mack, of course.
Anything can happen.
That’s why you love New York. A girl like you can be waitressing one day, starring on Broadway the next.
That’s how it was supposed to work, anyway. But right after Ray moved out, Kristina lost her waitressing job because the health department closed down the restaurant. Then she tore a ligament during a dance workout—which wound up requiring surgery she couldn’t afford, particularly without health insurance. And of course, the injury has put her Broadway show auditions on hold for God only knows how long.
As a result, she’s been isolated not just from the friends she and Ray shared as a couple, but now also from all her dancer friends and all her restaurant friends—pretty much her entire social circle. She doesn’t even have family now, other than her mother’s sister in England and her father’s cousins somewhere out West, who didn’t even show up for his funeral.
It’s been a long, hot, lonely summer, and Kristina has spent it falling madly in love with the guy who moved into the apartment below her on June first . . . with his wife.
Yeah. Mack is married.
Carrie. That’s her name. Mack’s wife.
Kristina rarely sees her. She has some kind of Wall Street job, and she leaves the building really early in the morning, way before Kristina gets up.
But now that Kristina is doing office temp work at an accounting firm in the Chrysler building, Mack is pretty much on the same morning schedule.
She used to hate riding in the building’s ancient elevator, which takes forever even without stopping at other floors. She used to particularly hate when it stopped on the fourth floor and Mrs. Ogden, who smelled of old fish, would get on. Kristina was secretly almost relieved when her granddaughter found her dead on the floor of her apartment one day, having fallen, the way elderly people do, and hit her head.
Now that Mrs. Ogden is gone and Mack has moved into her apartment, whenever Kristina presses the down button and the doors close after her, she’s disappointed when it descends all the way to the lobby. On good days, it creaks to a stop on the fourth floor and Mack steps in.
He’s not the best-looking guy she’s ever known. He’s nice and tall, but somewhat lanky for her taste. His black hair is razor-trimmed above his ears, and he’s usually freshly shaven and wearing a suit. A little too put together, as far as she’s concerned. She’s always been a fan of shaggy-haired guys, the kind who go around in ragged jeans with five o’clock shadow; guys who might be hiding a tattoo or . . . something. Guys with an edge.
That’s so not Mack.
But somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter. For some reason, she’s drawn to him anyway.
Wife and all.
“I didn’t go looking for it. It just happened.”
How often did she hear those words from her mother, a British war bride? Mum liked to tell the story of how she fell for Kristina’s father, a young American soldier who’d married his high school sweetheart the evening before he shipped out.
Their love story was a romantic and thrilling happily-ever-after tale. Daddy divorced his hometown wife right after the war, married Mum, and they stayed madly in love until the end. Mum died a few years ago with Daddy holding her hand, and he went less than six months later—a heart attack, officially, but Kristina is certain it was a broken heart. He simply didn’t want to live without the woman he loved.
Anyway—Kristina didn’t go looking for this, either. It just happened. On that hot July night when she happened to be hanging out on her fire escape and spotted Mack below, something about him just clicked with her.
Maybe it was the way he was walking—the way his feet expertly navigated the crowded city sidewalks while his head seemed to be somewhere else, a million miles away. Somehow she sensed, even from a distance, an aura of unsettledness about him.
Until that night she’d assumed—when briefly she’d seen him in passing, and even more briefly given him a passing thought—that he was one of those boring, happily married, hopelessly domesticated guys.
That night on the fire escape, though, it occurred to her that that might not be the case.
Now she knows for sure that it isn’t.
Poor Mack.
And poor me, Kristina thinks, pacing her apartment, wondering how she’ll manage to accidentally-on-purpose run into Mack tonight. The fire escape is out of the question in this weather.
Too bad, because it’s the perfect setup. Whenever Kristina spots Mack in the distance, coming down the block, she dashes down the four flights of stairs to the lobby. Then she takes her time checking her mailbox in the small vestibule by the door, waiting for him to come in from the street.
He always seems pleasantly surprised to see her. If he thinks it’s unusual that she’s often getting her mail at the precise moment he walks in, he hasn’t mentioned it.
They ride up in the elevator together, and she’s grateful that it takes so long, even though there’s never enough time alone with him. Sometimes she wishes the elevator would just get stuck between floors. She fantasizes about what might happen between them then, trapped in that small space together for hours, even days.
