SWF Seeks Same

“I suppose not. It’s the phone calls that are really bothering you, right?”

“You know me like a good friend, Graham.”

“That’s because I am a good friend.” They stopped and stood on the corner of West 74th and West End Avenue. “Didn’t you say your full name’s in the phone book?” Graham asked. The breeze riffled his dark hair, mussing the wings over his protruding ears.

Allie nodded.

“Then I wouldn’t worry so much about the phone calls. Just some pervert who chose you because he spotted the complete listing in the directory and knew he could shake up a woman by using her first name. It’s probably not as personal as you think. Or as you feel it is. You’d be surprised at the number of obscene phone calls made every day in this city. Every hour.”

“What bothers me,” Allie said, “is that my address is in the directory along with my number. This sicko—if it is only one man—knows where to find me.”

“Yeah. Well, I can see where that makes you uneasy, and that’s exactly what a bastard like your caller wants you to worry about. But believe me, the kind of nut who phones women and makes sexual references almost always does it because he’s too intimidated to confront them face to face. These are usually the last people who’d show up at your door and try something.”

‘“Almost always,’ huh? ‘Usually’?”

“Those words apply to virtually everything, Allie.”

True enough. But she didn’t agree with him out loud.

“What’d Sam say about the phone calls?” he asked.

“Pretty much what you said. He doesn’t think they’re anything to worry about. That’s what most men would say; they don’t feel the vulnerability in that kind of situation.”

“Can’t help that,” Graham said. “We’re not afraid of mice, either.”

They began walking down West End. A raggedy man wearing incredibly wrinkled, oversized gray pants, and a green wool blanket draped over bare chest and shoulders, approached them and in an almost unintelligible mumble asked if they had any spare change. The breeze carried his odor of stale perspiration and urine. Graham shook his head no and said, “Sorry.” Allie wondered how it would feel to be rejected that way by an indifferent world. To live on the streets of a city as cruel as Manhattan. Delusion might be essential to deflect the pain.

She watched the beggar veer toward a well-dressed couple waiting to cross the intersection. Trying to muster pity but feeling only fear, she said, “It must be a bitch, having to exist like that, struggling to survive through each day.”

Graham said, “It is, but he asked the wrong people for money. You’re out of work, and I’ve only been paid the first half of the advance on my play.”

“We don’t have to justify not giving a beggar money,” Allie said, a bit surprised at the vehemence in her voice.

“Yes, I’m afraid we do.”

At a newspaper and magazine kiosk, Allie paused to buy a Village Voice. She enjoyed reading the weekly paper, and it also contained help-wanted ads, maybe for computer programmers.

She abruptly yanked the Voice out from beneath the rock that was weighting it down on the stack of papers, and handed over a dollar bill for the paper to the grizzled old woman inside the kiosk, but after taking a step and starting to shove her wallet back into her purse, she stopped, realizing something was wrong.

She squeezed the wallet with probing fingers.

Opening it, she checked the plastic card and photo holders. She pried apart the leather compartments, her movements quicker and less controlled.

“They’re gone!” she cried.

Graham was staring at her, puzzled. “What’s gone?”

“My Visa and MasterCard.”

“You sure?”

She examined the wallet again, more slowly and carefully. “Positive. And something else is missing. My expired Illinois driver’s license.”

“Expired, is it? Good. Somebody might be surprised if they try to use it to cash a check. You sure this stuff was in your wallet at the restaurant?”

“Not absolutely sure. It might have been gone and I didn’t notice. The wallet felt different to me just now, not as bulky. I haven’t charged anything in over a week. Shit! The cards might have been gone for days!”

“Don’t panic, Allie, you can only be held responsible for fifty dollars on each card, even if the thief uses them to travel to Europe. It’s a law.”

“I know. Still …”

“And they’ve probably only been gone a short time, or you’d have missed them earlier.”

Allie didn’t answer, trying to remember how the wallet had felt in Goya’s when she’d gotten out money to pay for dinner. She hadn’t actually taken the wallet out of her purse, letting it rest inside so it and the folding money would stay out of sight below table level. Couldn’t be too careful.

“Better get on the phone,” Graham said, “and report the cards missing. They’ll cut credit on them and issue you some new plastic with different numbers.”