Full Stop (3 page)

Unable to think of anything else to say, Loretta asked: ‘How old
are
you?'

‘Coming up to 40,' Toni said crisply. ‘Listen, Loretta, I have to meet Jay at the bus stop in an hour. It's on 69th and Lex and with this traffic ... What time's your flight Sunday?'

Loretta tried to picture the flight coupon. ‘Nineish, I can't remember exactly. Nine
pm,
I mean.'

‘So you can walk Honey Sunday night? I asked Denny, he's my next-door neighbour, to take her out first thing Monday. I'll give you the spare keys and you can drop them through his door when you leave — 15H. I told the guys on the desk downstairs you were staying, if there's any problem tell them to look in the book.'

‘What book?'

‘It's the building security system, you have to tell them who's staying and for how long. Oftentimes they forget to tell the next guy on shift, so they write it in a book. Let me get you those theatre tickets, where did I put them?' She went back to the closet, disappeared inside and returned with them in her hand. ‘If you can't get rid of it, just cut me a cheque for yours.'

Loretta said: ‘I was going to give you the money for them. It was going to be my treat — '

‘And I messed it up, I know. Here they are.'

As Loretta took the tickets she glanced at the price and her eyes widened. At $40 each, it made sense to try and find a buyer for the spare. With a twinge of anxiety she added: ‘Did you say something about a restaurant?'

‘Yeah, I booked a table at Dad's place so there's no problem about cancelling. But he'd be very pleased to see you, I told him I was bringing a friend. Did I tell you he still makes his own pasta?' She hesitated, taking an off-white white linen dress from the Bloomingdale's bag and holding it against her. ‘What do you think?'

‘Great,' lied Loretta, who thought the proportions were all wrong. American women seemed to be a different shape, either worryingly thin or rather too plump; she had bought hardly anything all the time she was living in San Francisco, relying on the summer clothes she had brought with her from Oxford. Toni's new dress was short and very formal, with padded shoulders and a double-breasted fastening at the front.

‘You really think so?' Toni held the dress away from her. ‘I wonder if it's too short ... Oh well, it's too late now.' She folded the dress and eased it into the holdall, placing a bra and three
pairs of pants on top. ‘You'll need to get a cab to the restaurant,' she said over her shoulder, finishing her packing. ‘I'll call Dad and tell him the meal's on me.'

‘Where is it exactly?'

‘East 26th and Lexington.' She zipped her bag and turned to face Loretta. ‘You haven't been to New York in a while, right? I don't know what your plans are but if you use the subway, make sure and hide your jewellery. Like this,' she explained, tucking the necklace she was wearing inside her shirt. ‘And it's safe to walk in the parks in daylight, but not when it gets dark. Not even at dusk, OK? I'm not trying to scare you but you have to be sensible — stay away from the obvious places, I mean there's no reason why you should want to go to Harlem or Alphabet City –'

‘Alphabet City?'

‘You know, Avenue A, Avenue B, the Lower East Side. It's a big drugs area, there's a lot of people down there out of their heads on crack.' She checked her watch again, becoming visibly anxious. ‘I don't want to be late, let me show you where I keep Honey's food and the poop-a-scoop.'

Loretta had been about to launch into a slightly forced speech thanking Toni for allowing her to borrow the flat. ‘Poop-a-scoop?' she repeated disbelievingly.

‘It's no sweat, really.' Toni went into the kitchen, explaining over her shoulder the city ordinances on animal faeces. ‘Loretta?' she called when her friend didn't move. ‘Could you come in here, please?'

Loretta turned to the dog and wrinkled her nose, revolted by the idea of obeying Toni and getting a rundown on its toilet arrangements. Dog shit, she thought, I'm going to spend my weekend picking up dog shit...

‘Coming,' she said reluctantly, and followed Toni into the windowless kitchenette.

The dog would not let go of her shoe and Loretta was rapidly losing both her temper and her balance. ‘You stupid,
stupid
animal, ' she hissed, hanging on to the heel, the only part of the shoe she had been able to grasp when she came out of the bathroom and saw it in the dog's mouth. ‘You've been for a walk, what more do you want?' The towel she had wrapped round herself when she got out of the bath slipped down, exposing her naked back to the uncurtained windows, and Loretta glanced over one shoulder in an inconclusive attempt to check whether the building across the street was close enough for anyone to see her.

