Wait for Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

won’t.” Her smile was sagacious.
    “Look,” he said with a hesitation he was unaccustomed to and couldn’t appreciate. “Here’s my card if you ever... if you ever need anything or... if you feel like getting together for a drink or something sometime. I’d... I’d like to see you again.”
    “Thanks.” She took the card. It seemed like a very upper-class thing to do, handing out cards. Aside from his wallet, Oliver Carey appeared to have everything. Wealth. Privilege. Sophistication. Yet there was a great need in him that pulled at her. And she sensed that before long his need would become even greater. “When you’re... well, I’m in the book, if you want to talk to me.”

Three
    H OLLY LOFTIN WAS NEVER home. She didn’t sleep. And she never used her telephone. Oliver knew these things for certain, because he’d called her apartment fifty times over the past two weeks. The line was never busy and she never picked up, even when he called after midnight.
    He wasn’t used to people being unavailable to him, and it was damned irritating—in an illogical, irrational sort of way.
    She did have an answering machine. Loath to admit it, he’d called several times simply to hear her voice, but he hadn’t left a message. What could he say?
    “Holly, my father died and you were the first person I thought of... actually, the only person I thought of?”
    “Holly, I need to talk?”
    “Holly, we buried my father today, and I know this is going to sound really perverted because we hardly know each other, but I was wondering if you might be willing to hold me for an hour or two?”
    “Holly, my father is gone and I think about you constantly?”
    “Holly, I’m lonely. Where are you?”
    He’d tried every missive out loud, but couldn’t bring himself to leave them on the machine.
    With every passing day and with every beep from her machine, his need to see her escalated beyond desire and longing, beyond craving, to a point that found him leaving work on Friday, taking the top deck of the Bay Bridge straight into the heart of Oakland, then driving up and down quiet, Christmas-frilled neighborhood streets with every intention of camping on her doorstep until she finally came home.
    “Who is it?” she called through the door when he knocked.
    He was so shocked to hear her voice, it took him a second or two to answer. The door was draped with a glittering gold garland and tiny bright lights. An extension cord ran thirty feet down the hall to light them up. It had to be her.
    “Oliver Carey,” he said.
    “Oh, Oliver!” she said, and he was pleased to hear the excitement in her voice. “Don’t move. I’m not dressed. Don’t go away. I’ll only be a second.” A pause. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”
    Still a bit perturbed, he was about to tell her that he’d have come sooner if she’d answer her phone once in a while, but decided to wait until she opened the door. Which would happen at any second if the running footsteps from inside were any indication.
    The muffled cries of a baby drew his attention down the corridor, beyond the extension cord. The walls were drab and dirty. Someone was listening to the evening news on television, and the air reeked of long-gone cooking.
    It wasn’t the sort of place he frequented. And he hadn’t pictured Holly living in quite so impoverished a state. It wasn’t the first time that he realized how little he knew about her. He recalled that she’d said she didn’t wait tables for a living, so what did she do? Did her brothers know she lived liked this? If Spoleto’s Restaurant was any indication, they had plenty of money. Why didn’t they help her out a little financially? Did it ever frighten her to live in such a place, alone and unprotected?
    Of course, when Holly whipped open the door, every thought in his head was blown away, save one.
    She was naked. Well, she’d said as much when he knocked, but... and... well, she hadn’t covered much up in the