After Midnight

11
APARTMENT TWELVE

A young woman inside the room frowned out at me. Maybe “frown” isn’t the right word, since she didn’t seem angry. She looked concerned or confused.
God only knows how I must’ve looked.
I felt as if the floor had dropped out from under me.
What’s she doing here?
Nobody’s supposed to be here!
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I…I must have the wrong apartment, or…”
“This is twelve,” she said, then glanced at the number on the door as if to make sure of it.
She must’ve just gotten out of bed. She had a crease on her cheek, her short blond hair was mussed, and she wore wrinkled pajamas.
She was probably two or three years younger than me.
And beautiful.
Not exotic, glamorous beautiful.
Wholesome, girl-next-door beautiful, like an Iowa cheerleader.
I would’ve given my left arm to look half as good as this gal.
“Where are you trying to go?” she asked.
“Maybe I’m in the wrong building.”
She shrugged.
“Is this 645 Little Oak Lane?”
Why hadn’t I said 465? She would’ve told me, “Oh, no, this is 645. I’m afraid you do have the wrong building.” And that would’ve been the end of the situation.
But I was curious, for one thing. I wanted to find out what was going on.
For another thing, the damage was already done. She’d seen me.
And I didn’t know what to do about it.
After hearing the address, she nodded and looked more confused than before. “You seem to be in the right place, but…”
“Doesn’t Tony live here?” I asked.
“Tony?”
“Yeah, Tony.” I tried to remember his last name. “Romano.”
“What?” Now, she seemed confused and surprised. “Tony Romano?”
“Is this his apartment?”
“No. This is my apartment.”
“But you know him, don’t you?” I asked.
“Sure. Do you?”
“He gave me this address.”
“What for?”
“He said he lived here. And that…I should come over tonight. He gave me his keys. See?” I held up the key case in front of her. “I was supposed to let myself in. And wait for him.”
“Huh?”
I shrugged.
“But he doesn’t live here,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t his place. It’s mine. He lives over on Washington Avenue.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, all right. I used to spend half my life over there. Why on earth did he give you my address?”
“I don’t know.”
But I suddenly had a pretty good idea how I’d gotten the wrong address—and who she was.
“Are you Judy?” I asked.
“Yeah?” She said it softly, like a question.
I put on a big smile. “You’re Tony’s girlfriend!”
“Not anymore. But yeah. We were…” She shrugged.
“It’s nice to meet you. My name’s Alice.” I held out my hand, and she shook it.
“Hi, Alice,” she said.
“So, why did he give me your address?” I asked.
“I have no idea. It’s weird. But Tony can be weird, sometimes. Why don’t you come on in? Maybe you should call him, or something.” She opened the door wider and I stepped into her apartment.
Only a single lamp was on. It didn’t do a very good job. It cast a yellowish light that left corners of the living room in shadows.
I looked around and didn’t see anybody.
From the looks of the furniture, Judy wasn’t exactly rich. She had an old armchair, a sofa with threadbare cushions, a few lamps and small tables, and bookshelves against most of the walls. The shelves were crammed with books, mostly paperbacks.
After shutting the door, she said, “Tony does oddball stuff, sometimes.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
“Isn’t that one of his shirts you’re wearing?”
I forced a smile.
Wearing his jeans and shoes, too.
She wasn’t likely to recognize them, though. Most blue jeans and brown loafers look pretty much alike. Besides, I’d customized Tony’s jeans.
“I’m just borrowing his shirt for the night,” I told her. “Mine got spilled on.”
“So you saw him tonight?” She didn’t sound suspicious, just curious.
“Yeah, we had dinner together.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He really misses you.”
She winced slightly. “I miss him, too. Sometimes. Not that I’ll ever go back to him. Would you like something to drink? A Pepsi or a beer or something?”
“Okay, sure.”
“How about a beer?”
“Great!”
Being careful not to touch anything, I followed her into the kitchen.
She turned on a light and went to the refrigerator. The top of her kitchen table was hidden under a computer and piles of books and papers.
“So, how do you know Tony?” she asked.
Without even pausing to think, I said, “We met at a bar. The Cactus Bar and Grill.”
