A Collateral Attraction Read Online Free PDF Page A

a doll, trying on one dress after another till we both settled for the dresses we’re wearing now.
    As the DJ starts blasting house music on the speakers, I duck into the ladies’ room and hide in one of the stalls to catch my breath. I need to calm down and figure out where she is. Then I remember my clutch where I’ve kept my phone.
    Only it’s not my phone. It’s Blythe’s — an iPhone that requires her password or her thumbprint. My hands begin to shake as I realize that somehow, I’d handed her my clutch instead of hers when we left the bathroom earlier.
    Telling myself that no, it is my clutch I’ve been holding all this time and that it’s all just a bad dream, I pull out the cards, careful not to drop them into the toilet, but all I see is Blythe’s name stamped on everything, from her New York driver’s license, Equinox gym card, and her precious Gold card.   Then her lipstick — which she claims supposed to brighten any day — falls right into the toilet bowl.

4
Alone in Manhattan
    I commit my first act of fraud in the cab when I sign Blythe’s name on the credit card receipt half an hour later. With no cash on hand, it’s the only thing I have to pay the cab fare since I don’t have Conrad’s number to let him know that I’m ready to be driven back to the penthouse. At least I’ve committed Blythe’s address to memory, and even the doorman forgives me when I tell him I’ve left my keycard upstairs and would he be kind enough to swipe his master key card for the elevator that goes directly up to the penthouse?
    I even bat my eyelashes and thank him with a voice that’s an octave higher than normal. The impersonation is enough to make me go weak in the knees as soon as the elevator doors close and I have to lean against the railing for support as it makes its way up.
    As I slip off my shoes, I pray that Blythe is home. Maybe Ethan is all right after all and they’re probably on the couch, making out like teen-agers, just needing some alone time now that he’s back.  Still, it’s not like Blythe to just leave me stranded alone in a bar, especially not in the middle of Manhattan. But when the double doors open to the penthouse, the whole place is quiet, and I don’t need to inspect every room to know that Blythe is not home, but I do anyway.
    Besides the living areas, there are four bedrooms, five bathrooms, an office, and even a wine cellar, its total square footage larger than the two-story turn-of-the-century house Blythe and I grew up in. Everything in the penthouse is of contemporary design with its overall gray and white theme. Even the fresh flowers are white, and probably meant to go with the decor, which to me is bland. It’s too sterile, and worse, there’s not a bookshelf anywhere. There are coffee table books, all of them on contemporary architecture from the likes of Libeskind, Meier and Koolhaas, and modern art line the walls.
    I check the master bedroom to see if anything is missing. But nothing has been disturbed in the master bedroom. Her shoes are where she last kicked them off when we got back from shopping that afternoon, lying on their side next to the closet doors, and her dress is slung over a chair back. Even the bed is the way I’d left it that morning, hastily made up.
    I had spent my first night in Manhattan in her bed, falling asleep next to her after hours of catching up over the last three years, though it was mostly Blythe who did most of the talking. What was there for me to say about my life when all I do is wake up, make my coffee, go downstairs and open the shop? Maybe there’s inventory to be tallied and ordered, maybe even vendor shows that I have to go to for a few days with new inventory stocked at the back of my truck. But other than trips to the river where I can cool off on hot days, there’s nothing else to say about my life. So I’m grateful that the last two days, I learned all about her life since she moved away from Nevada City for good,