Single White Female Read Online Free Page B

advice, but this would be his first produced play. So he was in the process of following suggestions, doing the minor and, here and there, major revisions, trying all the while to preserve the essence of the play.
    He picked up a red-leaded pencil and began tightening dialogue and making notes in the margins. The last scene needed more emotional punch, he’d been told. The theme had to be more clearly defined. Well, he could supply punch and clarity to order, if only they’d produce his play. If only he could see real actors walking through his script, mouthing his lines. Striking life in it onstage.
    The evening, his apartment in New York, faded to haze, and he was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the Starshine Ballroom, where the play was set. Smoke from his pipe swirled around him as dancers and dialogue whirled through his mind.
    He hunched over his typewriter and script, absently puffing on the pipe and absorbed in his work, and forgot about his downstairs neighbor until he’d gone to bed at eleven-thirty. The Scotch and water he’d downed after leaving the typewriter had eased the tension fueled by his intense concentration on the revisions, and he’d almost fallen asleep when he heard the muted ringing.
    Her bedroom telephone.
    He stared into darkness, not liking himself very much, but telling himself he was a playwright and the study of human nature was his business. It was almost a professional obligation. Arthur Miller wouldn’t pass up this kind of opportunity. Would he?
    The phone abruptly stopped ringing. Allie had answered.
    Graham rolled over on the cool, shadowed sheet.
    To the side of the bed near the vent.
    Lying on his stomach, he nestled his forehead in the warm crook of his arm and guiltily listened.

6
    Allie drifted up from indecipherable dreams, pulled like a hooked sea creature by some sound . . . she wasn’t sure what. Then she felt a moment of panic as the jangling phone chilled her mind. She hated to be awakened by phone calls; almost always they meant bad news. The worst of life happened at night.
    Oblivious, Sam was snoring beside her, sleeping deeply on his side with one arm flung gracefully off the mattress as if he’d just hurled something at the wall. As she reached for the phone, Allie glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Only quarter to twelve. She’d thought she’d slept longer, that it was early morning. Maybe the phone call wasn’t bad news. Maybe somebody who thought everyone stayed up till midnight.
    The darkness in the humid bedroom felt like warm velvet as she extended her arm through it and groped for the phone. She pulled the entire unit to her so she could lift the receiver and quiet it as quickly as possible. No sense in letting the damned thing wake Sam.
    She settled her head back on the pillow, in control now, and pressed the cool plastic receiver to her ear. Her palm was damp, slippery on the phone’s smooth surface. She had to adjust her grip to hold on. “ ’Lo.”
    â€œI want to speak with Sam, please.” A woman’s voice. Young. Tense. And something else: angry.
    â€œWho’s calling?”
    â€œTell him Lisa.”
    â€œWell, listen, Lisa, Sam’s asleep.” Something cold and ugly moved in Allie’s stomach. Its twin awoke in her mind. “Is it important? About work?”
    â€œNot about work.” Was that a laugh? “I don’t work with Sam. But it’s important, all right.”
    Allie didn’t say anything. She was fighting all the way up from sleep, reaching out for answers and finding only questions. Lisa . . . Did she and Sam know a Lisa? Had Sam ever mentioned the name?
    Lisa said, “Gonna let me talk to him?”
    â€œIt’s almost midnight; he’s asleep. Sure it can’t wait till morning?”
    â€œIt can’t wait.”
    Allie stared into deeper darkness where she knew ceiling met walls. A corner; no way out. “Hold on.”
    She