Hard Up: Russ Tobin gets his come-uppance by Stanley Morgan

Author:Stanley Morgan [Morgan, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

She drove a little red Morris 1100; I followed in the van, but had barely got going when we arrived.

‘Jurst adore your automobile,’ she cracked in American accent, locking her car. ‘My, I’ll bet you really pull the girls with that, honey.’

‘Very funny. Don’t you know it’s cruel to mock the afflicted?’

We climbed to the third floor in a mini-elevator, our sudden awareness of being alone in a very confined space resulting in an awkward silence which she finally broke with a laugh.

‘I wonder why it is that people stop talking when they get into a lift?’

‘The shrinks would probably say... oh.’

The lift stopped and the doors opened.

‘It’s to the left,’ she said. ‘343. What would the psychiatrists say?’

‘Oh ... something about the confinement of space causing a heightened awareness of intimate juxtaposition between the sexes.’

‘Would they really?’ she grinned. ‘Is that what happened between us?’

‘Wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

She opened the door with a key and went in, putting on lights as she made her way down a narrow hall, to the living room, passing two closed doors on the left.

‘Bathroom,’ she informed me, tapping the second of the doors.

‘Ta.’

The living room was not large but it was very nicely

decorated in browns and yellows and oranges. Two large windows overlooked the street, or more correctly overlooked the foliage of tall silver birch trees growing in the pavement fifty feet from the building, resulting in the impression that the flat aspired to a sylvan rather than concrete setting.

‘Very nice,’ I remarked.

‘Thank you,’ she said, cutting left to a tiny kitchen psychologically separated from the living room in a recessed alcove. ‘What were you drinking?’

‘Vodka tonic... but don’t worry if you haven’t got it.’ ‘I’ve got it. Put on some music.’

I crossed to a stereo unit built into a shelf system and ran an eye over her collection of cassettes. There was a bit of everything from Wagner to Wings - but the majority was as I’d expected - Jack Jones, Vic Damone, Sinatra, Streisand, Andy Williams.

The lady was a romantic.

With a smile to myself, I picked out a Jack Jones with a big band backing, romantic yet sufficiently swingy for the time of the evening, something to get the fingers snapping rather than the bed-springs twanging.

As the opening bars of ‘Without Her’ began filling the room, she popped her head out of the alcove and gave me a pleased grin. ‘Oh, very clever. How did you know it was my favourite?’

‘It sounded like you.’

‘Adore that man.’

She came out with the drinks, put them on a low glass table in front of a floral settee, and sat down, curling her legs under her. I sat at the opposite end and got my cigarettes out.

‘No,’ she commanded, pointing to an onyx box on the table. ‘Smoke those.’

We got a couple going, drank our drinks, commented on the music, the singer, the next singer, had another drink, put on Sinatra, talked about him, had another drink, and time sped.

Suddenly she glanced at her watch and did a double

take.

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