69 Barrow Street Read Online Free Page A

it out in the glass ashtray on the table. He felt very comfortable with her, more comfortable than he had felt with a woman in years. There was a definite feeling of ease between them, as if they understood and appreciated and respected each other, thinking the same things and experiencing the same emotions. Why, her attitude about her ceramics work was damned similar to his own feelings about his painting.
    As if she were reading his mind she asked: “What do you do, Ralph?”
    “Not much of anything.”
    She waited for him to explain.
    “I’m a painter,” he said at length. “Or at least I was a painter. I haven’t done anything in months.”
    “How come?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve been in an awful slump, Susan. I just haven’t had the slightest desire to do any work. My brushes don’t even feel right in my hand anymore. Not too long ago I set up the easel in my front room and hauled out the paints and brushes. And I stood there looking at the canvas and I didn’t know what to do or where to begin. I felt like a damned fool, just standing there pretending to be an artist and not even getting a drop of paint on the canvas.”
    “That’s awful.”
    “It’s a weird sort of feeling. Guys I’ve talked to say it can happen in any line of work. There’s even a term for it—a writer friend of mine calls it writer’s block. He says it happens to him every once in a while and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.”
    “I guess you just have to ride it out, huh?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “In my case I think it’s something different. It’s not just that I can’t paint, it’s that I don’t even want to paint anymore.”
    “You’ll probably snap out of it.”
    “I guess so.”
    “You will, Ralph. All you have to do is keep trying. I think you’ll make it.”
    He smiled at her.
    Stella woke up like a cat. First her eyes opened slowly and closed again. Then she opened her eyes a second time and stretched herself slightly, tensing the muscles in her legs and reaching up over her head with her arms.
    She yawned, her mouth opening wide and the air rushing into her lungs. She stretched again, her whole body tensing and flexing to send the blood coursing through veins and arteries.
    The waking-up process took almost five minutes and by the time she clambered out of bed she was fully awake with her eyes wide open. She wondered where in hell Ralph might be.
    It would have been nice to have him around, she decided. She loved sex in the morning, especially when you were still half awake and half asleep. Then you came together without preliminaries, almost like animals, two bodies reaching and straining for each other and possessing each other without the brains getting in the way.
    It was good in the morning.
    But Ralph wasn’t around—and, unfortunately, neither was anyone else. She hurried into the bathroom for a shower and turned on the water. Then she kicked off her slippers and climbed into the small bathtub.
    A shower, like everything else she enjoyed, was a sensual experience for Stella. She didn’t just soap her body and rinse it. Instead she caressed herself with the soap, loving the smooth and slippery way it passed over her body.
    She loved to soap her breasts. She kneaded the lather into the soft smooth skin in a manner that was almost physically arousing. She did the same for all the erogenous zones of her perfect body.
    Then, when she was through, she turned on the cold shower full blast. Needles of icy liquid pain pelted her all over and hurt her in a deliciously invigorating way. The freezing water lashed at her breasts and belly and made her even more aware of herself.
    When she had stepped out of the tub and toweled herself dry she stood for almost fifteen minutes before her mirror. She loved to spend time at her mirror; she had done so since she was a small child.
    Stella had developed early. Her breasts began to grow when she was only eleven years old and reached their full