In Her Day Read Online Free Page B

anything left to do here?” Carole asked.
    “No, let’s go. My apartment is on 12th Street. We can walk over there, it’s not far. It’s easier to talk there than here or at the bar.”
    Underneath the West Side Highway, moonlight flickered on the old Erie-Lackawana buildings on the other side. A heavy river smell rose up in the July night.
    “It’s another world down here. Haunted.”
    “Wait until you see the building my apartment is in. I think it was built in the early nineteenth century. A sea captain built it for his mistresses and I live in the tiny cottage in the courtyard where he kept the number one lady.”
    The door to the stucco, crumbling apartment building, not but two stories high, was a bright blue. It opened into a long hallway and at the end of the hallway was another blue door, possibly bright but who could tell in the dim light. Ilse reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out keys on a long chain that was hooked to her belt loop, and unlocked the door.
    “Isn’t this a trip?”
    “It’s charming. The courtyard looks like something out of Vermeer.”
    French windows were opened to catch what cool breeze there was and patches of small flowers, closed for the night, hinted that the days were colorful. Flat stones paved the enclosure and a high wall refused entrance to the rest of New York City.
    “Each set of windows is an apartment,” Ilse said in a low voice. “There are two wings and the middle apartments in the wings have little balconies. You should see the narrow, winding staircases those people climb. But the balconies are very romantic. A friend lives in the left one over there and she puts up flags to signal me.”
    “Do you signal back?”
    “Yeah, I hang mine out my side window, see,” she pointed around the small cottage and there a red and yellow pennant fluttered sporadically. “That’s my great day flag. My flowers are coming along and over there’s a bird feeder. Come on, let’s go inside.”
    She opened the door into a small room where two cinder blocks under each side of a piece of plywood served as a low desk, a cushion for a chair. A fewhandfuls of books surrounded the desk. Off to the left was a slightly larger room with a bed against the wall, covered with an Indian print. Over the bed was a poster of multicolored little women in circle after circle holding hands. A fireplace was six feet from the bed. The walls were startling, bone-white stucco. On the other side of her desk was the bathroom, and the kitchen was a miniscule refrigerator and stove not ten feet opposite the fireplace. A dilapidated make-up dresser was right by the door.
    “This is out of another century. All you need is a thatched roof,” Carole exclaimed.
    “I know. I dig it. In the winter the fireplace is the only heat I have but the place is so small it keeps me warm. The only trouble is keeping the wood dry outside so I always have to be sure to have fifteen logs stacked up by the frigie or it’s blue lips Ilse.”
    “Is that the bathroom over there?”
    “If you want to take a shower, call me and I’ll join you.”
    “Took one before I went out,” Carole answered, closing the door. When she came out she noticed Ilse had turned off her one overhead light and now a fat candle glowed in a low dish. Next to it in a Lancer’s bottle were lavender and blue straw flowers.
    “You can take one with me or wait, I won’t be long. Running around serving all night, in and out of that steaming kitchen, makes me a prime candidate for Dial soap.”
    “I’ll wait.”
    As there was no place to sit other than the floor, Carole crawled over on the bed and leaned out the French windows. The courtyard, silver in the moonlight, was noiseless. A fat cat looked down at Carole from her perch on the left balcony. Not far away a deep call came from the river, a tug pulling its prizein from the sea. The shower drizzle stopped and Ilse, wrapped in a terrycloth robe, emerged from the bathroom. As she offered