‘Oh for God's sake,' she snapped, turning back to face the dog, which had begun a new tactic of shaking its head violently from side to side to make her relinquish the shoe. Loretta, who hadn't anticipated this problem when she undressed for her bath, could not help thinking what a ridiculous figure she must make if anyone was watching the apartment, the bath towel clutched ever more ineffectually in her free hand as the dog redoubled its efforts. Suddenly the phone rang or, more accurately, emitted a long, muffled burr. Loretta abandoned the shoe and fumbled with the towel as she waited for Toni's answering-machine to cut in; when it didn't, she turned and made a swift check of the area near the double bed from which the sound seemed to be coming. The phone wasn't on the bedside table, nor on the high shelf which seemed to contain Toni's night-time reading, and it took Loretta a moment to realise that the reason for the muted sound was that the handset was actually under the bed. She lifted the cover and groped underneath, her hand colliding with the receiver as the phone
rang for the tenth or eleventh time. Dragging it out, she said breathlessly: ‘Yes? I mean — hello.'

She glanced round the unnaturally tidy room for a pen and paper but couldn't see anything like a desk. It crossed her mind for the first time that there was nowhere in the apartment for Toni to work; surely she needed to bring books and essays home from time to time? Or did she keep everything in her office at Columbia?

‘Sorry,' she said, vaguely aware of a man's voice at the other end of the telephone line. ‘Are you ringing for Toni?'

‘Toni?' said the voice, friendly and laconic. ‘This is Michael.'

‘Michael?' It meant nothing to her so she added: ‘I'm sorry, Toni's not here. She left a couple of hours ago. She's gone away for the weekend.'

There was a longish pause. ‘OK. Who am I talking to?'

‘Um — my name's Loretta Lawson. I'm a friend of Toni's.'

‘Hi, Lor — Loretta, did you say?'

‘That's right.'

‘Hi, Loretta — nice name. Toni's not there?'

‘No,' Loretta said firmly, beginning to sweat again as the cooling effect of the bath wore off. ‘Would you like to leave a message?'

‘Sure. You English, Loretta?'

‘Yes. Hold on a minute while I find some paper.' She checked the room again, smothered an impatient sigh and went to kneel beside her weekend case, still talking into the receiver. ‘I've only just got here, I don't know where Toni keeps pens and things.' Belatedly she remembered the cupboard on the other side of the room from which Toni had produced the theatre tickets, but by now her hand had closed on her own spiral notebook and she was flipping it open at a clean page. ‘She's gone to ... to Long Island, but she'll be back on Monday.'

‘Great. You say you're a friend of hers, Loretta?'

‘Yes. What shall I –'

‘Funny, I don't recall she ever mentioned you. Tell me what you look like, Loretta.'

‘What I look like?'

‘Yeah, like ... are you an English rose?'

She gave a puzzled laugh. ‘I haven't heard that expression for years. No, I think I can safely say I'm not an English rose.'

‘OK. Tell me what colour hair you have.'

‘My hair? What for?'

He was immediately contrite. ‘I'm sorry, Loretta, have I offended you?'

‘Um –' She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a gasp. ‘I thought you wanted to leave a message for Toni. I mean, what's my hair colour got to do with anything?'

‘You're blonde, right?'

‘Well –'

‘You
are
blonde. I truly believe I can tell a whole lot about a person just from hearing their voice and you had to be blonde.'

Loretta had come across a lot of wacky theories in California, people who consulted crystals before changing their lovers or their jobs, but she had never encountered this one. She pulled a face, hoping he wasn't going to give her a lecture on astral waves. ‘All right, I'm blonde,' she said curtly, ‘but what do you want me to tell Toni? Listen, Michael — you did say your name was Michael? I've just got out of the bath and I'm going to the theatre this evening, I really ought to get dressed –'

‘You just got out of the tub? You mean — you're not wearing any clothes?'

