Free The Sandman by Robert Ward Page A

from the table.
    “No,” he smiled, helping her on with her coat. “Why should it be over. There’s no reason for that at all.”
    As they walked through the lobby of Debby’s building, Cross felt a terrible tightening in his stomach, a strange seizure of panic and near hysteria. What was he doing? Perhaps she had hypnotized
him
in some way—not with her mind—no, he was certain he was smarter than she, but with her body, her eyes, her breasts, and her legs. He saw her legs as she walked a couple of steps in front of him. Perfect, so damned perfect. He wanted her. He wanted her badly, but there was something happening inside of him, a voice telling him to stop right now. Beware. He tried looking away from her at the tiled walls. There was a mosaic of a man and a woman walking through a field of grass. God, it was tacky, tacky and cheap. He followed her dutifully, like a small child, to the elevator, and again he was overcome with the sensation that he wanted to bolt, but she looked at him and smiled, and he found himself smiling back. He felt the warmth spread through him.
    She held his hand. The elevator arrived. Two men with blow-dried hair, tight red-and-blue body shirts, and huge gold link necklaces got off and brushed by him. He felt the sickness return. Why would she live here if she wasn’t one of those kind of people herself? Wasn’t it obvious? She was just another one of—what was it Harry called them? Hitter Chicks. Yeah, the Hitter Chicks, exactly like the ones who hung out in the café across the street. Only she was better at it, had put on a face filled with upstate shyness and innocence, and he had fallen for it, told her all the stuff about Poe, about his mother. Things he hadn’t ever meant to tell anyone. Now he was trapped in her apartment.
    He began to feel sweat pouring from his neck and a grime-and-gut-wrenching slime in his groin. She had taken advantage of his loneliness. He wouldn’t forgive her.
    The elevator stopped and they stepped into a narrow hallway painted with bright yellow flowers. Tacky. Horrible. Why hadn’t he bolted? But he kept walking with her, a step behind. He kept his eyes on her ass and her neck. God, she had a beautiful neck. Even now, raging with fear and resentment, he knew that he was going to go with her. He had to.
    “Here we are,” Debby said, slipping her key into the lock.
    She pushed open the door, walked assuredly through the dark room, and switched on the light.
    “This is it,” she said, smiling and opening her arms as if to offer him the room.
    Cross looked around. There was a feeling of warmth in the apartment unlike his own black-and-white-and-chrome. Debby had fixed the place up with a warm blue couch, an old-fashioned bookcase, two very comfortable-looking overstuffed chairs with deep blue corduroy covers. Hanging from the walls were plants, and in the fireplace were real logs. On the floor was a very tasteful Indian rug. It had a design on it—a cherry tree harboring two peacocks. So she did have taste—eclectic taste, but taste, sensibility. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong to confide in her. He had to calm himself, not dwell on things.
    “Would you like a drink?” she said.
    “Yes. I’ll have a Scotch.”
    “Johnny Walker Red?”
    “Fine.”
    “I think I’ll have a Campari and soda.”
    She walked around to the kitchen, and again he found himself following her. But he stopped at the bookcase. There were a couple of novels, mostly Book-of-the- Month Club stuff, but there was also The
Collected Illustrated Stories
of Edgar
Allan Poe
. He took out the book and looked through it. The pages looked fresh, unmarked.
    “Did you just buy this?” he asked.
    “Yes, Peter,” she said. “I just did. And if you want to know if I just bought it because I met you, the answer is partly yes and partly no.”
    She smiled seductively, warmly, and handed him a drink. Then she went and sat down on the couch. He followed her there. He felt foolish. He