Breakfast at Tiffany's Read Online Free Page A

wouldn't it be a good deed if I went to visit him once a week. Well, I couldn't: it was too romantic."
    "I don't know. It doesn't sound right."
    She smiled. "You think I'm lying?"
    "For one thing, they can't simply let anyone visit a prisoner."
    "Oh, they don't. In fact they make quite a boring fuss. I'm supposed to be his niece."
    "And it's as simple as that? For an hour's conversation he gives you a hundred dollars?"
    "He doesn't, the lawyer does. Mr. O'Shaughnessy mails it to me in cash as soon as I leave the weather report."
    "I think you could get into a lot of trouble," I said, and switched off a lamp; there was no need of it now, morning was in the room and pigeons were gargling on the fire escape.
    "How?" she said seriously.
    "There must be something in the law books about false identity. After all, you're not his niece. And what about this weather report?"
    She patted a yawn. "But it's nothing. Just messages I leave with the answering service so Mr. O'Shaughnessy will know for sure that I've been up there. Sally tells me what to say, things like, oh, 'there's a hurricane in Cuba' and 'it's snowing in Palermo.' Don't worry, darling," she said, moving to the bed, "I've taken care of myself a long time." The morning light seemed refracted through her: as she pulled the bed covers up to my chin she gleamed like a transparent child; then she lay down beside me. "Do you mind? I only want to rest a moment. So let's don't say another word. Go to sleep."
    I pretended to, I made my breathing heavy and regular. Bells in the tower of the next-door church rang the half-hour, the hour. It was six when she put her hand on my arm, a fragile touch careful not to waken. "Poor Fred," she whispered, and it seemed she was speaking to me, but she was not. "Where are you, Fred? Because it's cold. There's snow in the wind." Her cheek came to rest against my shoulder, a warm damp weight.
    "Why are you crying?"
    She sprang back, sat up. "Oh, for God's sake," she said, starting for the window and the fire escape, "I hate snoops."
     
    The next day, Friday, I came home to find outside my door a grand-luxe Charles & Co. basket with her card: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling : and scribbled on the back in a freakishly awkward, kindergarten hand: Bless you darling Fred. Please forgive the other night. You were an angel about the whole thing. Mille tendresse -- Holly. P.S. I won't bother you again . I replied, Please do , and left this note at her door with what I could afford, a bunch of street-vendor violets. But apparently she'd meant what she said; I neither saw nor heard from her, and I gathered she'd gone so far as to obtain a downstairs key. At any rate she no longer rang my bell. I missed that; and as the days merged I began to feel toward her certain far-fetched resentments, as if I were being neglected by my closest friend. A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but it induced no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now like a salt-free, sugarless diet. By Wednesday thoughts of Holly, of Sing Sing and Sally Tomato, of worlds where men forked over fifty dollars for the powder room, were so constant that I couldn't work. That night I left a message in her mailbox: Tomorrow is Thursday . The next morning rewarded me with a second note in the play-pen script: Bless you for reminding me. Can you stop for a drink tonight 6-ish?
    I waited until ten past six, then made myself delay five minutes more.
    A creature answered the door. He smelled of cigars and Knize cologne. His shoes sported elevated heels; without these added inches, one might have taken him for a Little Person. His bald freckled head was dwarf-big: attached to it were a pair of pointed, truly elfin ears. He had Pekingese eyes, unpitying and slightly bulged. Tufts of hair sprouted from his ears, from his nose; his jowls were gray with afternoon beard, and his handshake almost furry.
    "Kid's in the shower," he said, motioning a cigar toward a sound of water