Hot Properties by Rafael Yglesias Read Free Book Online

nutty.”
    “Thank you, darling.”
    Betty relaxed. “Who is your meeting with?”
    “Gloria.”
    “Gloria Fowler? How did that happen?”
    “She called me.” Tony raised his eyebrows in an attempt to look snooty. “Said she admires my plays and wondered if we might have lunch.”
    Betty whistled.
    “You think she wants to represent me?”
    “Does she do theater?”
    “No, she doesn’t really. But other people in the agency do. She might want me to write movies.”
    “Movies!” Betty reached for a pack of cigarettes on the night table beside her. “What would make her think you’d want to write movies?”
    “Well.” Tony stood up and walked majestically toward the window, his legs stepping high and deliberately in front of him, a soldier on the march. “Don’t you think I can?”
    Betty’s eyes were on his greenies. “Do you want to write movies?”
    “God, you say it as if I’ve announced I want to fuck a leper.” He peered out a window at the street tragically.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. It’s fine if you want to write movies.”
    “Thank you. Now we just have to get a studio to agree.” He turned to face her, smiling pleasantly. She looked at his flat stomach and followed the line of black hair that ran from his navel to the bulge in his greenies.
    “Come here,” she said.
    He did, approaching with a skeptical look. When he reached the side of the bed, she took his hand and pulled him down, her arms wrapping around his broad and bony back. She ran her fingers down his spine. “You have doe’s skin,” she said in a whisper.
    “I think I should be saying that to you,” he answered.
    “Let’s do it quickly. I don’t want to be up for hours,” she said with a kiss on his cheek. She moved her way up to his earlobe and nibbled on it.
    “You flatter me,” Tony said. “It’s never taken hours.”
    She smiled and slipped out from under him, opening the night-table drawer to remove the blue plastic diaphragm case, and then tiptoed quickly toward the bathroom. As she modestly shut the door behind her, she winked at him, like a girl at summer camp sneaking out of her bunk to do mischief.
    Fred had left the bathroom, stung by his wife’s rejection. When, with an attitude of disdain, she took his hand off her body and placed it on the cold and slippery porcelain, he wanted to smash her. That deadly look of boredom and contempt—it was humiliating.
    “I have to get cigarettes,” he said in a clipped voice, and left the room, closing the door behind him with a bang: hard enough to register a protest, but just short of actually slamming it.
    He found a pack on the coffee table. There were only two cigarettes inside and he knew he would be up for hours. “Fuck.” he said, and got his coat. “I’m going down for cigarettes,” he shouted at the bathroom door.
    “What?” Marion asked, her voice made faint by the closed door.
    Fred opened it and said, “I’m out of cigarettes. Do you want something?”
    Marion, her face a mask of indifference, shook her head.
    Fred suddenly couldn’t maintain his anger: his look pleaded for mercy. “Are you angry at me?”
    Marion’s eyes widened with surprise. “No. I’m taking a bath. I don’t want visitors when—”
    “Okay, okay, I get it.” He shut the door and left, walking angrily, his feet stamping on the gray-carpeted floors. He stood at the bank of elevators and muttered to himself, accompanied by the hollow noise of wind rushing down the shaftways. “She really doesn’t want me around.” An elevator door slid open as he said this and there was a couple, dressed formally, inside. Fred suspected that they had heard him and he stepped in with his head down, embarrassed. This marriage isn’t going to last, he thought to himself, peering at the logo of Otis Elevator on the floor. This thought was loud and final in his skull. He knew the marriage wasn’t going to end that night, but inevitably it would have to: they had no