Crazy in Love Read Online Free PDF

west-side marshes had been filled in, the hotel had stood at the edge of the Hudson River. Now you couldn’t even see the water from our room on the top floor. A ten-minute walk from the river, and I felt landlocked. The hotel had a genteel shabbiness: faded brocade draperies, mahogany walls and lobby furniture, polished brass lamps, leather chairs at the writing tables, sad-eyed portraits of Lady Gregory. Nick sometimes suggested we stay at a fancy hotel on Central Park, but I liked it here. I felt totally anonymous. The bellman barely greeted me; I carried my own bag upstairs. In the dark shadows of Manhattan, I tried to not feel anger about leaving bright, sparkling Black Hall. Wasn’t it my choice to join Nick? He had never insisted that I come to town; in fact I could not remember him actually suggesting it. He was happy that I wanted to, but the idea was mine.
    I paced the room for a few minutes. The desk was antique, in need of new brass drawer pulls. I used a plastic pen cap to pry open one drawer, to check whether the previous tenant had left anything behind. Once I had lost four sketches of marine life in that very drawer, but today it was empty. I spread my papers across the desk. My first quarterly report was due in a month.
    I called Nick’s office and left a message with Denise. Then I picked up the Manhattan phone book. I called Mona Tuchman’s number. She answered.
    “Hello, this is Georgiana Swift calling from the Swift Observatory,” I said, expecting her to hang up.
    “Mmmm.”
    “I wondered whether I could interview you.”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. What does the Swift Observatory want with me?”
    “To ask you a few questions. Talk to you awhile.”
    “I notice you don’t have the rapid-fire approach. You could have already asked me some questions.”
    “I thought we could meet. You could come to my hotel, or I could go to you. Whichever you prefer.” I could hardly believe I was arranging a meeting with Mona Tuchman. After our last conversation I had been steeled for an attack.
    “You might as well come here,” she said. “Okay?”
    “Okay,” I said, already planning my subway route.
    She lived in a big building on the Upper West Side where stone gargoyles, angels, and rams leered from rooftops and lintels. A brilliant green patch of Central Park was visible around the corner. A terra-cotta planter of begonias stood outside the entrance. The doorman directed me to the eighth floor.
    She was waiting in the foyer. I had been right about the dark hair; short and curly, it framed her round face. She wore tortoiseshell glasses. Gentle lines indicated that her face was accustomed to smiling, but it was at that moment expressionless. She wore a full green corduroy jumper over a nylon turtleneck. I wondered whether she was pregnant.
    “Entrez,”
she said, preceding me into the apartment. We introduced ourselves.
    “What is the Swift Observatory?” she asked, gesturing at a brick-red wing chair. I sat, watching her settle herself onto a straight-backed desk chair. The decor was vaguely colonial. Patchwork quilts hung on two walls.
    “It’s an organization that studies human nature.”
    “Yikes. What kind of human nature are you after here? Human nature. I don’t know, I thought this was going to be an ordinary interview.”
    “It is. I don’t want to intimidate you,” I stammered. I felt intimidated myself, and pompous at the same time. “Actually, I am the Swift Observatory—I’m all there is. I needed a name for my work because it’s funded, you see.” As Clare had said, the foundation would be more likely to give grant money to the Swift Observatory than “Georgie Swift, Nosy Bitch.”
    “I never planned to kill Celeste Stone. My hand was stabbing her, then all of a sudden I realized what I was doing and stopped. In one instant I ruined my life. Well, not an instant exactly. I was hitting her for about thirty seconds, we think.”
    “We?”
    “Celeste and I. We haven’t