She wonders who would make the first move. Usually she imagines that it would be he because that’s sexier, but in reality, she probably wants it to be she. Yes, because part of what she loves about him is that he’s a decent guy. A guy who’s willing to make a commitment. A guy who wouldn’t make a pass at another woman.
Maybe that’s a crazy way to think about it, but Kristina can’t help it.
Crazy.
She’s crazy about him.
Maybe just plain old crazy, Kristina thinks as, aptly, Barbara Cook croons Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind.”
Kristina lives for those elevator rides with Mack. She’s pretty sure that one of these days, they’re going to wind up in each other’s arms regardless of whether they’re stuck between floors.
After all, he’s not happy with his wife. He hasn’t come right out and said that, but she can read between the lines; can see the flicker of discontentment in his green eyes whenever he mentions Carrie.
Is it any wonder? His wife doesn’t exactly have a sparkling personality. Not that she’s unpleasant, but . . . she’s just kind of quiet. Keeps to herself.
Plus, Carrie used to be in relatively good shape and pretty, but Kristina has noticed an obvious weight gain lately. Even her face looks bloated. In fact, she actually asked Mack—maybe a week or so ago—if Carrie was pregnant.
She was dreading the answer, because she knew that Mack having kids would change everything. It’s one thing to be in love with a married man. It’s another to be in love with a married man with a child.
She was secretly elated when he told her that Carrie wasn’t pregnant, and she could swear Mack actually winced when he said it.
Obviously, his wife is simply letting herself go, and when that happens, the marriage is in trouble.
Barbara Cook has stopped singing.
Kristina wants to hear the song again. She should probably figure out how to use the replay setting, but she’s too wrapped up in Mack to figure out anything more complicated than pressing the play button.
“The sun comes up, I think about you . . .”
Yeah, tell me about it, Barbara.
Kristina hasn’t even seen Mack since Friday night, but it’s hardly out of sight, out of mind.
She spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the building’s basement laundry room, because sometimes she runs into him there over the weekend. This time, all she got for the effort was the knowledge that every stitch of clothing, bedding, and bath linens she owns is clean.
And now, because she can’t wait outside in the rain and she can’t quite see down the street from the window, she may have to go another whole day without seeing him.
That can’t happen.
Maybe she should plant herself downstairs in the vestibule and wait till he shows up.
There’s really no logical reason for a tenant to linger there, though—and there’s one pretty solid reason not to.
Jerry.
You never know when you’re going to run into the building’s part-time maintenance man, who seems to lurk around the hallways even when he’s not fixing something. He works at several other buildings in the neighborhood—Kristina knows that because he once told her, in one of his awkward, stilted, non-sequitur attempts at conversation. But lately, he’s been around here a lot more than usual.
Or maybe it’s just that Kristina herself has been around here a lot more than usual, and she keeps running into him.
“Doesn’t he give you the creeps?” Kristina asked her neighbor Allison, when they were chatting in the laundry room yesterday afternoon. Jerry had come in and out several times, ostensibly to fix a washing machine that seemed to be working just fine.
“I don’t know—he’s just kind of simple-minded, I think.”
“What about the stuff that’s been stolen around the building lately?” Kristina pointed out. A few tenants have reported thefts over the past couple of months. Not major heists—just loose cash, some jewelry, and—oddly—women’s clothing.
“Including their underwear,” Kristina added with a shudder.
“How do you know that?”
“They told me—you know, the people who got robbed. Whoever did it is a pervert, and it seems like he must have had keys, too. I mean, it’s not like the doors were broken down.”
“Yeah, but the windows were open. Someone could have easily crawled in from the fire escapes. Look, I really doubt it was Jerry. He’s really just a kid—”
“He’s twenty-four.”
“That’s how old I am, exactly. He seems younger. How do you know his age?”
“He told me once. Like I care.”
“Well, in any case . . .” Allison shrugged. “I can’t imagine him hurting a fly. He seems harmless.”
“Okay, maybe he’s not a thief. But harmless? The way he was looking at us . . .” Kristina shuddered again.
“Not us—you.”
True. For some reason, Jerry didn’t appear to be the least bit interested in Allison, who happens to be a drop-dead-gorgeous blue-eyed blonde.
