Death of a Tall Man by Frances Lockridge Read Free Book Online Page B

but only for a moment, she felt a strange hollowness, an inadequacy. But it lasted only for a moment; when she spoke there was no hesitancy.
    â€œSaks Fifth Avenue,” she said. There was nothing to indicate that it was merely what had come first into her mind.
    This was another turning point, of course. It might be that this was a taxicab which would only go downtown. But Pam doubted it; acceptance, although long delayed, seemed to have been complete—complete, at any rate, within reason. Not Brooklyn, of course. Not the Bronx. Certainly not Long Island City. But almost certainly Saks. Perhaps even the upper East Side, if she wanted to go to the upper East Side.
    The taxicab driver did not respond, but he made a sound. It was hardly contemptuous at all, that sound. He reached across and pushed down the flag. He started up. (There was something, rather dreadful, wrong with the transmission, Pam’s ears told her. But the taxicab moved.) Pam sat back in her seat.
    Now, she thought to herself, whatever am I going to buy at Saks? When all I want is lunch? She considered a moment. Oh well, she thought, probably that will take care of itself.
    It took care of itself reasonably well, as it turned out. Pam found several things she needed without going off the main floor. She had no particular feeling of guilt, having long needed a new purse, anyway. What feeling of guilt she did have, vanished when she bought Jerry a dozen handkerchiefs which she was sure he needed and then, after some speculation, a new tie. He needed a new tie, and she always bought his ties. Neither of the Norths thought this at all comic, nor did Pam at any time buy Jerry a new tie of which he did not highly approve.
    Since she was there, she decided, there could be no harm in looking at new dresses, because there might be something entirely too good to pass up. She took the elevator and looked at dresses for some time, and found one that might be too good to pass up and tried it on, and looked at herself in all the mirrors. Then she decided that Jerry had better see it before she bought it, on account of the line, and arranged to have it put aside for twenty-four hours, on the chance. She reclothed herself in the lightweight wool dress which was not far from the color of Martini—a very useful, and not coincidental, similarity; Martini was shedding—but which had red pockets, which Martini did not have. She tossed her light spring coat over her arm and tapped briskly toward the elevator, stopping only long enough to make an appointment at Antoine’s desk for the next afternoon. (She did not keep the appointment; she did not return with Jerry to consider the reserved dress. The next day was not to be, in any detail, as she planned it.) In the elevator, she looked at her watch and was startled to see that it was now two thirty. Two thirty-five, really, making the necessary corrections for deviation.
    She was really hungry now, she thought, going out the Fiftieth Street door and turning toward Madison. She wanted something reasonably substantial, like hamburgers. She turned up Madison, walking briskly, thinking of hamburgers. She found them in Hamburger Heaven, sitting at the counter. She had two and a cup of coffee and then, after a momentary pause of doubt, a large piece of cake. She had another cup of coffee and a cigarette with it and was pleased because if she had gone to Charles she would almost surely have had a cocktail and this way she hadn’t. The taxicab had really been a godsend, Pam North decided.
    She pressed her cigarette out in the ashtray—and was faintly repelled when the man next to her, finishing, simultaneously, dropped his, still afire, into his almost empty coffee cup—slipped from the stool, paid her check at the counter and went out into Madison. Now what? she thought, turning downtown. Now a bus—miracles never struck twice in one day—home and then it would be almost time for Jerry. It was three