Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

them. I tried it, he wasn’t buying. And then I forgot to flush and J.B. found all these floating Cheerios and thought I’d gone crazy. The only thing that sort of works is to give him an M&M each time he pees, but now he’s figured out how to make one pee stretch into eight trips to the potty.”
    “ All this talk of peeing is giving me ideas,” Claire said, and went down the hall. Confronted by her own image in the bathroom mirror, she let out a little shriek. She looked like a demented super hero or the bride of Frankenstein on an acid trip. It wasn’t just the silver plastic cape. The dye had stiffened her hair, so that it bristled out of the rubber cap at all angles. Light glinted off the sections wrapped in foil.
    When Claire came back, Susie had the car keys in her hand. “Why don’t you go lay out in the back and get a little color? You don’t want to show up at your reunion looking like a ghost.”
    Claire made a mental note to buy some self-tanner so that her legs wouldn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to something that crawled up from the cellar. “I think I’ll just stay inside.”
    “ On a nice day like this? You’ve got to take advantage of the sunshine when you find it.”
    “ I look like a nut case, Susie. I don’t want to take the chance of anybody seeing me like this.”
    “ Come on, we’ve got a six-foot privacy fence back there. And I’ll loan you my latest issue of People and a pair of sunglasses.”
    It was beginning to sound tempting. Warm weather always made Claire lazy. “Maybe I’ll just go to sleep. But you’ll wake me up, won’t you?”
    “ Don’t worry. If I let that stuff stay on for more than an hour, it might make your hair fall out.”
    “ Fall out?” Claire froze.
    “ Don’t worry. I’ll be back long before that.”
    Claire peeked out into the backyard before she opened the door all the way. Susie was right. No one would be able to see her here. Stretching out on the lawn chair’s white rubber tubes she closed her eyes. Claire put one forearm over her face and let herself relax. She thought of Dante, his dark curls, his smoothly muscled shoulders, the way his breath would catch when she kissed him in the cup of his left ear, just above the gold earring he wore. Even smiling, he looked slightly dangerous, since one of his front teeth had been broken and then mended with a flash of white. None of her old classmates was ever going to believe that he was a Met curator specializing in 16th century art.
    ###
    Claire was dreaming of Dante, of his slow smile and his gold-flecked eyes. They lay together in his bed, the noises of New York City muffled by the thick walls of the old apartment, built before the First World War. Enjoying the contrast between her paleness and his swarthiness, Claire pressed her body against him. He groaned in pleasure. Then the street sounds swelled in her ears, louder and louder, shouts, a woman screaming in fear.
    Claire opened her eyes. The sounds continued.
    “ You bastard!” A grunt. The stinging sound of a palm against flesh.
    She rolled off the lawn chair and crept toward the fence. Peering out between the slats, Claire realized that a woman was being raped in the alley just outside Susie’s fence. The woman’s blond hair hung wild in her face and her long breasts were exposed to the world. The man already had his pants loosened around his hips. Bravely, the woman balled her fists and swung at the man, who had his broad back to Claire. The street was otherwise empty, although Claire wondered if a dozen other pair of eyes were also watching, evaluating, waiting to see if the man had a gun, or telling themselves to mind their own business. This was the kind of neighborhood where people thought the best way to stay out of trouble was not to notice things.
    Claire had seen enough. But the phone was inside the house. By the time she reached it, called the police and they arrived, this poor woman would probably be lying on the