Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [46]
The laundry room was one of the reasons she and Roger had rented the apartment, so she was determined to take advantage of the convenience. Besides, it was cheaper than a laundromat or dry cleaners.
Laura, her husband Roger, and their sixteen-year-old son Davy had lived in the Upper West Side apartment for the past two years, after being displaced when their longtime apartment on West 89th Street had gone condo. The new apartment had finally begun to feel like home.
Like her husband, Laura was in her late thirties. She and Roger had only last month celebrated their seventeenth wedding anniversary. She smiled, thinking as she often did that she was part of an attractive family. She still had her dark good looks, her lush auburn hair, and bright blue eyes. And Roger, while never a handsome man in the conventional sense, was still trim and attractive in his homely, Lincolnesque way. Davy, of course, was beautiful, with Roger’s craggy features and Laura’s bold blue eyes and wavy dark hair. A heartbreaker, Davy, though he didn’t date much.
Laura turned on the washer and listened to the ancient pipes rattle along the ceiling joists as the tub began to fill. She spread out the shirt with the stain facing up, stretching the material tight over the top of one of the nearby dryers, then reached for the aerosol can of spot remover. She sprayed the stain, then dipped a scrub brush into the warm water gushing into the machine, applied some soap to the brush’s bristles, and began to work on the stain.
When it had completely disappeared, she started on the similar stain on the shirt sleeve. Red sauce of some kind, perhaps even a thick red wine. She scrubbed until that stain had disappeared too, then continued to scrub.
When the washer was almost filled, she put the shirt in by itself, so it would be good and clean.
Davy’s shirt.
“David,” he said.
The pretty blond girl looked at him and cocked her head to the side to demonstrate she was curious. Her hair was combed straight back but ringlets had escaped to dangle in front of her ears and dance when she moved her head.
Davy smiled. “I thought you asked me my name.” They were in a video arcade near Times Square, and it was noisy not only from the games but from the traffic sounds drifting in through the open door.
“You heard wrong,” the girl said, but she returned his smile.
He shrugged and turned back to his Mounted Brigade game, swerving his horse right and lopping off the head of one of the charging Dragoons. An abbreviated shrill scream burst from the machine.
“Holly,” he heard.
He turned back to face the girl. “A beautiful name.”
She laughed cynically. “Yeah. So’s David.”
“You come in here often?” he asked, ignoring the trumpet signaling another charge.
“I don’t come in here at all. I stopped in to get out of the rain.”
He glanced outside and saw that a light summer drizzle had begun. People on the sidewalk were looking up at the sky in wary surprise, some of them opening umbrellas. Then he took a closer look at the girl—woman. She was older than he’d imagined, in her twenties. It was the renegade ringlets that threw him, and her clothes. She was dressed young, in tight jeans, a sleeveless Mets shirt, and dirty white jogging shoes. She had an angular, delicate look, emphasized by her swept back blond hair and the way she wore her makeup, heavily applied, with eyeliner that made her blue eyes even bluer. Both her ears were pierced in three places, and each piercing held a tiny fake diamond stud.
“Seen enough?” she asked.
He laughed. “Not by a long shot.” He turned away from his video game so she’d know she had his full attention. They always liked that. “You go to NYU?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Your shirt.”
She looked down at what she was wearing and gave him a quizzical look.
“NYU