mind. Computers and Allie were compatible. Right now, she envied them. Computers thought, in their basic way, but they didn’t feel. Allie didn’t want to feel. She wanted to see herself from a distance, so she could analyze and convert emotion to cold fact. An IBM clone—that’s what she wanted to be.
She keyed in her household budget program and looked over the figures. Made a few calculations and studied the results on the screen.
The computer played fair with her and gave her the hard truth. Without Sam, if she wanted to stay in the Cody Arms and pay her bills, she’d need help, even with the Fortune Fashions account.
There was a way to obtain the right kind of roommate, she knew. She’d considered it before Sam had moved in with her.
Allie keyed in the word-processor program. She typed “Wanted, roommate to share apt. W.70s,” then her phone number.
Tomorrow she’d look at the classified pages of some newspapers and decide where she might place the ad. She wanted to do this right; didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of people. She’d read the ads in some of the underground papers. Desperate singles, divorcées, shutins, and gays. People looking for sex partners who shared their particular perversions. There was a loneliness there, a sadness she didn’t want to touch her.
She spent the next half-hour composing and printing out rental application forms.
She couldn’t leave the computer; it was like a friend she could rely on, one that wouldn’t deceive, or switch allegiance. There was comfort in predictability.
When the windows were beginning to brighten with the dawn, she switched off the computer, went back to bed, and finally slept.
Chapter 7
ALLIE slept until almost noon, then awoke to the sinking realization of what had happened. Lisa. A woman named Lisa. She felt a hollowness when she thought about Sam, and beyond that a deep resentment and anger. Love could do a quick turn to hate, sudden as a tango step, and she didn’t want that. She chose not to have that kind of corrosiveness inside her. The task would be to exorcise him from her mind, a necessary knack if she wanted to continue her life.
For a few minutes she lay in bed, getting used to the new Allison Jones in her state of existence without Sam. Then she rolled her tongue around her mouth, making a face at the bad taste, and struggled out of bed.
Slightly stiff from sleeping so late, she staggered into the bathroom and brushed her teeth with the final surrender of the Crest tube. She picked up Sam’s toothbrush from the porcelain holder and dropped it, along with the distorted corpse of the toothpaste tube, into the wastebasket. Then she turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature. She stood for a long time beneath the hot needles of water, waking up all the way and working up courage to face what was left of her Saturday. Of her life.
After toweling dry, she put on black slacks and a baggy white T-shirt with SIMON AND GARFUNKLE CENTRAL PARK CONCERT lettered across the front; she’d bought it the day after she’d attended the concert several years ago, and the letters were faded. Simon, who was still hard at it, probably had a song about that. He was doing fine without Garfunkle; she could make it without Sam.
She stepped into the comfortable soft leather moccasins she wore on weekends and wandered as if lost through the apartment, pausing here and there and running her fingertips over the furniture, as if to reassure herself it was real.
Jesus, she thought, how maudlin. She walked over to the office-alcove, ripped the fan-fold paper from the computer printer, and read the classified ad she’d composed before dawn. It was simple and to the point. Effective. She’d been thinking clearly enough when she considered advertising for a roommate to share expenses.
It occurred to Allie that she might have a problem, telling potential roommates they’d have to live surreptitiously in the apartment, be
She keyed in her household budget program and looked over the figures. Made a few calculations and studied the results on the screen.
The computer played fair with her and gave her the hard truth. Without Sam, if she wanted to stay in the Cody Arms and pay her bills, she’d need help, even with the Fortune Fashions account.
There was a way to obtain the right kind of roommate, she knew. She’d considered it before Sam had moved in with her.
Allie keyed in the word-processor program. She typed “Wanted, roommate to share apt. W.70s,” then her phone number.
Tomorrow she’d look at the classified pages of some newspapers and decide where she might place the ad. She wanted to do this right; didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of people. She’d read the ads in some of the underground papers. Desperate singles, divorcées, shutins, and gays. People looking for sex partners who shared their particular perversions. There was a loneliness there, a sadness she didn’t want to touch her.
She spent the next half-hour composing and printing out rental application forms.
She couldn’t leave the computer; it was like a friend she could rely on, one that wouldn’t deceive, or switch allegiance. There was comfort in predictability.
When the windows were beginning to brighten with the dawn, she switched off the computer, went back to bed, and finally slept.
Chapter 7
ALLIE slept until almost noon, then awoke to the sinking realization of what had happened. Lisa. A woman named Lisa. She felt a hollowness when she thought about Sam, and beyond that a deep resentment and anger. Love could do a quick turn to hate, sudden as a tango step, and she didn’t want that. She chose not to have that kind of corrosiveness inside her. The task would be to exorcise him from her mind, a necessary knack if she wanted to continue her life.
For a few minutes she lay in bed, getting used to the new Allison Jones in her state of existence without Sam. Then she rolled her tongue around her mouth, making a face at the bad taste, and struggled out of bed.
Slightly stiff from sleeping so late, she staggered into the bathroom and brushed her teeth with the final surrender of the Crest tube. She picked up Sam’s toothbrush from the porcelain holder and dropped it, along with the distorted corpse of the toothpaste tube, into the wastebasket. Then she turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature. She stood for a long time beneath the hot needles of water, waking up all the way and working up courage to face what was left of her Saturday. Of her life.
After toweling dry, she put on black slacks and a baggy white T-shirt with SIMON AND GARFUNKLE CENTRAL PARK CONCERT lettered across the front; she’d bought it the day after she’d attended the concert several years ago, and the letters were faded. Simon, who was still hard at it, probably had a song about that. He was doing fine without Garfunkle; she could make it without Sam.
She stepped into the comfortable soft leather moccasins she wore on weekends and wandered as if lost through the apartment, pausing here and there and running her fingertips over the furniture, as if to reassure herself it was real.
Jesus, she thought, how maudlin. She walked over to the office-alcove, ripped the fan-fold paper from the computer printer, and read the classified ad she’d composed before dawn. It was simple and to the point. Effective. She’d been thinking clearly enough when she considered advertising for a roommate to share expenses.
It occurred to Allie that she might have a problem, telling potential roommates they’d have to live surreptitiously in the apartment, be
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