What's a Girl Gotta Do Read Online Free PDF

strangers. So much more
rational than just dead people. Do you still grow poison ivy in the
window boxes?’
    “It’s too cold for window boxes. I have it in
hanging planters inside the windows now and in vases on top of all
the major appliances and valuables. In case of burglars. If they
rob me and the police don’t catch them . . .”
    “You want them to suffer a painful rash at
least, I know,” he said. “You’ve explained this to me a dozen times
and it still strikes me as nutty. You don’t think this behavior is
a little strange?”
    “This from a man who rubs sheep-placenta
cream into his face every night. A man who refers to his genitalia
as ‘Uncle Wiggily.” A man who won’t read a magazine until he wipes
down the cover with disinfectant.”
    “You know how many people’s hands a magazine
goes through before it gets to your door? Do you know where their
hands have been?”
    “I’m surprised you were willing to kiss me
without wiping me down first.”
    “It’s no use trying to talk to you civilly,”
he said. “You’ll excuse me.”
    “Sure, Heinrich,” I said loudly.
    He looked around nervously.
    I know lots of his secrets: that his given
name is Heinrich Adolph Stedlbauer IV, changed to Burke Avery for
television; that at home he belches without excusing himself and
secretly reads Judith Krantz. I know his guilty pleasures and his
annoying habits. I know his blood type, his allergies, even which
foods give him gas. I wish I didn’t know so much about him, and I
wish he didn’t know so much about me. That’s why I said his name,
to remind him to keep his mouth shut about me.
    “You promised not to tell anyone that my
name—“
    “You promised to love, honor and cherish,” I
said. But he looked so hurt by my threat that I gave in. “I won’t
say anything. Jeez.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “Let’s get together and
talk one of these days. I really do want to be friends if we can.”
He kissed my cheek and as soon as he did I wiped the kiss away with
my hand.
     
    I looked for Eric—unsuccessfully—while
worrying about my imminent meeting with the ginger-haired guy. At
10:55, I headed to the elevators. As I got on, Solange, changed
into a fresh blue suit, got off.
    “Oh, are you staying here tonight, Robin,”
she asked.
    “Uh, no. I’m going to meet a friend.”
    “Oh, I see,” she said suggestively.,
    I smiled weakly and let the elevator doors
close her out. Great. A rumor of some kind would be circulating
around the ballroom in about a minute and a half. I wondered who my
name would be linked with. I wondered who I could get to tell
me.
    I walked down the corridor and when I reached
the door marked 13D I opened my purse slightly to have access to my
Epilady and my cayenne cologne if I needed them, and I get a good
grip on my knife.
    I knocked. No answer. I knocked again, harder
and waited. Still no answer.
    Maybe he was late. I leaned against the wall
and waited. While I stood there, Joanne Armoire came out of a room
down the hall. She gave me a quizzical smile. “Who are you waiting
for, Robin,” she asked. Journalists are shameless.
    “A friend.”
    “Oh. Well, happy New Year, almost.”
    “Yeah, you too.”
    I watched her walk away and disappear into
the wall where the elevators were.
    I knocked one more time, longer and louder,
in case the asshole had fallen asleep or something. But there was
still no answer.
    What kind of weird joke is this, I
wondered.
    Yeah, that’s what it was, I realized. A
joke.
    I’m known as a kind of . . . prankster at
ANN, which was crawling with them. Somebody was getting even with
me, and in a way that would naturally appeal to my troublesome
curiosity. Let’s face it, a few phone calls around my hometown
could have yielded the information he’d fed me on the phone.
    Hell, if he’d caught my own mother on a bad
day, she would have quite innocently told him anything he wanted to
know, and forgotten about it as soon as she hung up the