New York Nocturne Read Online Free PDF

pleased with my silk dress. It draped well; it shivered and shone. But now I realized that I had clearly been out-silked. There was a fringed black silk shawl on her angular smooth shoulders below a tumble of bright blonde ringlets. There was a short, shimmering silver-gray dress, cut on the bias, that clung to the elegant curves and hollows of her small, perfect body. There was still more silk, sleek and sheer, in the black stockings that sheathed her thin legs and glistened from the top of her cunning round knees to the glossy silver-gray leather of her high-heeled shoes.
    A moment before, I had been as unaware of her existence as she had been of mine. Now a small part of me, flickering away at the back of my thoughts, wondered whether she wanted to stamp mine out.
    She smiled at John. “Johnny,” she said in a sulky southern drawl. She raised her right hand and lightly placed the tips of her splayed fingers on his chest. “How are you? It’s been ever so long.”
    Johnny?
    She turned to me, a half smile on her scarlet Cupid’s bow of a mouth. Inquisitively, she arched her sculpted eyebrows and batted her long eyelashes, signaling that I should explain myself.
    â€œDaphne,” said John, “this is my niece, Amanda. Amanda, this is Daphne Dale.”
    â€œHello,” I said.
    Ignoring me, she turned back to him, her mouth pursed now into a mock half pout. “Why, Johnny, you devil. You never told me you had a niece.”
    He smiled faintly. “You never asked.”
    Ignoring him, she turned back to me. “Such a pretty little thing. Aren’t you just darling .”
    I was four or five inches taller than she. And considerably less irritating.
    â€œDaphne’s a writer,” John said to me, as though that explained something. Perhaps, to those who knew more about writers than I, it did.
    She cupped her hand to the side of her mouth, leaned slightly forward, and spoke to me in a stage whisper that was audible across the room and probably in the building next door: “You do know,” she said, “that you’re the envy of just about every girl in the room.” She looked back at John and flashed a sweet smile up at him. “Including me, of course.”
    He smiled bleakly. “Is there something I can do for you, Daphne?”
    She cocked her small, perfect head. Her ringlets trembled. She leaned toward him, as though his gravity was drawing her closer. “Could we talk for just a little bit, sugar? In private?”
    He looked at her for a moment, neutrally, and then looked down at me and smiled. “Excuse me for a minute?”
    â€œSure,” I said. “Of course.”
    Sugar?
    Daphne swung the right end of her shawl up over her left shoulder, regally turned, and then swished off toward the bar, her hips swinging. I could almost hear them ticking, click-clack , like a metronome. John followed her.
    I picked at my food as I watched them. She sat down on a stool and ordered a drink, something pink and frothy. She sipped at it daintily while she talked. John stood beside her, facing forward across the bar, not looking at her, his elbows on the top of the bar, his hands clasped, his lowered head nodding from time to time. She chattered away.
    Then John turned to her and said something.
    Daphne slammed her drink down onto the bar. Some pink swirled out and spattered onto the counter. Along the bar, on either side of them, heads swiveled in their direction. She swung herself around, away from John, stepped down off her stool, flipped the shawl up over her shoulder again, and marched across the room, her head raised. She disappeared into the entryway.
    John had turned and watched her as she stomped off. Now he glanced over at me. I lowered my head and became extremely industrious, sawing away at my steak.
    A moment later, he sat down opposite me. “Sorry for the interruption,” he said.
    I looked up from my steak. “No, that’s