Impersonal Attractions Read Online Free

to a little rough and tumble, the clink of chains, the smell of oiled black leather. But most of them were 6 A . M . to 2 A . M . joints, peopled with lonely men and women for whom the distinctions of desire had long been blurred by the bottle.
    The blond man knocked back a shot of bar bourbon. He took a long pull on his beer chaser, set it down on the slightly sticky bar, and held his hands straight out in front of him. No shake, no tremble. He was relaxed.
    Earlier he’d been nervous. It had been such a long time.
    Looking in the mirror again, he flexed his biceps. He liked to watch his muscles move beneath his black T-shirt.
    It was a fresh shirt. He’d been home to shower and change. He’d had to.
    How surprised she’d looked when she realized that his present wasn’t what she’d thought. He’d had something to give her, all right.
    She’d smiled at first, right after she’d opened the door. So excited. They always were. Talked about how pretty the flowers were. How sweet they smelled.
    The roses did smell good, but not good enough to cover up her smell.
    He took a deep breath. Old whiskey, cigarette smoke, stale beer. Smells he was comfortable with.
    She was so stupid to have let him in.
    “Dumb bitch,” he muttered to himself.
    “I know what you mean, pal,” said the man drinking next to him. “They’re all alike.”
    The blond man wasn’t looking for company or conversation. He liked to savor the time afterward, to roll it around in his mouth like the taste of a good steak.
    “Women!” The man next to him spat on the already filthy floor. “They’ve ruined a lot more men than this.” He gestured toward his half-empty glass of beer. “One of them break your heart, mister?”
    “No,” the blond man answered curtly as he stood up. He drained his beer and laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound.
    “That’s good,” he said. “Nope, not my heart. Her heart, that’s more like it.” He flipped onto the bar the dollar tip he’d picked off a red and blue carpet an hour earlier and walked out. On the street, he squinted into the bright afternoon.

FIVE
    L eaving The Deli, Annie strolled west on Union Street, enjoying the shops and the warm afternoon. September was the time to enjoy San Francisco, during the Indian summer the poor August tourists had just missed.
    She always felt so sorry for them, enshrouded in the bone-chilling, blowing fog that mischievously hid the Golden Gate Bridge from them day after gray day. Annie thought travel agents had a moral obligation to mother summer tourists into bringing plenty of warm clothing. Or to warn them to hold off their visits until September or October, when the fog went back out to sea and the crystalline blue days rivaled the postcards they all sent back home. Then the view from a thousand different spots could stop the heart of even a native.
    But maybe this was better. The tourists were gone and San Franciscans could enjoy their city at its best, at the beginning of fall.
    The beginning of the year would always be in September for Annie. She had been conditioned by so many sharpenings of pencils for school’s opening both as a schoolgirl and, later, a schoolmarm. Nature seemed to be of the same mind here in California. The fall brought warmth and sunshine, and then the rains that would turn the hills from sere brown to luscious green.
    Annie strolled and stretched, catlike, in the afternoon sun. It was so nice to be dressed in only a T-shirt and jeans—one of the rare days when she didn’t need a sweater.
    When she’d first arrived from Atlanta, her hometown, she hadn’t believed the advice of her friends: always, and especially in summer, take a jacket. Now the wrap was a given, as was the phenomenon of San Francisco air conditioning—a confluence of ocean, bay, and inland heat that produced the city’s clean, cool breath.
    She reached the corner of Fillmore and turned to begin the steep climb up Fillmore Hill to her apartment over the crest of