Free Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Anna Mostyn, with an address given in the West Eighties in New York.

    "Oh, that's good," said Mrs. Hardie, "you never know how girls will take that these days, but"—she looked up at the new guest's face, and was stopped short by the indifference in the long blue eyes. Her first, almost unconscious thought was she's a cold one, and this was followed by the perfectly conscious reflection that this girl would have no trouble handling Jim. "Anna's such a nice old-fashioned name."

    "Yes."

    Mrs. Hardie, a little disconcerted, rang the bell for her son.

    "I'm really a very old-fashioned sort of person," the girl said.

    "Didn't you say you had family here in town?"

    "I did, but it was a long time ago."

    "It's just that I didn't recognize the name."

    "No, you wouldn't. An aunt of mine lived here once.

    Her name was Eva Galli. But you probably wouldn't have known her."

    (Ricky's wife, sitting alone in the restaurant, suddenly snapped her fingers and exclaimed, "I'm getting old." She had remembered of whom the girl had reminded her. The waiter, a high-school dropout by the look of him, bent over the table, not quite sure how to give her the bill after the gentleman had stormed off, and uttered "Huh?" "Oh get away, you fool," she said, wondering why it was that while one half of high-school dropouts looked like thugs, the other half resembled physicists. "Oh, here, better give me the bill before you faint.")

    Jim Hardie kept sneaking looks at her all the way up the stairs, and once he had opened her room and put her suitcase down offered, "I hope you're going to stick around a good long time."

    "I thought your mother said you hated Milburn."

    "I don't hate it so much anymore," he said, giving her the look which had melted Penny Draeger in the back seat of his car the previous night.

    "Why?"

    "Ah," he said, not knowing how to continue in the face of her total refusal to be melted. "Ah, you know."

    "I do?"

    "Look. I just mean you're a goddamn great-lookin' lady, that's all. You know what I mean. You got a lot of style." He decided to be bolder than he felt "Ladies with style turn me on."

    "Do they?"

    "Yeah." He nodded. He couldn't figure her out. If she was a nonstarter, she would have told him to leave at the beginning. But though she let him hang around, she wasn't looking interested or flattered—she wasn't even looking amused. Then she surprised him by doing what he had been half hoping she would do, and took off her coat. She wasn't much in the chest department, but she had good legs. Then, entirely without warning, a total awareness of her body assaulted him—a blast of pure sensuality, nothing like the steamy posturing of Penny Draeger or the other high-school girls he had bedded, a wave of pure and cold sensuality which dwindled him.

    "Ah," he said, desperately hoping she would not send him away, "I bet you had some kind of great job in the city. What are you, in television or something?"

    "No."

    He fidgeted. "Well, it's not like I don't know your address or anything. Maybe I could drop in sometime, have a talk?"

    "Maybe. Do you talk?"

    "Hah. Yeah, well, guess I better get back downstairs. I mean, I gotta lot of storm windows to put up, this cold weather we got ..."

    She sat on the bed and held her hand out. Half reluctantly, he went toward her. When he touched her hand, she placed a neatly folded dollar bill in his palm. "I'll tell you what I think," she said. "I think bellboys shouldn't wear jeans. They look sloppy."

    He accepted the dollar, too confused to thank her, and fled.

    (It was Ann-Veronica Moore, thought Stella, that actress at John's house the night Edward died. Stella allowed the intimidated boy to hold her fur coat. Ann-Veronica Moore, why should I think of her? I only saw her for a few minutes, and that girl really didn't resemble her at all.)
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    No, Sears continued, I was resolved to help that poor creature, Fenny Bate. I didn't think there was such a thing as a bad boy, unless