Free SWF Seeks Same by John Lutz

been married then, but so what? That shouldn’t have caused such a problem. He hadn’t asked her to go off on a guilt spree and spill her guts to her husband, who went crazy and came looking for Mayfair at home. At fucking home with the wife and kids, no less. Jesus, what a scene? What a night!
    Mayfair had forgiven Elaine for that error in judgment, and even helped to find her an apartment to begin the single life she still led. So it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to the bitch. She was having a ball now, dating different guys all the time, accepting gifts from them. Not a hooker, though. A secretary. Mayfair almost smiled.
    The scene with Elaine’s husband had hastened his own inevitable divorce. His wife Janice and the kids were living in Buffalo now. Everybody seemed better off. Mayfair was certainly happier. He supposed that indirectly he could thank Elaine for that.
    He leaned back in his padded swivel chair and studied her as she bent over a lower file drawer. She still had the wasp waist and trim ass, the nice legs.
    Elaine straightened up and smoothed her skirt. Her calf muscle bulged as she swiveled a foot back into one of her high-heeled shoes that had worked halfway off. Sexy. She was holding the file folder she’d been seeking.
    She turned around and aimed her heavily made-up eyes at him. “Allie Jones coming in today?”
    “She’s scheduled,” Mayfair said. Allie was tutoring Elaine in the use of the computer. Elaine was in the fold and would stay there. Mayfair would point this out to Allie to let her know the company’s need for her expertise had decreased. In fact, she herself wasn’t actually
essential
at this juncture. But he’d hint that there was no problem; she might increase her value in other ways.
    About ten o’clock Allie and Elaine would isolate themselves in a corner of the anteroom, Elaine at her new computer while Allie sat next to her in the red and brown Danish chair pulled over from where it was usually angled against the wall. Patiently, professionally, Allie would explain to her what she was doing right, what she was doing wrong. Tutor and student got along well; both were bright and adaptable people.
    He smiled. It wouldn’t be long before they had something else in common.
    She was getting ready to leave the apartment and ride the subway downtown to Fashion Fortunes when the phone rang.
    Allie put down the earring post she’d been trying to work through her pierced ear, turned away from her dresser, and answered it with an absent “‘Lo.”
    Her face became serious. Then bone white. She squared her jaw and slammed down the receiver so violently she pinched a finger between it and its cradle.
    A psycho. Whoever had called her had to be a psycho to say the things she’d heard on the phone, to even imagine what he’d said he’d do to her.
Go someplace and masturbate, buddy! But leave me alone
!
    She remembered the phone call she’d received earlier, the man who’d hung up on her. Might both callers have been the same person? It was possible, but she knew the odds didn’t necessarily favor it. The city was full of sick people who regarded telephones as a means of erotic stimulation, Allie told herself. Any single woman in this city could expect that sort of phone call now and then. It was as much a part of life in Manhattan as being approached by panhandlers or getting cursed at by cabbies.
    Yet there was a familiarity about both calls that chilled her. The man—or men—had used her name. Casually called her “Allie.” Not “Allison”—“Allie.” Old chums. More than chums.
    She grimaced and wiped her hand on her skirt, as if contact with the phone had soiled it.
    Jones was such a common surname that she’d used her first name in the phone directory instead of merely her initial, as was the custom of most single women who wanted or needed to be listed. Allie had been uneasy about it at the time, and would have preferred an unlisted number