Weep for Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

they spotted me at once. It made me feel uneasy. They’d seen me talking to Emily Rudolph by the water fountain, and they could add two and two and get seven most of the time.
    Jo Anne had come to bank picnics and parties with me, and they knew her, and some of them had been in school with both of us. I felt curiously naked standing there waiting for the new girl. Just as I decided that itwould be smarter to go across the street and wait at the soda fountain, she came out in her green dress. She wore a little green knit hat like a helmet, and the hat matched the dress.
    We met there on the sidewalk and beyond her I saw two of the girls, heading for the bus stop, turn and stare back at us. In the bright daylight she looked more pale than ever, and her skin was so transparent that at the temple I could see tiny blue veins like a geography-book map of a little river system.
    “It’s within walking distance,” I said. “Five short blocks. We can talk on the way. You don’t mind walking?”
    I was anxious to get her out of there. “I walk a great deal,” she said in that controlled tone.
    As we waited, side by side, for the light, I glanced at her face. She was staring straight ahead. Jo Anne’s head comes to the tip of my nose. Even though she was wearing low heels, Emily’s shoulders were only two inches below mine. That made her a tall girl. Taller than I had realized.
    “This may seem a bit odd, Miss Rudolph.”
    “What made you think I was looking for a place?”
    “Mr. Grinter told me you are living at the YW. That means you have to eat out. I just guessed that you were probably looking around.”
    We crossed with the green light. “Then what is odd?”
    “I’m being married when I get my vacation this summer. This is my apartment I thought you might be interested in.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s a bargain. As long as I’m vacating it, I might as well pass it along to someone I know.”
    She walked with one arm holding the flat brown purse to her side. I glanced down and saw how each stride she took molded the flaring skirt to the long line of her thigh.
    She was remarkably difficult to talk to. Yet she gave no hint of shyness. Rather, she was almost too self-possessed.
    “Do you like Thrace?”
    “I haven’t thought of it, Mr. Cameron.”
    “I suppose you came here because you knew someone, or someone spoke of it to you?”
    She gave me an oblique look. “I looked in an atlas, Mr. Cameron. This was the only city of this size that I had never heard of, never heard mentioned.”
    “That seems like an odd thing to do.”
    “Doesn’t it?”
    Walking with her, through the after-five rush, I was extremely conscious of her, of her effect on others. Men followed her with their eyes, with a sudden look of speculation and hunger. It was difficult to understand why. She was not beautiful. She was not pretty. She dressed very soberly, very quietly: It was like Sam had saidas though she carried a sign.
    “Here we are,” I said, in a forced way. I held open the street door. Inside was a narrow white-tiled vestibule with mailboxes and buttons for the apartment bells. Three steps led up to the second door. I unlocked it and held it open for her.
    “No elevators,” I said. “I’m on the second floor, though. The people on the fourth floor get their exercise.”
    She went up the stairs in a peculiar stride, and I suspected that she could have carried books on her head with no difficulty. I unlocked my door and pushed it open. She went in and stood in the middle of the single room. She turned slowly, and I knew that she saw everything there was to see.
    “Look around,” I said heartily. She looked into the kitchenette, into the tiny bath with its shower stall. I said, “It’s sort of gloomy. No view. Of course, I suppose you pay for a view.”
    “And lose a sense of privacy, Mr. Cameron.”
    “Then you like it?”
    “Well enough.” She stood staring at me without expression. My move.
    “Won’t you sit