No, he seemed fixated on Kristina—continually sneaking glances at her as he crouched in front of the washing machine, then falling all over himself to retrieve a rolling quarter she dropped.
Yes, he always acts utterly smitten when she sees him around the building—which is much more often than she’d like. It’s almost as if he’s lying in wait for her . . .
The way you lie in wait for Mack?
She weighs the risk of running into Jerry if she goes downstairs right now against the risk of not seeing Mack for another twenty-four hours.
Easy decision.
Kristina hurries over to the full-length mirror.
Checking her reflection, she tosses aside the tweed suit jacket she wore to her temp job and unbuttons the second button of the white blouse beneath. After a moment’s hesitation, she also daringly unbuttons the third, for optimum cleavage.
Hmm—still a little frumpy. She makes a mental note to take her knee-length skirt to a tailor to be shortened after this wearing. The suit is a couple of seasons old, but it’s still decent, and Allison mentioned yesterday that miniskirts are back in style. Kristina has great legs, a dancer’s legs. Why not show them off?
She does a quick makeup touch-up and dabs perfume behind each ear. Then she spreads her fingers and rakes them from her scalp to the ends of her curly, shoulder-length dark hair, tousling it just enough to look bedroom sexy, but not bed-head messy.
There. Good to go.
She slips her feet into a pair of pumps and hurries for the door, glancing at her watch. Perfect timing.
She hurriedly descends four flights of steps to the first floor, opens the door from the stairwell . . .
And literally crashes into the bulky, imposing figure of Jerry.
Kristina wobbles on her feet. Jerry puts his hands on her upper arms to steady her. Her nostrils twitch at the ripe scent of his sweat.
“Sorry!” he says.
“It’s okay.”
She’s no longer wobbling, but he doesn’t move his hands. She looks pointedly down at them. His fingernails are dirty. His grip is unpleasantly strong.
She flinches.
He gets the hint.
Removing his hands, he shoves them into the pockets of his jeans. A lot of young guys are wearing their pants baggy, ragged, and low lately—a trendy nod to gangsta rap—but Kristina knows Jerry isn’t making a fashion statement.
No, with him, it’s classic, clueless-handyman butt crack.
Between that and his breath—which is bad, no surprise there—it’s all she can do to hold back a shudder. Especially when she sees him take in her deliberately displayed décolletage.
That’s not for you! That’s for Mack!
Beneath his blond crew cut, Jerry’s plump face is flushed. “Kristina . . .”
He knows her first name?
Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, but somehow, it is. Or at least, the sound of it on his lips. Surprising, and repulsive.
“Are you busy?”
“Busy?”
“Yeah. I thought . . .” His hands push deeper into his pockets, his shoulders hunching toward his jowls. He licks his lips and a strand of saliva stretches between them until he speaks again. “I thought—I mean if you aren’t busy—then maybe I thought—I mean, I did think—that you could . . . that maybe we . . .”
Dear God, no. No, no, no.
She’s shaking her head, but he doesn’t seem to get it; he keeps right on fumbling his way through an invitation of some sort.
“If you like cake, I thought . . . Do you like cake? I do. I love it. And we could . . . I could—”
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” she blurts. “Sorry.”
He stares at her, eyes wide, jaw hanging.
“Look.” She tries to brush past him. “I’m really busy and—”
“If you’re busy,” he blurts, stepping into her path, “we can—”
We? This time, she doesn’t even try to hold back the shudder.
“Thanks, but I can’t. No. No.”
She waits for him to retreat, perhaps hanging his head in defeat.
But he stands there in front of her, looking at her, his gray eyes shadowed.
Kristina shrugs and starts to step around him.
Jerry holds his ground.
Unsure whether to be infuriated or frightened, she casts her gaze at the ceiling and says, “Excuse me. I need to get my mail.”
Still, he doesn’t move.
How dare he? He’s just standing here, blocking her way.
“If you don’t move,” she says levelly, “I’m going to call the cops and have you arrested.”
Without another word, Jerry steps aside.
Shaken, Kristina walks down the corridor toward the vestibule, eyes focused straight ahead.
But she can feel him standing there staring after her, and it’s giving her the creeps.
Just before she enters the vestibule, she impulsively lifts her right arm and raises her middle finger.
“Jerk,” she mutters, flipping him off without looking back to see if he’s still watching.
Something tells her that he is.