Free Over Her Dead Body by Kate White Page A

the eleven o’clock local news. For the next few minutes I paced my apartment, nursing my wine but barely tasting it. I didn’t particularly like Mona, but seeing her injured like that was immensely disturbing.
    For the first time in a long time, I also felt a desperate craving for the company of Jack Herlihy, the guy who’d been my boyfriend until January. Jack was a psychologist I’d met while researching an article about a troubled young girl who’d made everyone think there was a poltergeist in the house. Though I’d fought my initial attraction to him, we’d ended up in a steady, monogamous relationship last fall. A professor at Georgetown, he lived in Washington, D.C., during the week but flew to New York every weekend, and in the fall he would begin teaching at NYU. We’d spent our time together prowling around the Village, seeing movies, listening to music at little clubs, skiing, and having lots of very nice sex.
    Then in January he’d knocked me off guard by telling me he wanted us to move in together—with the expectation that we would probably marry in the future. I was crazy about Jack, but as soon as the words spilled from his mouth I knew that I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. I’d been divorced for just over two years, and I needed more time to figure out how I’d blown things so profoundly and how I could make sure I was never guilty of such bad judgment again. Jack broke things off with me, saying that it had to be all or nothing for him. It stung like a bitch at first, though I knew I’d made the right call. As the weeks went by, the ache subsided—perhaps more quickly than I’d anticipated.
    But tonight all I could think about was how great it would be to have Jack to talk to. He had that shrink way of asking lots of the right questions, and when I answered them I generally felt an enormous sense of release, like floodwater gushing over sandbags. But there was no Jack anymore, and I was going to have to be a big girl and suck it up.
    I headed for the refrigerator, this time in search of something sweet. In the freezer I found a tub of frozen vanilla yogurt, date and origin unknown. As I popped off the lid, I saw that it looked as old as the south polar ice cap. I scraped off the ice crystals on top and stabbed at it with a spoon. It tasted even worse than it looked.
    As I was tossing the tub in the trash, my home phone rang.
    “Tell me this isn’t happening, will you?” someone said after I’d answered. There was a frantic edge to the voice.
    “Who is this?” I asked.
    “Me, Jessie,” she said after letting out a big sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m just going out of my mind, and since I knew I was near your place, I dialed your number. This whole thing is just so—I don’t know . . .”
    “I know, I know. I’m going out of my mind here as well.”
    “Is it true—that you were there?”
    “Yeah, I was there—I went by to pick up some work. How did you hear that?”
    “I’ve talked to a million people from
Buzz
already tonight. I guess someone who was at the
Track
party heard you found Mona.”
    “Where are you, anyway?” I could hear cars rushing by in the background.
    “I’m right around the corner—on University and Eighth. Look, do you feel like getting together? We could just grab a cup of coffee or something.”
    “Why don’t you come up?” I asked. “We could sit and talk on my terrace.”
    “You don’t mind? I feel like a big buttinsky.”
    I told her I didn’t mind and made sure she had the exact address.
    I retrieved my jean skirt from the corner and wiggled into it again. I liked Jessie, but I didn’t think she was ready to see me in a pair of hot pink boy briefs.
    She arrived five minutes later, breathless, her long glossy brown hair shoved behind her ears.
    “Hey, come on in,” I said, opening the door to her. “I’m glad you called.”
    She was wearing low khaki green pants, a pale green T-shirt, and a necklace made of amber-colored