Gravity Brings Me Down Read Online Free Page B

then continue home.
    As I round the corner of the street, I’m amazed to see Miss Marple still standing where I left her. It’s been hours since I rescued her. What has she been doing all this time? I try to avoid her by ducking behind a lamppost but it’s too late. She’s already seen me.
    “Oh, Marie!”
    There’s no point telling her that I’m not Marie because it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I give her a blank stare, the way I do with Tod, because I don’t know what else to do.
    “I’ve been trying to get home,” she says. “Won’t you help me, dear?”
    Why is this happening to me? My only conclusion …

    I was an axe murderer in a previous life.
    “Don’t you know where you live?” I ask.
    Miss Marple looks at the ground, wrinkling up her forehead. “I used to know… yes, of course I know.”
    She starts digging furiously through her purse, like the answer is somewhere in the junk at the bottom, then pulls out her keys. They’re on a ring with a blue plastic dummy coil attached. “Here they are!” she says, holding them up for me to see.
    “Okay… is there a door that goes with those keys?”
    Her mouth opens and closes. I can tell she’s groping for something outside her mind’s grasp but she’s coming up empty-handed. Then she points at the building right in front of us.
    “Here it is,” she says. “Come on in, dear, I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
    Miss Marple slips through the glass doors at the front of the building. I’m tempted to run, but for some crazy reason, I don’t. I follow her into the foyer, watching as she fiddles with the keys until she somehow manages to unlock the door.
    “You are coming in, aren’t you?”
    I consider my options. I really just want to go home. It’s almost suppertime and the last thing I want is to spend any more time with Miss Marple. But she looks at me so hopefully.
    When we reach the elevators, she seems to forget why we’re there so I press the button. Minutes pass and the elevator still hasn’t arrived. I’m thinking there must be a black hole in the shaft, it’s taking so long, when the doors finally open. We step inside. The wallsare covered in graffiti. It stinks of something gross like fried fish or million-year-old french fries. I pinch my nose to keep from barfing. “What floor?”
    “Fourteen,” she says. “Number 1404.”
    As I press the button for the fourteenth floor, I have to wonder if Miss Marple isn’t jerking me around. One minute she doesn’t know what building she lives in, and the next she’s rhyming off her apartment number, no problem.
    Just as the doors are beginning to close, another blue-hair pops into the elevator.
    “Hello,” she says.
    “Hello,” Miss Marple answers. “Have you met my daughter, Marie?”
    I’m about to correct her, but the blue-hair gives me a big smile.
    “So young,” she says.
    “The baby,” Miss Marple tells her.
    Oh my God.
    The elevator struggles against the invisible forces, groaning by rusty inches along its cables until it lurches to a stop on the seventh floor. The doors open with an unnerving bang and the blue-hair steps out. We wait forever for the doors to close again, and then it takes another hour to get to the fourteenth floor. More wonderful smells wait for us there. I scrunch up my face, shadowing Miss Marple to her apartment.
    “This is mine,” she says, pointing to a yellow door like all the other doors on the floor, only hers has astraw wreath, decorated with a plastic dollar-store angel tied with dental floss at the top.
    “Here we are,” she says, rattling the keys in the lock.
    I’m expecting her place to be totally ghetto, given the surrounding environment. But it’s not at all. It’s neat and tidy and nice. She ushers me in, closing the door quickly.
    “I don’t like the smells,” she says, gesturing with her hand to the hallway.
    Amen to that.
    Miss Marple doesn’t have many things, but what she does have appears to be top-drawer.