SWF Seeks Same

Right now, whether she liked it or not, she cared a great deal about Sam.

She shouldn’t care, but she did. And if Sam knew what she knew about Hedra, he’d feel differently—not only about Hedra, but about Allie. He’d have to feel differently.

She phoned the Atherton Hotel and asked the desk to ring Sam’s room. Then she waited while the phone rang eight, ten times, until she was positive it wasn’t going to be answered.

Allie hung up and glanced at the clock. It was quarter past eight, but sometimes Sam worked late. She remembered the number of Elcane-Smith Brokerage and pecked it out with her finger so violently she bent a nail.

Someone answered at Elcane-Smith, a harried-sounding man who told her Sam had left at five o’clock.

So where was Sam? Possibly on his way to meet Hedra for dinner. Or in his room and not answering his phone. Maybe because Hedra was with him and they were making love.

Reason left Allie. Only fear for Sam remained. Sam, who was in her blood forever.

What she really wanted most was to have him back. She didn’t like knowing that about herself, so she shoved that sticky bit of knowledge to a dim corner of her mind where she could let it lie for a while before coming to terms with it. She heard again Hedra’s little-girl taunt on the phone, and she understood the great truth: What we wanted, whom we needed, was wound and set like clockwork in us when we were children, infants perhaps, and after a while there could be no denial.

If Sam wasn’t in his room, she’d find him no matter where he was and convince him Hedra was sick. Maybe dangerous. A woman who had no self, and who might be the collector of news stories about gruesome murders. The police would be interested. She and Sam could go to the police together and substantiate each other’s stories, and Kennedy would listen. Together she and Sam could awaken from the nightmare.

She wanted to be real again. To be the only Allie Jones. She was sure she wasn’t imagining things.

She strode to the hall closet to get her blue coat.

It wasn’t there. Wearing only the blazer over her jeans and blouse, she rushed out into the cool night, risking rain.

Chapter 26

IN the Atherton Hotel’s long, narrow lobby were a white sofa and chair in front of a large mirror and an arrangement of potted plants. Beyond them, the desk and the entrance to the adjoining coffee shop were on the left, the elevators on the right. A middle-aged Hispanic woman sat low and almost unnoticeable at the switchboard, idly plucking at a hangnail. Behind the long marble-topped desk, a tall gray-haired man was busy registering a young couple whose only luggage seemed to be the overstuffed backpacks lying at their feet in a tangle of canvas strapping, like parachutes in case of fire.

One of the elevators was at lobby level. Its doors slid open immediately when Allie punched the Up button. She stepped in and pressed the button for the tenth floor.

On Five, the elevator stopped and an overweight blond bellhop got in and smiled at Allie. He was carrying a clipboard under his arm and had a yellow pencil wedged behind his right ear. At Seven, he got off the elevator, and Allie was alone when it arrived at Ten.

She walked down the narrow, dimly lighted hall toward Sam’s room. The carpet soaked up the sound of her steps. A TV was playing too loud in one of the rooms; the inane chatter of a game show seeped through the door as Allie passed, then was left behind in an outbreak of enthusiastic but diminishing applause. Somebody had won big. The humidity outside had inundated the hotel; the hall was cool and had a mildewed smell about it. The air was almost thick enough to feel.

The next room was 1027, Sam’s room. Allie stood for a moment close to the white-enameled door. No sound came from inside.

She knocked.

No answer. Nothing.

She turned the knob and found the door was unlocked. In fact, it hadn’t been closed quite all the way. Wasn’t even latched.

Maybe Sam hadn’t pulled it tight when he’d left to go out. He could be careless that way. Or maybe he was in the shower. Or sleeping so deeply her knocking hadn’t awakened him. She prayed it was something like that, that the reason he hadn’t come to the door was something innocent and explainable.

She swallowed, pushed the heavy door open, and stepped inside.

The smell that struck her was familiar, yet she couldn’t quite place it. The lights were out in the room. The only illumination was from the picture rolling soundlessly on the TV near the foot of the bed; a car chase racing vertically as well as horizontally. The TV game show next door was barely audible through the wall. Sam’s double bed was unmade, sheets and spread in a wild tangle.

She could see into the suite’s adjoining room. It was also dark. The bathroom door was closed, but no crack of light showed beneath it.

Allie said, “Sam?”

The only answer was the muted, constant roar of traffic ten stories below, the background rush of noise that was always there and was itself a part of the city’s silence and existence. A vital sign of life; steel blood coursing through concrete arteries.

Allie saw something on the floor near the television, at the foot of the bed. The flickering light from the screen had a strobelike effect and she couldn’t make out what the object was.

She moved forward a few steps.

Stopped and gasped.

She wasn’t seeing what she thought! It was a trick, a magician’s prop!