Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

myself back to that state of mind.
    It was quarter of six when I went down the stairs with the box in my hand. Just as I went out the street door, a cab pulled up in front and Emily Rudolph got out. My heart gave a wild bound as I thought at first that she had come to see me. But the cab driver pulled two big suitcases, two little ones, and a couple of hatboxes out of the cab.
    She saw me and said casually, “Oh, hello, Kyle.”
    “What goes on?”
    “I’m moving in. When I left Friday I noticed that there was no name on one of the mailboxes. So I saw the superintendent. At first he said he was saving it for somebody and then let me have it. It’s on the third floor, and it’s right above yours, Kyle.”
    “Want I should lug that stuff up, lady?” the driver said humbly.
    “I’ll take some,” I said, “and we can do it all in one trip. Got your key?”
    “Yes. He gave it to me when I paid the rent.”
    She took one hatbox. The driver took one big suitcase, one little one, and a hatbox. That left a big suitcase anda little one for me. It was expensive luggage. The best. You could see that.
    In order to carry them, I shoved the corsage box into my jacket pocket. I knew Emily had seen it. She put the hatboxes down and unlocked the door. It was almost like walking into my own place. The furniture was arranged the same, and it was just about as beat as mine. As she was nearer the top of the well, it was a lighter apartment.
    She paid the driver. “Thanks, lady,” he said. “Thanks a lot.” He went whistling down the stairs.
    For the first time Emily seemed a bit ill at ease. “I just happened to like the setup, Kyle. And I can afford it. The others I’ve looked at were too high.”
    “Don’t apologize for becoming a neighbor. I like it”
    “I don’t want you to think that it changes anything I said Friday.”
    “I understand that.”
    “Thanks for helping me, Kyle. I don’t want to hold you up. You’ll be late.”
    “It … wasn’t a definite date, anyway.”
    She was under control again. She looked amused. It seemed as though she knew, somehow, what a miserable week end I had given to Jo Anne, and why I was taking her the flowers. Her dress was of a soft gray material with tiny flecks of white. Her hat, of white wool in a coarse knit, was identical to the green one she had worn Friday. No watch, ring, bracelet, clip or pin.
    I went down three steps and looked back, expecting to see her in the doorway. But she had closed the door so quietly that I hadn’t heard it.
    Out on the sidewalk again, I took the transparent box out of my pocket. It had become slightly crushed. I tried to straighten it out, but made it worse. By the time the bus dropped me at the Clark Street corner, the edges of the petals were rimmed with the faint brown that meant that the man had sold me flowers that were not sufficiently fresh. I tossed the box on top of a trash barrel beside the grocery store on the Clark Street corner.
    They were at dinner. I should have phoned. Ed insisted that I pull up a chair. Mom went out and broughtin a plate apologetically, because there wasn’t much on it. There was a happy look in Jo Anne’s eyes. I tried to tell myself that things were as they had always been, and yet, sitting with her family, I felt like an impostora guy who happened to look just like Kyle Cameron, but who had changed in some immeasurable way.
    I watched the TV news again with Ed until the dishes were done, and then walked with Jo Anne to the neighborhood movies.
    I sat in the darkness beside her, our shoulders touching, her hand warm and faintly sticky in mine. The movie was about a batch of madly gay people at some sort of resort. Jo Anne liked it. I watched them on the Technicolor screen, all the incredibly seductive women, all the bronzed long-jawed men. It made me remember, for no good reason, a line drawing in one of the old history books in school, in a chapter about feudal days. A big banquet was going on in the