Impersonal Attractions Read Online Free Page A

Pacific Heights. A young couple, out of control with downward momentum, almost crashed into her.
    “Sorry, sorry,” they apologized breathlessly. She watched their backs as they crossed the street. Clad in twin yellow sweat shirts and jeans, they were a couple out of a soft-drink commercial. Laughing, secure in their world. Annie felt a twinge of envy.
    She knew that feeling. Us against the world. She’d had it before. And she’d have it again.
    In the meantime, she had David.
    David, her once-a-week lover. Like refined sugar, he was good for a quick surge, but always left her hungry for something substantial, something more. But as Samantha said, at least men like David kept women from gobbling up handsome young boys on the street.
    Like the one who was smiling down the hill toward her. Blond, blue-eyed. The quintessential California kid. She was old enough to be his mother, if, of course, she’d been a child bride. She tried to control her puffing. She hoped she wasn’t as noisy as her Volkswagen, Agatha, as she ground up the hill. San Francisco was not a city kind to old cars and old ladies with crunchy noises in their knees.
    Shut up, she said to herself. You’re beginning to sound like your mother, old before her time. At thirty-seven, you’re not ready for the home yet, or worse, the endlessly boring flatlands of the South.
    She picked up the pace and lengthened her stride, taking the steps up the hill two at a time. It was indeed a lovely day, a great day to be alive.
    A lucky day to be alive. She could never walk up this hill without remembering what had once happened here to Sam, who almost hadn’t been lucky or alive.
    *
    Sam, like Annie, tromped through cities whenever and however she pleased. With a sane person’s healthy respect for dark, lonely streets, alleyways, and neighborhoods that everyone knew meant trouble, she was independent but not foolhardy.
    One night, a year ago, having finally found a parking place in the neighborhood, a feat akin to winning the Bay to Breakers Race, Sam decided to pop in on Annie. She’d been with some friends six blocks away, a small party that had broken up at about nine.
    Trudging up the Fillmore steps, thinking about a shopping trip she was planning to New York, mortality was hardly on her mind. Until a man jumped out of a dark driveway and grabbed her.
    Time stopped. She’d seen plenty of self-defense maneuvers while hanging around with cops and had idly asked herself, what if? This was if.
    In torturous slow motion, Sam learned what stuff she was made of.
    With one long, reflexive move, she had stomped on his instep, smashed his nose with the side of a hand, and screamed at the top of her lungs. He let her go and she ran like hell. She didn’t know if he was behind her or not. She just ran until she found a liquor store, where she’d caught her breath and stopped shaking long enough to call the police. Their response was quick, but they found nothing. Her attacker was long gone.
    He’d been tall. He’d been black. He’d smelled of stale booze. And he ought to have a sore nose and a limp. That was all Sam could tell them.
    Later, when she finally did arrive at Annie’s, too rattled to go home though it was late, she was furious.
    “Joe Kelly was one of the guys who answered the call. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘you know better than to be out on the streets of this city alone.’ How the hell does he think I get around? With an armed guard, a Doberman?”
    “He probably means you should be on the arm of a man.”
    “And he’s right,” Sam snorted, “for more reasons than one, but until that guy shows up, what do we all do? Double bolt our doors and stay inside?”
    It was infuriating to live defensively. To concentrate on carefully locked doors, to be wary of where one walked, when, and with whom. They agreed that it meant that they’d given up, given up the night to the robbers and the rapists. They’d allowed the bad guys to circumscribe their world with