Free 69 Barrow Street by Lawrence Block

still a chance that he could find a normal life for himself and he had to follow that chance up. He had to go to Susan, to paint her picture, to use his paints and brushes as the tools to dig his way back to a decent sort of an existence.
    He still had a chance.
    Hell, it wasn’t much of a chance. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to paint worth a damn any more. Maybe whatever talent he once possessed was gone now and he wouldn’t be able to draw a straight line with a ruler. But as long as there was a chance he had to take it. As long as there was a single course open that might lead him out of the pitfall of perversion, that was the course he had to follow.
    He walked to the closet and opened the door. On the top shelf with the painting of Stella was a small flat wooden box that contained his brushes and his tubes of paint. Next to the box was his palette, and beside it was a fresh canvas. He took them all down and laid them out on the couch.
    His easel was standing on the floor of the closet behind several of Stella’s coats. He took it out and shut the closet door again.
    It was hard to carry all his paraphernalia at once but he managed. He loaded himself up and opened the apartment door. Then, not bothering to close the door, he walked to the staircase and began to mount the steps to the fourth floor.
    Ralph didn’t shut the door to his apartment.
    Now normally he did shut the door. On this occasion, however, he was too encumbered with painting equipment to do so without putting all his things down and then picking them up again. This seemed a lot of trouble to go through just to shut a door, especially since Stella was home and since there was nothing much worth stealing in the apartment anyway and since it was mid-afternoon and a rather ridiculous time for a burglary. Perhaps a psychiatrist might argue that Ralph left the door ajar unconsciously because he was hoping that someone would come in and kill Stella in her sleep.
    But this we may leave for the psychiatrists to puzzle out among themselves. What is important is the fact that Ralph left the door open.
    This made it possible for Maria Raines to walk into the apartment while Stella slept.
    Maria was a mess. Her beautiful black hair was tangled and snarled; her clothes looked as though they had been slept in. In a manner of speaking, this was not far from the truth. What sleep Maria had had, she had in her clothes.
    Larry and Sally had gone home together. They didn’t even tell Maria they were leaving and when she looked around for Larry he had already gone. She had to walk all the way home to their apartment by herself. When she arrived there Larry told her she couldn’t live with him anymore.
    The rest of what had happened was a large blur in her mind. She wandered all over the Village, her head in a whirl and tears pouring periodically from her eyes and running down her cheeks. She was very tired but there was no one for her to go to, no place for her to sleep. She didn’t even have enough money for a room at a cheap hotel.
    Finally she managed to find her way onto the subway and collapse into a seat. She couldn’t really sleep, but every once in a while her mind would wander and her eyes would close for five or ten or fifteen minutes. It wasn’t very satisfactory but it was better than no sleep at all.
    After a time she tired of the subway. She got off in the Village and wandered some more. After a good bit of walking she ran into a man with whom she had spent the night once and talked him into buying her some breakfast.
    The food stuck in her throat. She couldn’t eat at all at first, but she knew it was important for her to eat something and she managed to bolt the food down and keep it down.
    When her feet led her to 69 Barrow Street she hesitated outside in the vestibule. She didn’t want to ring Stella’s bell. She waited instead until somebody else left the building and caught the door before it slammed shut. Then, once inside, she was relieved to