Girls' Dormitory by Orrie Hitt Read Free Book Online

way closed. He stepped back, wiped his hands on a rag and smiled. He would freeze her out.
    He climbed the stairs to the kitchen and walked to the refrigerator. Whenever Mrs. Reid was away the residents shifted for themselves, making sandwiches, cooking eggs, boiling coffee all over the place.
    He selected two eggs, found a frying pan and almost burned the bottom out of the pan before he remembered to put butter in. He also burned the eggs, scorched the toast and made the worst cup of coffee he had ever tasted. If it wasn't snowing so hard he'd have gone down to the corner diner and had a burger or something decent. But the weather was bad, he had turned the heat off upstairs and all he had to do was to sit and wait for something.
    He had some more coffee, a couple of cigarettes, and then, she was there, shivering as if she had just come in from the snow.
    "It's freezing in my room," Peggy said. "Freezing! Did you know it?"
    "Why, no, I didn't know it," he lied, getting up from the table. "It must be the radiator."
    "It's cold," she said. "Like ice."
    He nodded and looked at her. She was wearing a clinging red robe, as though she had been getting ready for bed or a shower. She had some shape, the best he had ever seen—better than that French actress people yelled about—and his hands were anxious to touch her. He didn't want to hurt her; Jerry just wanted to touch her, and learn if her lips were as soft and wet as they looked.
    "It's probably in the radiator or the line," he told her. "You get an air bubble in the line or the radiator and it cuts off all the heat. The only thing you have to do is bleed the radiator or the line."
    He knew she didn't understand what he was saying.
    "Well—would you?" she asked.
    "Oh, sure. I'll check the cellar first and then I'll be right with you. I'll have to look at the radiator in your room."
    She said nothing and he opened the door to the cellar stairs and walked down. Once he was in the cellar and behind the furnace, he opened the valve again. It would take several minutes for the heat to creep up to the third floor and if he was in her room when it started to come it would make him look good.
    He found her waiting for him in the kitchen.
    "I did what I could down there," he said. "Now we'll go up to your room."
    She walked ahead of him and he followed. It wasn't so bad until they got on the stairs. Then his head began to pound at the base of his neck and over his eyes. That girl had a pair of liquid hips and they moved like jelly in a bowl. He couldn't stop watching them or aching to run his hands over them.
    Her room was icy cold.
    "Like a barn," he said.
    He crossed to the radiator and fooled with the valve, opening it and closing it. She stood in the middle of the room and watched him, her arms crossed over her breasts, hugging herself for warmth.
    "Do you think you can fix it?" she asked him.
    He left the valve closed and got to his feet.
    "I think so," he said. "But it'll take a few minutes before I know for sure." He nodded toward the bed. "Why don't you wrap one of the blankets around you until it gets warm in here?"
    He could tell from the expression in her eyes that she hadn't thought of doing that.
    "I've got a coat in the closet," she said. "That might be better."
    He moved to the closet and opened the door. "Which side?" He knew which side.
    "The left one."
    There were three coats on the left side, one way back.
    "The one in front," she said. "The gray one."
    "Okay."
    He reached way back, feeling the last coat, and he knew what it was. Persian Lamb. The girl out at the West End had had one just like that and she had said it had cost a bundle of dough.
    "Here," he said,. carrying the gray coat over to her. "Put this on."
    He held the coat for her and she got into it. He kept thinking about that Persian Lamb. He had never seen her wearing it around the place and he doubted if anybody, including Helen, knew that she had it. A girl at a community college. A cheap way of