LITMIR.BIZ

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evening constitutional.

      She had plenty of company. The sidewalks were packed in midtown, then thinned out as she moved up Madison Avenue into the East Sixties, where limousine drivers were delivering their wealthy employers home to their town houses. The heat and humidity weighed her down, so she paused occasionally for rest and window-shopping at stores that were closed down, had probably closed immediately after the blackout for security reasons, or to give their owners and managers a slight chance of making it home. Sweating in her flowered skirt and coral T-shirt, shopping didn’t grab her attention.

      She ought to look for another job, go somewhere she could feel successful, but she was scared to confront a break in her steady salary and benefits. She was alone in the big city.

      She was alone in the big world was what she was. Or would be, if it weren’t for Candy.

      If she got any more maudlin, she’d sound like a character in a soap opera. She’d be okay. She could take care of herself. She’d worked hard. That scholarship had given her an excellent education. She just hadn’t found the right job yet, that was all.

      Her smile faded as she had a fleeting vision of herself in jeans and a sweatshirt, loading a host of bright-eyed children into a station wagon in the driveway of a spotless, warm and cheery white clapboard house in the suburbs that still smelled of the bacon and eggs she’d cooked for breakfast, the tuna fish sandwiches she’d lovingly packed in their lunch boxes along with rosy apples and bags of chips. This was her other dream, a dream far more important than the Lois-Lane-saves-the-paper dream.

      What she really wanted was to be a wife and mother. In her spare time she might write a weekly column in the local newspaper, something on housekeeping. Or parenting. She’d volunteer at her kids’ school, of course, and might even run for City Council in a quiet little suburb in Connecticut or New Jersey where the major issues were fence height and lawn maintenance. She’d keep her brain active, but the children—and her superhero—would come first.

      This was a secret she kept in her heart. She didn’t have a single friend, especially not Candy, who would understand. The aggressive, career-oriented women of Manhattan would view homemaking as a nightmare. To Blythe, who’d never had a home and family, it sounded like heaven on earth.

      Unfortunately the scene needed a handsome, loving, sexy man to kiss goodbye while the kids piled into the car, a man who could understand and support her dream and even express his love for her and the children by boiling the eggs for the tuna fish salad. She’d find that man someday. Just not quite yet.

      At long last, she stepped gratefully into the lobby of the building where she and Candy shared an apartment, expecting the relief of a delicious blast of air-conditioning when, of course, there wasn’t any.

      Santiago, the day doorman, was still on the job. “Miss Padgett.” He sounded relieved. “You made it home.”

      “Just barely,” she croaked. “All I want is a nice long shower—we do have water, don’t we?”

      An uneasy look came over his face. “We have water.” He cleared his throat. “Not necessarily hot water, but water. What we don’t have is elevators.”

      She and Candy lived on the twenty-third floor. “I thought the elevators had an emergency backup system.”

      He shuffled his feet. “It’s not working. Guess it has to get electricity from somewhere.”

      She’d already heard this from Bart. “I know,” she said kindly. “If I want a lesson in electrical engineering, I’ll have to get it from somebody else. Okay, so I’ll walk up.”

      “It’s dark, and I mean dark, in the stairwells,” Santiago went on. “I bought all the flashlights the hardware store down the street had left. Take one. First come, first served. I’d walk up with you, but J.R. and I are the only staff here. We stayed on because the night shift didn’t make it in.”

      She took a moment to send out hugs to people stranded on subways, stuck in elevators, hoping Candy wasn’t among them. “Have they closed the bridges and tunnels?”

      Santiago nodded. “Eddie called in,” he said. “He can’t get out of Brooklyn.”

      That definitely took care of her date-under-duress. “I knew we’d live to regret the age of technology,” Blythe said as she headed for the stairs that spiraled up through the building and ended closest to hers and Candy’s apartment. She opened the door and almost lost heart. With no windows in the stairwell, no light reached it at all. But it was the only way home. Grasping her flashlight, she aimed it up into the darkness and got her feet moving.

      Second floor, third, fourth, fifth…

      She’d never buy a StairMaster. Who needed one, as undependable as New York was.

      Sixth, seventh, eighth…

      When she’d trapped a wonderful husband and delivered numerous adorable children to worry about, she’d be grateful she’d opted for that house in suburbia. Two floors, three, max. She could hear some noise going on above her. It was comforting, knowing other people were in the building. She wouldn’t have that in suburbia, but then she wouldn’t be climbing twenty-two flights of dark stairs, either.

      Ninth, tenth, eleventh…

      The higher she climbed, the worse she felt about Candy’s friend. Now, thinking of him in a state of crisis, or worse, she wished she’d been more receptive to Candy’s idea, had let him take her into his arms, kiss her, let nature take its course, just as Candy had assured her it would.

      At least pestered Candy for his “frigging” name!

      She frowned. The heat and isolation were getting to her. She hadn’t done anything bad to Candy’s friend yet. She couldn’t have taken him into her arms and let nature take its course because he hadn’t gotten there. She still had time to make things right. Feeling she’d had a narrow escape from a level of guilt she’d never get over, she collapsed on the first step leading up to the twelfth floor, drew her knees up, rested her forehead on them and closed her eyes, reflecting on the true value of certain New York status symbols, the Upper East Side apartment, the higher floor.

      The noise from above had increased in volume. She suddenly realized that what she was hearing was not the voices of neighbors but frantic pounding and shouting. It galvanized her into action. She could feel her hair standing on end. Someone was being attacked, maybe killed! What manners, to mug somebody during a crisis! And in such a nice, safe building! Was there no honor among thieves anymore?

      She had a whistle and a can of Mace she’d carried around in her handbag for two years without needing them. She hoped they still worked. Where was the shouting coming from? She hated to retrace a single precious step. She’d start on the twelfth floor. Dredging up one last burst of energy, she raced up the steps and encountered a locked door.

      Locked for security reasons, of course. She was pretty sure one of the keys she’d been issued when she and Candy moved in unlocked the stairwell doors. As the pounding intensified and the shouts grew louder, she searched the depths of her handbag for the ring of keys, found them and began jabbing them at the keyhole one at a time. At least the guy was still fighting off the mugger. A key fit, turned and she barreled out into the twelfth-floor hallway, shining her flashlight to the left and to the right, yelling, “Hands up! I’ve got you covered!”

      The shouting stopped. The hall was silent. Nobody was being mugged that she could see. “Hello?” she said timidly. “Is somebody up here.”

      “Yes.”

      The voice came from right behind her and several feet above her. Blythe screamed. The flashlight flew out of her hands and the hallway plunged into total darkness.

      2

      “WHO SAID THAT? Where are you?” On her hands and knees, Blythe scrambled blindly for the flashlight. Her hand closed on it and she clutched it gratefully to her bosom, then remembered why she loved it so much and

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