Free The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons Page A

home from work. Work was frenetic and boisterous, and the apartment was blissfully mute; work had glaring fluorescent light contrast, and the apartment was soothingly dark. Only the changing traffic lights from Broadway flickered through the open windows. Spencer poured himself a J&.B—blended with 116 different malts and 12 grains—and kept it in front of him as he palmed the glass with both hands, turning it around and around like a clock, counting the seconds, the minutes of time passing, looking at the drink, smelling it. He threw off his shoes. He took off his shirt and tie. He used the bathroom, he came back to the table. The drink was still there. Spencer was still there. He sat in the dark, facing the open windows and palmed the drink again.
    He had interviewed the panicked mother, the people this Amy McFadden girl waitressed with at the Copa Cobana, her clique of friends, all confounded but eager to help. He searched the apartment, he checked her bank records, her credit card accounts, the Department of Motor Vehicles.
    And then he met Lily.
    The girl seemed so self-possessed, so unconcerned—and so tanned. No histrionics, no whining from this girl; he liked that. Unlike the other one, Rachel Ortiz. She was an emoter. But Lily had herself and the matter in hand. Unlike the mother, Lily was not unduly anxious. She should talk to Amy’s mother, calm her down. Perhaps Lily was right. Perhaps her missing roommate would just show up.
    Lily was smooth and chocolate bronzed and young, her little spaghetti strap tank top, her short, short denim skirt. Fleetingly he imagined her lying on the white sand in Maui, all moist and hot from the sun, eyes closed, on her back, browning, burning, topless.
    Spencer needed to pour the drink back into the bottle. He never drank on the days he worked, because Spencer knew that his mind played tricks on him when it told him he could do it, could have just one, when it intellectualized and rationalized the glass in his hands. He imagined bringing the whisky to his mouth and downing it in three deep swallows. No dainty swilling, smelling, sipping of the blended malt for him in a quaint dram.
    If life had taught Spencer Patrick O’Malley anything it was that the missing never just showed up, and there was no such thing as having just one.

6
Conversations with Mothers
    “Detective O’Malley…” Lily wished she could ask him to stop, tell him to stop coming to the diner. He’d been to see her five times in ten days. “People are starting to talk,” was all she said.
    “Really? What are they saying?”
    Lily shook her head. “What can I do for you today? Can I get you a cup of coffee? A donut?”
    “Very stereotypical of you, Miss Quinn. No, thank you to both. I am not a donut person. Have you spoken to Amy’s mother?”
    “No, not yet.”
    “You should call her. She would like to hear from you. I think it will be good for her to hear from you. She’s always just this side of hysteria. She calls me four times a day. And I’ve got no leads besides you.”
    “I’m not a lead,” said Lily, taken aback, but then saw he was half-joking. “Detective,” she said, almost pleadingly. “I’ll call her, and I’m going to tell her what I’ve told you. I think she’s worried for nothing. I think Amy just left for a while and will soon turn up safely and everything will be all right. My hunch is that Amy went with whoever she was seeing on vacation.”
    “Oh, so a minute ago you didn’t think she was seeing anyone at all, and now you think she’s eloped?”
    Lily squeezed her hands together. She could not do this anymore, she had to go back to work, she had other customers!
    During her silence, Spencer said, “And do you think Amy would leave on vacation for four weeks without telling anyone and miss her graduation, to which she invited her whole family? Is she that unthinking, that inconsiderate? Wouldn’t she realize her parents would be worried sick about her?”
    “Not