Nine & a Half Weeks Read Online Free Page B

the quicker we’ll be done. You’ll be back in bed by eleven-thirty.”
    We are halfway down the block when I say, “You’re not by any chance walking toward the subway, are you?” He nods, blankly. “Absolutely not,” I say. “I have to take that thing twice a day all week long, I’m not setting foot in it on a weekend.” We get a cab at the corner. Bloomingdale’s teems. “I always think these people are at the Hamptons this time of year,” I say loudly. “Do they all come back every Saturday just to stock up?” “Half an hour, I promise you,” he says. “All right” I say. “It’s you who doesn’t like stores, I like stores fine, I’ve got some sense about when I go in them, too.” “Listen, sweetheart,” he says, “will you please shut up, I’m asking you nicely. I’m being very patient under this petty cynicism, but pretty soon I’ll tie you to the men’s makeup counter and you’ll end up buying a lot of Braggi bronzer and not having a good time at all until I come back.” This vision makes me giggle. “What are you looking for?” 1 say. We’re on the fifth floor. “A bed,” he says. “A bed!” I exclaim. “You’ve got a perfectly good bed.” “It’s a great bed,” he says. “So?” “It’s a great bed for one person.”
    He is steering me past opulent dining room sets. There is one particularly dramatic group: small, piercing spotlights illuminate a black glass tabletop above obligatory chrome legs; black napkins are coiled inside black crystal rings, black glasses sit next to black bowls. “It’s to serve caviar on charred steak,” he stage-whispers to me, while we both almost stumble into a momentous arrangement of innumerable sofa sections, taking up more floor space than is offered by my entire apartment. “White velvet,” I say. “Good God! One speck of cigarette ash, one cat hair, and poof it goes, all down the drain.” “Bloomingdale customers are a clean lot,” he says, gravely. “It may be a mystery to you, but it’s very simple. We keep our pets in the John and smoke only in closets….” “… hear you’re going on vacation Monday,” says a woman’s voice behind us. “Yup,” answers a man’s. “Where’re you off to?” I look over my shoulder. A red-haired woman, elegantly dressed and holding a pad of sales slips, is speaking to a man in a Cardin suit, also holding such a pad. “New York Ci-ty,“he says, his mocking inflection of pride making them both laugh. “Smart man,” she says, walking away, “best place in…” “Come on” I say—the massive sofas have been a fluke, we’re amid more dining sets—“I’m not that big, and if you’d only said something, I’d have stayed on my side more.”
    “It’s not the size,” he says. “Then what is it?” I persist. He stops before a fantasy room, a black-lacquered desk facing us at an angle. It supports, on its flawless and gleaming surface, one huge-bottomed lamp, six ceramic jars in assorted sizes, a narrow vase holding eight glorious tulips, a stack of oversized current photography books, a collection of artfully arranged foreign magazines, and an address book, covered in finely patterned silk. “Now this is what I like to see,” he muses. “A real working desk. You can roll up your sleeves, spread out to your heart’s content over all of two square inches, and get down to business.” “Stop sneering,” I say. “Nobody made you come here and that address book makes my mouth water. That’s what all this stuff is supposed to do and it works.” He smiles and puts his arm around me.
    The bedrooms are next. The first one has a polished dark floor, the next is light parquet, a third is tiled in red; there is a bed with a headboard like a barndoor supporting the cloth-covered canopy, matching satiny fabric spilling to the floor on either side. A large plant inside a decorative and even larger basket sits inexplicably on the bedspread, slightly off-center. Another bed is