The Girl From Nowhere Read Online Free PDF

mask—of innocence. The defiant, disheveled woman in Yari’s photograph was present in the Sandy Smollett who lifted her heavy restaurant coffee mug with a little finger delicately extended.
    This girl had trouble written all over her in indelible ink, and part of me couldn’t wait to read the juicy bits. The sane part said it was time to take that trip to Patagonia I’d been putting off for so long.
    “When I got to New York,” Sandy Smollett continued, “I sublet an apartment near Lincoln Center, and at first everything was okay. Then one day I got home from work and there was a dead rat in the apartment.”
    “They say that you’re never more than ten feet away from a rat anywhere in New York. They have to die somewhere.”
    “This one was in a fancy box tied up with pink ribbon. I would have been more upset, but the next morning I was leaving town for a month’s engagement at another of Joey’s clubs. Aladdin’s Alley, down in Fort Lauderdale. It was a relief to get away, but while I was down there I began to get letters . . .”
    She hesitated, as if she didn’t want to continue.
    “What kind of letters?”
    “Dirty letters.”
    “You mean obscene?”
    “Yes, but threatening too. Whoever wrote them said something horrible was going to happen to me.”
    “Horrible in what way?”
    “Nothing specific. It was all pretty vague. The message was basically that I’d been a bad girl, so something bad was going to happen to me.”
    “Do you have any of these letters?”
    She shook her head.
    “I tore them up, but then unpleasant things started to happen. I got to work one day and found someone had slashed my costume. That was the first thing. Next, one night while I was at the club, the room I had rented in a bed-and-breakfast at the beach was broken into. The place was ransacked. Someone had gone through my drawers and taken stuff.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “Underwear. I moved to a different hotel for my last couple of days down there, then when I came back to the Alibi I discovered someone was stalking me.”
    “The guy who attacked you this afternoon?”
    She shook her head.
    “A very different kind of guy. Youngish, tall, long dirty-blond hair.”
    “Like a hippie?”
    “Not really. Just a regular guy who’s grown his hair out. I noticed him on the train one morning after work. I was sure I’d seen him before somewhere, though I couldn’t place him. A few days later he was on the platform as I waited for the train, and he kept looking at me in a way that gave me the creeps. He got into a different car, but when I left the train at Columbus Circle he got off too, and he was right behind me when I went up the stairs. But then he disappeared. Starting the next night, and for three nights in a row, he was on the same train as me again. In the same car. This was at two in the morning—how likely is that? The trains are almost deserted. The first two times he got off at my stop, then disappeared, though for all I know he may have still been following me. The third night he sat right opposite me, even though the car was empty, and stared at me the whole way. By then I was really scared—praying that a transit cop or someone would come through the car. I was sure the man would get off when I did, but this time he didn’t. As I stood up he said, ‘Excuse me, miss.’ I had been trying to ignore him, but I couldn’t help responding. When I looked his way he lifted the newspaper that had been on his lap . . .”
    “He flashed you?”
    “He exposed himself. After that I took taxis home from work, but a few nights later I woke up at about four in the morning and there was a man in the room.”
    “What was he doing?”
    “Masturbating.”
    She blushed and bit her lip.
    “Using my panties,” she added.
    “Nice. Was it the same man?”
    “I think so, but I couldn’t be sure. It was dark. I screamed and he ran.”
    “Any sign of a break-in?”
    “When I checked, the door was unlocked.