Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,14

‘Okay,’ which was all I could think of to say.

Finally she went on; ‘This is hard for me…I’m sorry…I was rude…The other night I got some bad news. A family problem. I’d taken some medication and then I heard those noises outside my apartment…I was a bitch. I let my frustration out at you.’

‘Did you talk to Shi?’

‘Oh yes! What a sweetie! He came up and re-keyed the lock on my door and put some kind of security latch on my windows to keep them from being unlocked from the outside or forced open. Everything’s resolved.’

‘That’s not what I meant. Did you tell him about our argument?’

She was smiling. Perfect straight white teeth. Green eyes the color of a warm Florida ocean. ‘No, I didn’t.’ She extended her hand. ‘Friends?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No problem.’

In her heels Tonya was at least three inches taller than me. As our hands shook the top of her dress containing her fat white freckled tits pressed up against the front desk counter.

We stood there.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to get back to work. You’ll have to excuse me.’

She smiled again. ‘Have a nice evening, Bruno.’

‘Okay. You too.’

Shi continued to spend his time licking Tonya Von Hachten’s ass and running her errands and drooling every time she crossed the lobby with her two-pound mutt. But I had an instinct about her. We were on speaking terms again and her smile made my dick hard but I was still leery.

And I was right too. A few nights later a similar deal to the first deal that happened with Ms. Von Hachten happened again. This time it was later at night, past two in the morning. I’d been in bed reading, sipping from a pint of Ten High instead of beer, hoping to induce my brain to give me a break and slow down. The front desk buzzer sounded several times. Pissed off at the intrusion, I took my time slipping my feet into my shoes and putting my pants on.

The buzzing got more persistent. Someone was holding the fucker down with their thumb.

I climbed the stairs and opened my door.

It was her in her green robe and nightgown. ‘Hello, Miss Von Hachten,’ I said, ‘here we are again.’

She was stoned again but not as stoned as before. And upset. ‘There’s somebody there, Bruno,’ she blurted. ‘God damn it! Some perv’s after me!’

‘What happened?’

Now she was yelling; ‘I’m moving out! It isn’t bad enough that I have to share my apartment with ten thousand fucking cockroach roommates, now there’s a goddam night stalker tip-toeing up and down the halls, probably rubbing his wang, licking my doorknob!’

She was way too loud for my hotel lobby. ‘Okay,’ I said, a finger to my lips. ‘Keep it down, okay.’

‘I hate this dump! I hate the cheap pink cretin wallpaper in the laundry room and the floral carpet!’

‘Hey!’

‘Okay, okay,’ she said, lowering her volume. ‘I heard someone, something. Either the sounds came from the fire escape or the hall bathroom next to my apartment. Just like last time - like somebody breathing hard, you know, humping the wall or something.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay…what?

‘I’ll put you in another room for tonight.’

‘What about this: you go sleep up there! Tomorrow morning at trash collection time let the detectives sift through the dumpsters on Lexington Avenue and gather up your body parts.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Call 911!…Right now. Immediately!’

‘No cops, Ms. Von Hachten. They won’t come anyway.’

‘Then go investigate!’

‘Okay,’ I said, knowing I was hooked. ‘I’ll go look.’

I went back down to my apartment. In the closet I located the long house flashlight that Shi had told me to keep handy for emergencies; floods in the basement, boiler room malfunctions. Then I put on my jacket, tucking my pint of Ten High into the pocket.

On Ms. Von Hachten’s floor I looked in the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall. Nothing. Then, with her behind me, I climbed the next two flights to the top floor to make sure that the heavy door leading to the sundeck was closed and locked. She insisted that I go out on the roof and check, so I did. It was cold, maybe twenty degrees. I shone my light around, then came back in. Nothing.

Downstairs outside her apartment, I checked the hall bathroom. I pulled the shower curtain back and looked inside. It was okay. I checked the bathroom window. It was okay too. Secure. Nobody’d gotten in.

Inside Ms. Von Hachten’s living room her dog Bobo was fast asleep