Free Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald

cool.
    “In other words, don’t come.”
    “You seem to be making the interpretations.”
    “If you want me to come, invite me.”
    She turned quickly and went off into the crowd. She carried her shoulders straight and her head high.
    I had lunch in a drugstore and went to a double feature. It was full of screaming kids. I sat with my eyes shut and that cold mechanism in the back of my mind was still clicking over, grinding out data.
    I sat through it nearly twice, and came out a little after six. At a liquor store I bought a bottle of cheap rye and took it home. I pushed open the street door. Jo Anne was standing by the mailboxes. She had the look of someone who had been standing there for a long time.
    She looked at the center of my chest rather than at my face. “I came to extend that invitation,” she said. Her lips barely moved as she spoke.
    I kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry about today.”
    “Can I come up?”
    “Of course.”
    We went into my apartment. She acted very strange. She had only been there twice before, and that had been when we were with other couples. She sat on the couch.
    “Drink?” I said.
    “A stiff one, Kyle. Strong as strong.”
    “Depth bomb coming up for the lady.” Her answering smile was meager.
    I made two drinks of rye and water. I made them both stiff. I handed one to her. She lifted it to her lips. Higher and higher, her throat working.
    “Hey!” I said.
    When the glass was empty she lowered it. She made a face and held the glass out. “Make me another, Kyle.”
    “I won’t be responsible,” I said.
    She looked me directly in the eye and said, “I don’t want you to be.”
    I made her second drink weaker than the first. She didn’t seem to notice. But at least she didn’t drink it in the same manner. She only drank half of it in the first attempt.
    I saw the drinks hit her, saw her blue eyes grow a bit vacant, saw her mouth slacken. She lifted the glass and drained it.
    “Feel floaty,” she said.
    “How could you help it? Not being used to it.”
    “Had to have a drink. Have to say something. Walking and thinking and crying and walking some more. People staring at me. Crazy girl.”
    I was standing, looking down at her. “What do you want to say?”
    “Came to tell you to take me, if you want me. Been a sissy. Sissy for years. Scared of it. More scared of it than anything in the world. Girls told me it hurts bad. Terrible. The first time. First time for me, Kyle, Twenty-eight. Firs’ time.”
    I sat beside her. “Not like this, Jo Anne. Not this way. This isn’t what you want.”
    She looked at me with tipsy shrewdness. “Want you, Kyle. For keeps. If this is the way, Jo Anne does it this way. Now. Sorry about … drinking. Scared.”
    “Jo Anne, I …”
    “Insist. Where’s your chiv’lry? Maiden humiliating herself.” She shut her eyes tight, then opened them wide, held her arms out. “Oh, Kyle! Please, Kyle.”
    I took her in my arms. Her lips were cold, compressed, frightened. She trembled violently. I moved her over so that she lay beside me, her back to the wall. This was one way out of it. One sure way out. After this, there would be no chance for me to continue the crazy tangent that I had started on.
    I was holding her, caressing her, murmuring to her,trying to make her fears smaller and her wants greater, when I heard a slow familiar step on the stairs. Involuntarily I stiffened. I heard Emily come up the stairs to my floor, walk by my door with her soft tread, and go on up to the floor above. Then I heard her footsteps over us.
    “That’s her, isn’t it?” Jo Anne whispered.
    “No, I just thought somebody might be coming to …”
    “Don’t lie to me.”
    “Jo Anne. Baby. Just …”
    “Don’t put your hands on me.” Suddenly she began to push frantically against me. “Sick,” she gasped. “Sick!”
    In the bathroom I had to support her with my arm around her waist, or she would have fallen. She had taken the liquor too