Best Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

that?” I pointed to the ceiling.
    He moved away from the wall to look up, and I found Jill’s name and apartment number scrawled on the paper.
    He grabbed my arm as I tried to step past. He was stronger than I thought. So was the smell. Unwashed skin and sweat. I looked in his red-rimmed eyes. They were blank.
    â€œGimme five bucks.”
    If he knocked me down to the cement floor, my head could split open.
    â€œLet go of me or I’ll call the cops.”
    I reached into my purse with my free hand and brought out my cell.
    He grunted and let go. I ran inside.
    The elevator smelled like piss. I took it up to Jill’s floor and wandered down the hall past the graffiti. Someone had spray-painted an exclamation mark as big as me on the wall. I got that. Life was full of surprises. It felt strange meeting these people who knew my dad. I wasn’t sure I liked him. It sucked, finding out my real dad wasn’t such a great guy.
    I found her apartment number and knocked on the door. I heard kids shouting and dishes clattering inside. I knocked again. Finally the door swung open. A large chick (okay, she was fat) stood there, one hand on a humungous hip. Long brown hair pulled off her face in a headband.
    â€œI said come after lunch. I’m busy now.” She started to close the door in my face.
    â€œI’m looking for Jill Hanes.”
    She held the door open a crack. “You’re not a cop?” She looked me up and down, nervous now. Yelling inside got louder. “Shut up!” she barked behind her.
    â€œI’m Freddy Allan’s kid. I wanted to talk to Jill about him.”
    She opened the door wide and smiled. “You’re kidding. Freddy Allan’s girl? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
    The phone rang in another room. She waved at me to follow as she waddled into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
    â€œYeah, I got it,” she said into the receiver. “Give me half an hour.”
    Three little kids sat at a table, getting orange SpaghettiOs all over their mouths.
    â€œGrandma!” one said. “I want chocolate cake for dessert.”
    The others piped in, “Me too!”
    Jill bent toward them in a threatening pose. They kept eating, unfazed. “Listen up! I’m going into the other room with this lady, and I don’t want to hear squat out of any of you.”
    They stared at me, their mouths moving. It was weird to be called a lady. I still felt like a kid. But they were three or four years old, so to them I was a lady. With a start, I thought: I was around their age when my world fell apart.
    Jill led me into the living room. Toys everywhere. Dolls and stuffed bears and plastic tea cups all over the dirty carpet. I moved a sticky rubber dinosaur to sit down on the tattered sofa.
    â€œSo, you’re Freddy’s kid.” She tilted her head, watching me. “I can see the resemblance. He was a great guy. Terrible what happened to him.”
    â€œI heard you two were…going out.”
    â€œOh.” She looked down. “I guess it was no secret. Yeah, I was crazy about him.” Then she studied me like she was trying to find him in my face. “We toured together. I would’ve done anything for him. I was a kid. I thought he loved me.”
    I tried to picture Jill young and thin. “He broke it off?”
    She looked away. “One day he just said there was somebody else. He said I deserved better! What a line. Just like that. I was young, he said, and I’d find the right guy. But I didn’t want the right guy. I wanted him .”
    I nodded to be polite. “Were you there that last night?”
    â€œYou mean when…?” She nodded. “We shared a cab home—he was so wasted. The whole way I tried to persuade him he loved me. I don’t think he heard a word.”
    â€œThen what happened?”
    â€œWe stopped in front of his house and he got out. Never