One Cold Night by Katia Lief Read Free Book Online

wait until morning before ringing alarm bells.
    “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    Susan crossed the room to get her purse from the coffee table, picking up her BlackBerry and zipping it into the purse’s outside pouch. He could just see her fretfully cleaning and e-mailing into the night as she’d waited.
    Everything at this late hour seemed conspicuously noisy: their footsteps down the rose-carpeted hall, the door to the elevator sliding open, its five-floor descent to the marble-and-chandelier lobby. On their way out, Dave stopped to ask Dexter — the night doorman, sitting behind the high faux-marble counter — to tell Lisa they’d be right back if she got home first.
    Dave held the front door open for Susan. Neither of them had thought to bring a jacket and it was cold out now, colder than just a few minutes ago when he hadcome home from work. Unless it was the contrast between home, its warmth, and now this. Susan hugged herself, and Dave pulled her close against him as they walked in synch in the direction of the park.
    Bridge traffic at this time of night was growing thin enough to tease out the sounds of individual vehicles. Vans and cars had different tenors, trucks were a low rumble, motorcycles a high whiz. Dave was used to the soloist meanderings of night, and was reminded by the intentness of Susan’s listening that she was not. She was accustomed to — and a direct part of — the neighborhood’s boisterous resurgence. She was noise, energy, progress, day. He inspected and chased the night. She shivered against him and he ran his hand up and down her bare, goose-pimply arm.
    Moonlight and the bright haze of Manhattan across the river drenched everything in the park — lawn, path, bench, shore — in a tarnished silver glow. This park that would wake with color in the morning was now a kind of sepia recollection. Dave scanned for signs of Lisa. And then, as he realized that he was looking for signs of her — that he wasn’t really expecting to find her lolling on a bench, staring at the river — he felt the lurch of his mode switching from home to work, the pit of his stomach sinking.
    They walked the curved stone path to the Main Street entrance, their shoes tapping softly on the cobblestones as they crossed over to the sidewalk. Dave’s eyes searched; he listened and he smelled. The night air was crisp and acrid with the hours-rotted garbage waiting for Sanitation’s morning pickup.
    “I don’t like this,” Susan said.
    Dave wanted to answer, Neither do I, but he stayed quiet. He wanted to keep Susan as calm as possible,because probably this was nothing; probably Lisa was already home, lying on her bed with her iPod whirring out a song. He unclipped his cell phone from his belt loop and speed-dialed home. There was no answer until voice mail picked up after five rings.
    “Doesn’t she have keys to the store?” he asked.
    “Good idea,” Susan said. “Maybe she went there.”
    As they neared the corner of Water Street they were met by a breeze that must have hooked through the yawning, eyeless Empire Stores warehouse to their right. And on that breeze Dave smelled a trace of paint. He remembered the yellow line: He had forgotten to paint it today. He wondered if the paint he thought he smelled was real or a nagging guilt at having neglected his promise; he hated to disappoint Susan.
    He glanced at her profile as they walked quickly together. Marriage, or at least marriage to her, was nothing like he had expected; when their initial passion had somewhat cooled, the deep friendship that blossomed had saturated him with contentment. She was a full decade younger than him, and a sweetness still clung to her face, a shine to her glorious eyes, but tonight there was something new. She had turned twenty-nine just yesterday, and now her face had the sober look of a woman about to cross thirty, heading forward in life, understanding the inevitability of... what? Something had