Grand Central Winter by Lee Stringer

Author:Lee Stringer [Vonnegut, Lee Stringer; foreword by Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-225-7
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I was smoked out, tapped out, thirsty as hell for another blast, dragging my ass in for the night with great reluctance, when, a few doors down the block, a woman’s voice calls out to me. I can’t see her face—she’s standing, head stuck in the phone booth, receiver to her ear—but what I can see of her is in perfect proportion and tantalizingly blond on top.

Her hand shoots out, a cigarette daintily poised between her fingers, and she’s jiggling the thing to let me know she needs a light. I walk over to her, fumbling in my pockets long enough to take a good gander, and she’s almost breathtakingly good-looking; all creamy, homogenized lushness and beguiling emerald eyes—a glimmering spectacle against the drab, shuttered storefronts along Ninth Avenue.

I light her up and she yanks a drag from the thing before she turns and starts purring into the phone again, working away at a wad of gum all the while as if she doesn’t have a care in the world, standing here in Hell’s Kitchen at two-thirty in the morning, crack dealers to the left, junkies to the right, sodden barhoppers slouching along everywhere else.

I like that.

I’m a sucker for spunk.

All the same, in the face of her freshness and perkiness, I feel too wretched, slovenly, and shy of resources to hope to take this anywhere. I’m about to step off, in fact, when she arrests me with a single, skyward “wait a second” stretch of her forefinger.

So I stand there like a trained mutt while she goes on gabbing into the phone. But she’s facing me now, giving me the slow once-over, sizing me up; a cool, studied, confident appraisal. I can’t quite make out what she’s saying, but I can hear her working that gum: moist, chewy sounds insinuating in my ears.

Finally I hear her say, “Okay,” and she plunks the receiver down and steps over to me.

“Where ya headed?” she asks.

“Upstairs,” I tell her, pointing to the Street News office a few doors down. She yanks another drag off the cigarette, releasing a cloud of smoke that draws my envy. “Can I impose on you for one of your cigarettes?” I add.

“It’s no imposition,” she tells me, and digs around in her tiny black purse. A wisp of fragrance tickles my nose as she takes her time lighting me up. She uses a pink Bic, which, I realize, she had all along.

“Who’s up there?” she wants to know.

“Just me and a few thousand copies of Street News,” I tell her, figuring a little charm won’t hurt the situation.

“Street News,” she says. “I’ve heard of that.” She peers up at the windows with a frown. “Is it clean?”

I mull this one over.

On the one hand, sloppiness has become something of a life skill with me. On the other, the lady is on the verge of inviting herself up. I decide clean is a relative term.

“Sure,” I tell her. “I mean you couldn’t accuse me of being a neat-freak, but it’s not unhygienic or anything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.