Three Bedrooms in Manhattan Read Online Free PDF Page A

driven in through the curtains by the neon signs in the street.
    He had stretched out his hand and touched nothing but the cold sheets.
    Had he really been glad? Hadn’t he really believed that things would be easier if they had ended like that?
    Apparently not—because when he saw the crack of light under the bathroom door, his heart registered the shock.
    What happened next happened so easily and naturally that he could barely recall the sequence of events.
    He had climbed out of bed, he remembered, because he wanted a cigarette. She must have heard his footsteps on the carpet. She had opened the bathroom door while she was still in the shower.
    â€œDo you know what time it is?” she asked happily.
    Strangely ashamed of his nakedness, he’d reached for his shorts. “No.”
    â€œMy sweet Frank, it is half-past seven in the evening.”
    No one had ever called him that before, and the words made him feel lighter. It was a lightness that would stay with him for hours, and it made everything seem so easy that he had the wonderful impression he was juggling with life itself.
    What had happened? It didn’t matter. Nothing would matter anymore.
    He said, “I wonder how I’ll shave.”
    And she said, more tenderly than sarcastically, “Just tell the bellboy to go out and get you a razor and some shaving cream. Do you want me to call him?”
    She thought it was funny. She had woken up clearheaded, while he was still confused. This reality seemed so new that he wasn’t too sure that it was, in fact, real.
    He remembered, now, the tone of her voice when she had said, with some satisfaction, “You’re not fat.”
    He replied, as seriously as he could, “I’ve always played sports.”
    And he almost flexed his muscles.
    Strange, they’d gone to sleep in this room as the night ended and woken up again as the night began. He was almost afraid to leave it—frightened of forgetting some part of himself there that he might never be able to find again.
    What was stranger still was that neither of them had thought of kissing. They both got dressed without embarrassment. She said thoughtfully, “I should buy another pair of stockings.”
    She licked her finger and drew it down the run he’d noticed the night before.
    He asked, almost awkwardly, “Can I borrow your comb?”
    The street, which had been empty when they arrived, was noisy now, bustling, full of bars, restaurants, and shops that they hadn’t noticed before.
    Everything seemed even more delicious because of this unlikely solitude, together with a feeling of relaxation they seemed to have stolen from the Broadway crowds.
    â€œYou haven’t forgotten anything?”
    They were waiting for the elevator; the attendant wasn’t the clerk from last night but a young girl in uniform, sullen and unresponsive. An hour later, no doubt, the clerk would have been back at his post: he would have understood.
    Downstairs, Combe went to turn in the key at the desk, while Kay, calm and poised, waited for him a few steps away, like a wife or longtime lover.
    â€œYou keeping the room?”
    Without thinking he said yes. He spoke quickly and quietly, not just because of her, but out of a sort of superstition. He didn’t want to tempt fate by seeming, so early on, to guess the future.
    What did he know about the future? They knew nothing about each other, even less than last night, perhaps. And yet had two beings, two human bodies, ever plunged into each other with such savagery, with such desperate fury?
    He didn’t remember how they’d fallen asleep or when. At one point he woke up and it was broad daylight. He had seen her, a pained expression on her face, her body almost spread-eagled, one foot and one hand hanging down to the floor. She hadn’t even opened her eyes as he rearranged her in the bed.
    Now they were outside, turning their backs on the Lotus’s purple