SWF Seeks Same

She was silent, trying not to let his nearness affect her in the cramped space. She could smell his familiar aftershave, feel the warmth of him. The doors slid closed and the elevator hummed into motion.

Neither she nor Sam said anything until the elevator doors opened. Allie started to step out, then realized they weren’t at lobby level. She looked at the floor indicator light, saw she’d pressed the wrong button on Three. The elevator was on the thirtieth floor. Sam was smiling faintly, as if he suspected she’d done it with subconscious purpose as some kind of Freudian slip. My God, might he be right?

She very deliberately stabbed a finger at the Lobby button, and the elevator began its descent. She felt a hollowness in her stomach, as if they were plunging straight down the shaft at dizzying speed. Down to the center of the earth.

He said, “Other women forgive other men for less.”

“We’re not other women and other men.”

He gave a humorless soft chuckle. “Somebody has to be. How else could Gallup and Harris take all those polls?”

“I never took part in a poll.”

“My life’s not good without you, Allie.”

“You don’t seem to have any trouble finding stand-ins.”

He clenched his fist and stared down at it, as if what had happened to his hand troubled him. Then he banged it into the elevator’s steel wall. “So I’m a fucking sinner! Who are you, Mother Teresa? Isn’t a human being allowed one mistake? For God’s sakes, are you shooting for the ministry? I need you, Allie!”

Allie’s heart was slamming. The abruptness of his outburst had startled her. The unexpected violence, and the heat of his words. Words that penetrated like darts because they recognized an imperfect world and made undeniable sense.

He was staring at her, his deep dark eyes angry and injured. She didn’t know quite how to react. She heard a voice something like hers say, “What now, Sam? You grab me and kiss me into submission like in the movies? Or give me a good shake until I see reason? Get what you want by force if it isn’t given willingly?”

“I don’t play the game that way and you know it.”

He was right, of course. She did know that about him. “Game, huh?”

The elevator stopped on Ten. The doors opened to an empty hall, then closed again. They continued their descent.

“Don’t twist what I say, Allie.”

“All right, I suppose that wasn’t fair. Mother Teresa apologizes.”

He wiped a hand down his face in slow motion, a gesture of remorse. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

“No, but maybe I shouldn’t blame you.”

He bent down and kissed her gently on the forehead. “I’m sorry, Allie. So sorry.” She didn’t move. Felt him bend lower as he braced with one hand against the elevator wall. His lips were against hers. She was suddenly tired of resisting, and all this time she hadn’t realized she was resisting him. Perhaps that was the most exhausting kind of self-denial.

Allie parted her lips, felt the probing warmth of his tongue. She felt herself catch fire.

He shifted position and his arms were around her, pressing her to him.

The fire spread throughout her body. Jesus, she didn’t want this! Yet she wanted it fiercely! So fiercely! She was ashamed of herself but couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop needing Sam. This was the kind of crap that happened in romance novels, not in her life.

They were no longer plunging through the core of the building. They’d been at lobby level for some time while the elevator adjusted position. The doors hissed open on the empty lobby, to faint sounds of traffic and the outside world.

Allie pulled away from Sam. She stared at the world beyond the street doors, and suddenly she didn’t want to go any further. She was held by a force stronger than her pride. Sam pulled her close to him again, as if she were as weightless as she felt. She heard him say, “Can you phone wherever you were going and say you’ll be late?”

She nodded, her cheek pressed against his white shirt and red tie. Trusting him. Wanting him. She nodded again, more vigorously, so he could feel the motion of her head against his chest even if he couldn’t see it.

She reached around him and pressed the Up button.

Chapter 14

SAM played it light and easy, continuing to live at the Atherton Hotel over on West 44th Street. He told Allie he wished he could move back into the apartment with her so things could be the way they had been, but it wasn’t necessary; things could be even better this way. He took her out a couple of times a week, to restaurants, for walks in Central Park, for easy jogs along early-morning deserted West Side streets, nurturing what he’d coaxed back to life. He hung around the apartment some weekends, but not in any way that created tension. If he sensed he was interfering with even normal domestic activity, he left. Allie was sure he was going out of his way to demonstrate to Hedra that he posed no threat to her secret living arrangement with Allie.

The two of them—the three of them—became close friends, learned how to coexist with minimum friction. Allie and Sam were falling back into their old relationship, bodies slipping into familiar orbit. Hedra was dressing more stylishly, going out more often in the evenings. Allie never asked where she went, suspecting that sometimes her reason for leaving was to make the apartment available for her and Sam. And Hedra never pried into Allie’s affairs.

Allie received a few more obscene phone calls. Not only obscene, but puzzling, and with that eerie familiarity that made her stomach drop.

But all in all she was happy in her reconstructed world. The roommate arrangement was working out.