69 Barrow Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Hello.”
    “Jimmy?”
    “Speaking.”
    “This is Stella James, Jimmy.”
    “Hi, honey. What can I do for you?”
    “I’m having a party,” she said. “Tonight. I wondered if you’d like to come.”
    “Love to. I’ve never missed a party of yours yet, have I?”
    “Swell. Drop up about nine.”
    “Will do.”
    “And Jimmy—”
    “Yeah?”
    “Bring some stuff,” she said. “You know what I mean.”
    “Gotcha. How much?”
    “Enough for about a dozen people,” she said. “We’ll have a real blast.”
    She hung up and relaxed on the couch, smiling happily to herself. Then she lifted the receiver again and dialed another number.
    “I’d like to paint you some time,” Ralph said.
    “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe sometime.”
    “I mean it, Susan. You’re a very lovely girl.” She looked away.
    “This isn’t a line,” he went on. “And I enjoy being with you. Hell, you’ve broken down my painter’s block. This is the first time I’ve felt like painting anything in a long while.”
    “I’ve never posed before, Ralph.”
    “That doesn’t matter.”
    “I probably wouldn’t be a very good model.”
    “You’ll be all right.”
    She thought for a moment. “Where would you do it? Your apartment?”
    “If there’s no place better. The lighting’s kind of weak. What floor are you on?”
    “Fourth floor front. Why?”
    “You get a good north light there,” he explained. “I could paint there, if you’d let me. It would be a lot better than my place.”
    She nodded absently. Then she took a puff of her cigarette and studied the glowing tip of it for a moment before she spoke.
    “Ralph,” she said, “how would you paint me?”
    “In oils.”
    “I know that. I mean…nude?”
    “Not if you’d rather not, if you prefer I’ll do a head and shoulders study of you. But I’d rather do you full figure, with or without clothes. Your head and your body go very well together.”
    “They’ve been together a long time.”
    He laughed. “That’s not what I meant. An artist looks at everything a little bit differently, especially people. Sometimes the various parts of a person complement each other more than other times. Your particular head looks better attached to your particular body, and vice-versa.”
    “Naturally,” she said. “Either of them would look kind of silly just rolling around by themselves.”
    “That’s not what I—”
    She laughed, delighted. “I know what you meant, silly. I was just teasing you. But I do think it might be nice to pose for you, if you really want me to.”
    “I do.”
    “I will, then—and we can use my apartment if you’d rather. I think I might be embarrassed posing at your place anyway.”
    “Whatever way you want it.”
    “And…Ralph?”
    “What, Susan?”
    She closed her eyes for a minute. Then she opened them and said: “I know you told me before that you weren’t a guy on the make. But I have to make sure, Ralph. I…I’m not looking for anything remotely resembling a sexual relationship. Not for the time being and not for the foreseeable future.”
    “I understand.”
    “I don’t want to keep harping away at this,” she went on. “It’s just that this is such a standard set-up in the Village. Village artist meets Village girl and asks her to pose for him and they go to an apartment and crawl into a bed. I don’t think that’s what you want but I want to get everything set straight at the beginning so that neither of us will be disappointed.”
    “I understand,” he said again. “Besides, there’s already a girl. I told you.”
    “I know. But down here it’s not too uncommon for a person to be sleeping with more than one person at the same time.”
    Thanks for telling me, he thought, thinking of Stella.
    “But I really would like to pose for you,” she said. “I like you, Ralph. As a person, I mean. I like you very much and I think I’d enjoy getting to know you better. But only as a person.”
    “I like you,