The Chelsea Girl Murders Read Online Free PDF

I’d have to dodge both the Evil Queen and her Cowardly Knave.
    About an hour before quitting time, Jerry tried to provoke me by telling me we needed a younger, prettier cohost on our after-school program, a grab bag of dating issues, school, and adventures. He added that its focus should shift completely to makeup, fashion, and how to get a boyfriend. I promised to think about it.
    I’ve never seen that guy look so miserable. If I’d known being mature and circumspect had this effect on him, I would have tried it long ago. What I told Louis Levin notwithstanding, I was doing this to Jerry on purpose. It hadn’t started out that way. It started because I came back, jet-lagged from the road, too exhausted to fight, and forced to rely on the little bit of diplomacy I learned in my travels. But when I noticed how much it bugged Jerry when I didn’t tongue-lash him, I started being mature and diplomatic just to, well, make his monkey crazy. It reminded me of one of my favorite old jokes: A masochist and a sadist are sitting on a bench. The masochist says, “Hurt me.” The sadist says, “No.”
    Evidently, my new maturity was getting to Solange too. A half hour or so later, just as I was about to leave, Solange came into my office and said, “Get a lot of rest on your vacation. You look tired. I’m very concerned about you.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œRelax. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll make sure Jerry doesn’t make trouble for you,” she said. “I’ll make sure Paula and Lucille don’t make trouble either. You just get lots of rest.”
    The last two were executive producers. We’d all gotten along okay in the brief times I was in the office, and it had never occurred to me that Paula and Lucille would want to make trouble for me—until now. I figured Solange was trying to pit me against them, and she was probably trying to pit them against me in a similar fashion. It was a favorite blood sport of hers, provoking people to attack each other, then stepping in after the bloodletting as the kindly voice of reason who would restore order.
    I was tempted to use my favorite passive-aggressive weapon against her, telling her about someone she disliked who was now happy. That always burned her butt. But as with Jerry, it was even more vexing to her if I just took the high road and acted mature and kind of … what’s the word … classy. Who knew? She hated people who took the high road over her even more than she hated people who were happy, which almost made taking the high road worth it. In any event, it was a good thing I was going on vacation, because torturing them was fun but that high-road thing is really hard to keep up for any extended period of time.
    Finally, it was quitting time. At the end of the day, when I left the pink-and-black granite Jackson Broadcasting Building, I felt a great relief and freedom, as the giant fingers that had been squeezing my chest for the past five days peeled back and let me go. No intrigues, no gossip, no gender politics for two whole weeks. Just rest and relaxation. Heaven.

chapter three
    When I got back to the Chelsea, loaded down with cat food, new clothes, and other essentials, I called Nadia from the lobby as she had requested.
    â€œWho is it?” Nadia snapped.
    â€œIt’s Robin, Tamayo’s friend. I’m downstairs. Is it okay if I come up?”
    â€œGive me half an hour.” She slammed down the phone.
    By now, I was really dragging my can. A half hour seemed an eternity—yet, ironically, not long enough to go somewhere and do something worthwhile.
    I took a seat in the lobby. There were just three people sitting in the lobby—an old man who slept in an armchair, a hip-looking young man with a brush cut and black-rimmed glasses slouched in a chair, and me. The lobby was eclectically decorated, to say the least, with artwork of different, sometimes conflicting