Read Greedy Little Eyes for Free Online Page A

the pointy nubs of her shoulder bones. Her hair slicked back into the tight chignon of a ballet dancer, she breezily told Andrew his footwear would not be allowed into the establishment.
    “These are Armani,” he said, lifting one sporty leather shoe as though the fine craftsmanship might change her mind.
    “We don’t allow running shoes of any kind.”
    “Let’s go,” Petra said. “We don’t need to be here.”
    “No.” Andrew adjusted his shoulders. “You ladies get a table. I shall go back to the hotel and change. I won’t be long, it’s close.”
    A career problem-solver, Andrew would not engage in any further debate, and he left.
    “He likes rules,” Petra said after we had sat quietly a few moments. She gazed around the room, at the ceiling and eventually at me. “I am tiring of New York. It closes in and makes me suffocated.”
    Andrew reappeared in only a few minutes, so few that I was startled. He sat down with a hearty hello as though to make clear that an insect in blue jersey could not possibly dampen his mood.
    “Do you live in the centre of Vancouver?” he asked as another round of drinks hit the table. “My children love Stanley Park. My wife took them in a horse-drawn carriage through the park. Have you done that?”
    “No.” I glanced down at the gloss of the brown oxfords on his feet now.
    “ I was in a horse carriage once. For New Year’s Eve,” Petra announced, her grin suddenly broad. “In Zurich! I was with Heinrich Vanderhoven. He’s—he’s a bit crazy.” Her tone was slightly malignant, but her pronunciation of kwazy mitigated my sense of peril.
    “We came very late to a nightclub and he was wearingblue jeans and a tuxedo jacket. At this club it is very chic and you cannot ever wear blue jeans. But he was Heinrich Vanderhoven !”
    Andrew nodded, expressionless.
    Repetition of the man’s full name seemed to be an important feature of the story. “Who’s Heinrich Vanderhoven?” I asked.
    “He owned half the magazines in Europe. He once owned the magazine I write for now, but he sold everything and went to make a meditation by the sea in California.” Her shoulders bounced with laughter as she tilted forward. I wasn’t sure if the memory of Heinrich Vanderhoven’s denim-clad self was what tickled her so much or if it was the thought of him sitting hours on end, cross-legged, ohm- ing in the sand.
    I tried to understand the nuance of the picture she painted. “He was your boss?”
    “No.” Her eyes glittered. “He was my lover .”

    The word sultry kept ringing in my ears the next day as I tramped up Park Avenue, pulling my suitcase. July in New York can be so oppressively hot and damp that the word sultry should never be used to describe it. Sultry implies a sensuality, an underlying lust that one can barely contain, when in reality the stifling mug of it renders the thought of another body lying sticky against one’s own nauseating. Or at least that’s what occurred to me as I caught sight of a billboard featuring someoversexed nymphet hawking brassieres. Breathing the soupy air into my lungs, I wondered if I might be coming down with something or if I was fumbling toward an early menopause.
    I negotiated my suitcase through the hotel’s revolving doors. At the top of the marble stairs, I looked from a crystal chandelier the size of a Volkswagon to the art deco floor mosaic, plucked my shirt away from my sticky flesh and felt immediately gauche for sweating. This was, after all, the Waldorf. As I wheeled my luggage down the expansive corridor, my eyes darted wall to wall, from paintings and sculptures to glass-encased dresses.
    In the main lobby, I sighed the relief of the air-conditioned. I had been sleeping on Felicia’s sofa the last two nights and imagined now that those around me could tell how my last forty-eight hours had been just by looking, as though my skin were dented with the pattern of couch upholstery and the feet of the Holstein-coloured cat