Manhattan Love Song by Cornell Woolrich

Author:Cornell Woolrich [Woolrich, Cornell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: love_detective, thriller_psychology
Publisher: William Godwin
Published: 1932-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

I didn’t bother phoning Bernice the next day but went right up there to see her a little before two. I felt unusually cheerful, as though Maxine’s visit and the revelation of the day before had cleared the air for all parties concerned. It didn’t feel as though I were double-crossing her any more to come up here — although I hadn’t told her that I was going to, just the same.

“Hello, hand-shoes,” I greeted Tenacity, “is my lady in?”

Tenacity said she was eating her lunch, and when Bernice wanted to know who it was through the door, called back with unreproved familiarity, “Wade!”

She was sitting at her vanity table when I went in, or whatever you call those low things with triple mirrors and no drawers of any kind under them, and had all her beautification implements pushed aside to make room for a little tray containing a cucumber sandwich and a glass of frothy pink stuff that I took to be a strawberry soda. She pointed the second cucumber sandwich toward me, not offering it to me but indicating me by it, and waiting until she had finished chewing and had swallowed, remarked: “I thought you’d be around today!” At the same time, there was a mischievous, bantering light in her eyes that boded well.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing the sandwich at a chaise lounge. “Be through in a minute. I never do this, but I didn’t have any breakfast this morning.”

I had made up my mind before coming not to say anything to her until she had mentioned the subject first. About Maxine’s visit, I mean. Because, for all she knew, Maxine mightn’t have even told me and I might still be in the dark about it, so I wanted to hear what she had to say first. Therefore I made casual conversation while she bit her way busily through the second sandwich and sucked up the pink stuff through two straws.

“Gee, it’s a pipe of a day today, gold dust ’round your feet. You shoulda been out hours ago. What was the matter, hangover from last night?”

“No,” she said, “I simply overslept. Tenacity never wakes me, you know, and for the first time since I’ve been living in this place, the phone didn’t ring once all morning! Don’t know what to put it to. I even had her call the operator and have it tested, I was so sure it must be out of order. Nothing the matter with it, just an off-day for me, I guess.” This while she bent her head forward over the tray and the pinkish stuff drew together at the bottom of the glass and then was gone. “Not that it worries me; some relief, let me tell you. ’Jever try answering a phone with your eyes closed and a lot of cobwebs over your mouth?” She threw her arms back over her chair and stretched, turning her wrists out, then in again and beat them idly together. “And I never yet got in the tub but what I got a call and had to hop out again.

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