Read Greedy Little Eyes for Free Online Page B

who had meandered up and down the length of me from midnight till dawn, enjoying the breeze of the nearby fan that seemed to hit my own skin only if I sat up.
    I brushed the ghost of a cat hair from my nose and took in the other patrons: T-shirts, ball caps and designer jeans with deliberate and calculated fading. It appeared the wealthy had become an uncouth lot.
    A long bank of black and gold marble reception desks was set into what I figured was a mahogany wall. Was I meant to feel pampered or intimidated as I looked up past the two-ton gold clock to the gold tiles overhead?My entire immediate family, both parents, my brother and me, could be stacked and still not reach the ceiling. If any of us still spoke to one another.
    Glancing at my luggage, I wondered if it looked cheap to the educated eye. An editor once complimented the skirt I wore, remarking that I had expensive taste. I was compelled to tell her that my skirt had cost twelve dollars at a chain store. Her mouth spread into open-mouthed delight, but the pleasure in her eyes dimmed and I regretted having set her straight.
    I lifted the receiver of the house phone and asked to be put through to Andrew Kinderhaus.
    Andrew answered with his very British “Yes, hello . ” He sounded calmer. I had called earlier, just before I left Felicia’s place, and he had been breathless when he picked up the phone. I imagined him taking calls compulsively, listening to his wife tell him all about Vancouver while he was in the midst of a New York sex act. One that would leave a free hand.
    “It’s Lila,” I said now. “I’m in the lobby.” Anxiety started to rise in my chest like heartburn. I felt complicit in a way I hadn’t expected.
    A couple days after Petra had arrived in New York, she left me a playfully frustrated message. “Ya, Lila, this is Petra and I would like for you to call me at the Waldorf, but my lover is out and I cannot answer because I am in here with a married man. Shit.” Her delivery tickled me—her V s in place of W s, her zis’s and zat’s—and the way she said what she’d said all in one breath: Marriedmanshit.
    I turned to see them coming through the lobbytoward me. Walking past a tall urn that held a massive bouquet of fresh flowers, Petra looked perfectly at home amidst the grandeur.
    I hugged her. Andrew shook my hand.
    “So!” He clapped his hands. “Shall we register you?”
    Petra held my suitcase while her lover and I went to the front desk.
    The magazine’s sex survey wondered if a woman might need an excuse to cheat in a way a man would not. Down the list was: Who do you think is more faithful by nature ?
    “So the two of you will be going to Maine?”
    “Connecticut for me,” he corrected. “And New Jersey for Petra.”
    “Right.” I nodded as though I’d known all along that Petra and her lover were taking separate vacations from their vacation. “Where in Connecticut?”
    He glanced at the desk clerk. “Near Massachusetts.”
    The clerk excused herself to program a key.
    “Can I receive calls?”
    “Yes,” he said firmly. “No one will call me here this weekend.”
    The clerk handed me the new plastic key. We rejoined Petra and headed to the elevator bank.
    “This is really so kind of you,” I said, as Andrew pressed the call button. The words clanged falsely in my mouth even though I meant them.
    Petra smiled.
    “No,” he responded, “we thank you . For looking after our suite.”
    Inside the elevator, I glanced at the beige plastic card in my hand, The Waldorf-Astoria stamped in cursive script on one side. “I would have thought the Waldorf would have nice old-fashioned keys,” I mused aloud as we rose up the shaft.
    Andrew’s smile was patient. “The hotel would have to change the locks each time a person left.”
    “I guess that’s true.”
    “It is true,” he stated. “This clientele needs to have computerized locks.”
    Petra grinned as if this were all part of the Waldorf’s never-ending