“Really?” She set a couple of beer bottles on the counter, then reached up and opened a cupboard. “I ate there with him once. I’m surprised he went back. He thought they had lousy margaritas.”
“He sure put down a lot of them the night we met.”
“No kidding.” Shaking her head, she filled a pair of glass mugs with beer. Then she turned around and handed one to me.
“All he could talk about was you,” I said. “And how much he loves you.”
“Really?” Her smile seemed a little sad.
“Yeah. He’s miserable.”
We went into the living room. Judy sat in the armchair, and I took the sofa.
I still had no idea what I was doing.
That’s not quite true.
I was stalling.
Playing things by ear.
Because I had no idea what to do.
Shoot her?
I was sitting on Tony’s pistol. It made my butt hurt on the right side, and I would’ve been glad to take it out of my pocket.
But shoot her?
Gunshots in a place like this, at an hour like this, would probably wake up half the people in the building.
I’d be shafted.
“So you don’t think you’ll get back together with Tony?” I asked, then tried the beer. It was very cold and bitter and I liked it a lot.
“Not a chance,” Judy said. “Did he tell you why we broke up?”
For a while, I couldn’t answer because I was busy swallowing that wonderful beer. Then I said, “I think it was too painful for him to talk about.”
“He was probably too embarrassed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s not the sort of thing you want to tell people about. Especially not a woman.”
“Oh, well, you don’t have to…”
“I’ll tell you. Hey, I’ve got to tell you, if you’re going with him now. He beat me up.”
“He beat you up?”
“Yeah.”
“My God! Why’d he do that?”
Judy’s face suddenly changed from nicely tanned to bright red. “Well, he was drunk. It was a sex thing. He wanted to do something, and I wouldn’t let him.”
“So he pounded you?”
She nodded. Her face was scarlet.
“What did he want to do?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
An idea struck me. Frowning, I leaned forward and said, “Do you want to know why I’m really wearing Tony’s shirt? Because he ripped mine off me. Tore it right off.”
She looked shocked. “Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Jeez. Was he drunk?”
“As a skunk,” I said.
“’Cause, I mean, he’s not usually like that. How long have you known him?”
“Just a few days.”
“He must be in really bad shape. I mean, we went together for months, and he never pulled anything like that. He drank too much a few times, but he never attacked me. He was always so sweet. You wouldn’t have thought he had a mean bone in his body. Till that night he went berserk on me.”
I nodded eagerly.
We’ve both been there, girl!
“Tonight,” I said, “was the first time he ever got ugly with me. I couldn’t believe it. He’d seemed so gentle, before. Like a really sensitive, sincere guy.”
“Exactly,” Judy said.
“But, boy…” I shook my head. “Not tonight. He scared me half to death.”
“What did he do?”
I drank some more beer, sighed, then set the mug down on the table in front of the sofa and said, “Well, he came over to my place for dinner. After that we went and saw Independence Day. Everything was fine till after the movie. We went back to my place and had a few drinks. We were planning to fool around, but my roommate came home. She always shows up at exactly the worst possible time.”
Judy smiled slightly. “That’s what roommates are for.”
“Do you have one?” I asked, suddenly worried.
“Not since college.”
“They can be a real pain in the butt,” I said.
“No kidding.”
“Anyway, the three of us sat around and had a few drinks. And I could tell that Tony was starting to lose his patience. He wanted to…you know, mess around. But we couldn’t do it in front of Jane. Finally, he said it was time for him to go home. And he asked me if I wanted to come with him. So I said, ‘Sure,’ and we left.”
“Was he okay to drive?” Judy asked.
“No. Hardly. But neither was I. I mean, we were both pretty looped. We shouldn’t have driven at all. But I wanted to get out of there, too, before something happened between him and Jane. She was starting to look at him a certain way, you know? Besides, I was interested in seeing where he lived. He’d been kind of funny about the place, like he didn’t want me there for some reason.”
“Strange. He had me there all the time.”
“Well…” I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe that had something to do with it. You know? The way he feels about you, maybe he thought I might—taint the place, or something.”
“That’d be really strange.”
“Anyway, he didn’t take me there, after all. He drove us into the woods, instead.”