Free Act of God by Jill Ciment Page B

camisole, and jeans were hanging over the tub. Was he seeing someone and hadn’t told her? Whoever she was had good taste, though Vida didn’t care for the uniform red cast to all the fabrics. Only as she was changing the bed sheets did it strike her—didn’t she own the exact same dress, camisole, and jeans? She left the bed unmade to check the labels. Her size. She slipped her hand into the jeans’ left front pocketand her index finger found the familiar hole. Had she left some clothes at his house? She hadn’t spent the night here in six months. Sam had been over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, had he stolen her clothes? Why would he steal her clothes? Why would he dye them red? Maybe she was making too much of a wild coincidence, albeit an unsettling one. He’d always said he admired her style. Why not expect him to be attracted to a new lover who had similar tastes? The clothes weren’t exactly haute couture originals. She was a size eight, common enough. And doesn’t everyone have a hole in her pocket?

Ashley hid in the broom closet when she heard someone open the front door. According to the hen’s datebook, the actor wasn’t supposed to return for a month. Whoever was inside walked with a light, female stride. When Ashley heard the bathroom door close, she quietly tiptoed out of the apartment, wearing only the actor’s kimono. Her temples were pounding from startled flight, but she strolled down the hall as if she belonged there. She rode the elevator to the top floor. The penthouse key was on the ledge where the doorman had left it.
    Closing the door behind her, the darkness was so abrupt and depthless that it looked as if someone had blacked out the three glass walls, or maybe the thirtieth floor was engulfed in the black clouds, or maybe it was raining oil. If a city was out there, she couldn’t see it.
    She didn’t dare turn on any lights. Who knew who was watching? She groped her way across the vast nothingness, a blind beggar crossing the steppes, exposed to whatever hunts at night, unaware of the precipice ahead.
    When she bumped into what she discovered was a bed, she climbed under the covers (there were no sheets), curled into a ball, and drew the spread over her head until the terrifying emptiness became only a sliver of darkness. Why had she come to this alien land? How had she ended up so alone?Where was her mama? Everyone back in Omsk was right: she was an insignificuntski, she had no business thinking she could make it in America.
    Self-disgust, like bile, rose from her gullet to her throat and she threw back the covers. By touch, she returned to the factory-sized living room, determined to learn how Americans experience stormy black nights. They sit comfortably on their deep, soft sofas, dry and safe, enjoying the rain’s music. They don’t cower like mice fearing unseen hawks overhead. Darkness isn’t a hole you hide in; it’s the cosmos.

The cab from the nursing home back to the Metropolitan Hotel cost Kat over a hundred dollars. She tried to pay with Edith’s American Express card, but the card was denied. She gave the cabbie a fistful of cash from Edith’s purse. On the way through the lobby, the night clerk, the kind Indian man who had found Kat a drink on that dreadful first night, asked if he could speak to her.
    “Your sister’s credit card has been frozen. Can we please have another one?”
    Kat handed over Edith’s Visa, Discover, and MasterCard, all denied. She paid cash for the night, leaving her only forty dollars and some coins. She had Edith’s ATM card, but Edith hadn’t shared the password. Why hadn’t Edith trusted her with anything? Then she remembered her fuckup about the pills. No wonder Edith hadn’t trusted her. But not to tell her who Alice was?
    Kat hadn’t let the maid into their room since Edith’s death, but the maid had come today. Both beds were made. She suddenly missed the naked mattress. Tomorrow morning she’d see if one of the neighbors