‘What is this?' cried Loretta, pulling the towel tightly round her and glancing uneasily at the windows. ‘I mean, if you're a friend of Toni's –'

‘Sure I'm a friend of Toni's. Hey, Loretta, cool it, all I asked was what you're wearing. The temperature drops pretty fast at night and if you're standing there without your clothes you might catch a chill.'

This was so obviously preposterous that Loretta was about to protest when a thought struck her: how did he know she hadn't answered the phone sitting down? A shiver ran down her spine as he pressed on. ‘Are you
nakedj
Loretta? I'm picturing you in
Toni's apartment with your long blonde hair and without your clothes ... You know what I'd like to do, Loretta? I'd like to come on over and –'

‘Shit,'
she exclaimed, not quite believing what she'd heard, and slammed the phone down. She stared at it, her heart thumping and her breath coming in gasps, half expecting Michael — if that was his real name, which she doubted — to call back. When he didn't she began to breathe more easily, telling herself there was nothing to be frightened of, that the flat door was securely locked and anyway a stranger was unlikely to get past the porter on the ground floor. Even so she felt vulnerable, as if the caller really had seen her without her clothes — he seemed to know she had
long
blonde hair — and she realised how unwise she had been to undress without doing something about the windows. She edged towards them, fumbled with the cords to release the Venetian blinds and let out a sigh of relief as the plastic slats tumbled down and blanked out the building across the street. Loretta thought it was an office block, in which case most of the employees would already have gone home, but she felt safer with the blinds shielding her semi-nakedness.

Could
it have been someone across the street? Someone who had been watching Toni's apartment? If so, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that he should choose this of all evenings to call for the first time, catching Loretta so soon after she arrived in the city. Yet if he had phoned before, had been making these calls on a regular basis, wouldn't Toni have warned her before she left? Loretta folded her arms across her chest, over the bath towel, and tried to remember how the conversation had begun. She had supplied both names, her own and Toni's, she was almost certain of that, but had he said anything that suggested he knew who he was talking to? Getting her hair colour right was probably just a lucky guess, either that or he was fixated on blondes; Loretta shivered, not wanting to visualise the possibility that Michael, whoever and wherever he was, had been masturbating while he talked to her. She had read Arthur Miller's autobiography immediately after seeing
A View
From The Bridge
and vividly recalled his description of seeing a man, a total stranger, jerk off as he watched Marilyn Monroe browse in a bookshop.

From the other side of the room, next to the front door, the dog let out a long rumbling snore. Loretta turned to see her shoe, which she had completely forgotten, lying abandoned close to its jaw. ‘Oh well,' she said, trying to make light of what had happened, ‘I suppose you do have a use after all.' Even if Michael had been watching her, even if he knew Toni's address and succeeded in getting past the building security system, there was always the dog to protect her. Still trying to reassure herself, Loretta returned to the cramped bathroom, hung the damp towel over the shower rail and sprayed perfume on her wrists and the backs of her knees. In the living-room she wriggled into a sleeveless black body, snapped the poppers together between her legs with practised efficiency and stepped into slingback shoes with two-inch heels. Her skirt, which she had absent-mindedly left on the sofa, had acquired a light coating of dog hairs which she brushed off with her hand before fastening it round her waist.

Loretta looked at her watch and saw she had twenty minutes to spare before she needed to set off for the theatre. She frowned, thinking there was no point in ringing the number Toni had left, she probably hadn't even arrived in Sag Harbor yet, and a mildly obscene phone call was hardly a reason for dialling nine-one-one. But she wanted to talk to
somebody;
she fastened a necklace, pulled a long scarf from her weekend case to cover her bare arms later in the evening and picked up her notebook. The number she wanted was scrawled in biro at the top of a page and she knelt by the phone, dialling a Washington DC number.

‘Reception. How may I help you?'

‘I'd like to speak to one of your guests, he's called John Tracey.'

‘Do you have Mr Tracey's room number?'

‘No, sorry.'

‘One moment.'

Tracey answered on the first ring, his tone immediately conveying to Loretta that this was not a good time to call. ‘John, it's me. Are you busy?'