Girls In 3-B, The by Valerie Taylor

Author:Valerie Taylor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Digital Vintage Pulps
Published: 2011-05-31T14:47:24+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

One thing was sure, Barby decided, she wasn't cut out for excitement and late hours. She woke late on Monday morning headachey and hung-over from all the excitement of the two preceding days, to find that she had slept through the shrilling of the alarm clock and it was now half-past eight, the hour when she was supposed to report for work. The other side of the double bed was empty, so she supposed Pat had got off all right, but through the half-open door she could see Annice still huddled into her blankets like a cocoon. One bare foot stuck out, dirty-soled and defenseless. Lie there and snore, Barby thought resentfully, feeling the weight of her two sleepless nights.

She yawned as she pulled on her seersucker housecoat and tiptoed downstairs to call the Store. Sleepy as she was, she was watchful of two things; to leave the heavy front door of the apartment off the latch, and to look around the turn in the stairs before she descended the second flight. She had been locked out once, and had had to sit on the hall floor, with nothing to pass the time, until Pat came home from work. That was annoying enough. But to be caught by Rocco in a flimsy nightgown and thin wrapper, locked out, on a Monday morning when everyone else in the building had gone to work. I don't think I could stand it, she thought, closing the door of the phone booth and dropping in her dime.

She was desperate enough to think of praying, and would have except for her long-time conviction that God had forgotten all about her when she was thirteen. Probably a good thing, too. If the Almighty took time out to recall her, He might go into the matter of her guilt and reject her altogether.

She made her excuses mechanically, aware that she sounded vague and that the switchboard girl probably thought she was hung-over, and got back upstairs without meeting anyone.

Her entrance woke Annice. She sat up yawning, her reddish hair tangled, her face pasty and heavy-eyed. "My God, what a night! What is this, Monday?"

"You're late to class."

"Well then, you're late to work too."

"We were half crazy with worry all day Saturday and all day yesterday. That's all." Pat's cup stood in the sink, so that was all right--she had gone off on time. Barby made coffee angrily, rattling the can against the sink, lighting the burner with a firmer thumb pressure against the pilot than was called for. "Nobody got any sleep at all Saturday night," she said. "Jackson stayed all night. God only knows what the neighbors thought."

"Probably thought he was laying you both, turn and turn about." Annice stood up, stretching. They had shoved and pulled her into pajamas after the neighbors left, but she hadn't washed, and Barby fancied that a queer acrid odor hung about her. "Drink your coffee. You need a bath." Annice sat down at the kitchen table and leaned on her elbows, riveting her gaze to the coffeepot as though it held some explanation.

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