Read Online Fallen Sparrow by Dorothy B. Hughes - Free Book Online Page A

with a brandy bottle at hand. No sense ordering by the drink when there were bottles. This time he was sly. He knew whom to call. He spoke his name at Carlo’s restaurant, thinned out his tongue, was so polite that he laughed silently at himself waiting for the voice to return with information. He didn’t speak with Carlo but he got the dope he wanted. There was no hurry, no reason to waste good brandy.
    He’d had too much to drink when he left the bar. He managed to slide into the cab without help. 56th, between Lexington and Third. Another old brownstone with military iron pickets planted in a patch of snow. Might be a little green there in spring. Content would call it her yard. His teeth set. With one and the same breath she would drip romanticism over a square of actual green in mid-Manhattan and brew a mess of lies calculated to involve in trouble a haphazard selection of acquaintances.
    There was a bookstore in the basement, the usual table of dull and worn tomes barring the entrance. Kit didn’t look at them. He managed to climb the steps to the door Without falling on his face. He entered the vestibule; the card for 3-B, front, wavered before resolving into C. M. Hamilton. M for Makepeace? Grandfather Hamilton with Mayflower ideology had named the younger generation. Kit didn’t ring. He had luck; someone’s exit admitted him into the hallway. He lurched up two carpeted flights, past doors spilling piano scales, voice scales, violin scales. One of those places. Annex to Carnegie. Content’s door wasn’t musical. He knocked loudly and he pulled himself straight and belligerent waiting to be denied entrance.
    Her voice called, “Come in!” The door wasn’t equal to the strength of his opening; he teetered a little on the threshold.
    Content was on the floor, resting on the back of her neck, her hands under her spine, her legs pointed long and straight at the rococo ceiling. The corners of her eyes saw him, said, “It’s you,” with some surprise, and her feet resumed pedaling an imaginary upside-down bicycle.
    Kit banged the door. He said, “I ought to push your teeth down your throat,” and then her words dripped through his brandied fog. “Who you expect—Blue Eyes?” All the other women he knew were after Otto Skaas; no reason why she shouldn’t be too. He dropped to the tapestry-covered studio couch, took off his hat and leaned his head against the pink wall. He removed the head quickly. Inside it there was a merry-go-round. He said to himself, “What I need is another drink.”
    Content said, “You’re in the wrong house. This isn’t a bar. And who’s Blue Eyes?” Her toes touched far above her yellow head and she turned an effortless somersault landing on her knees. She looked like a kid in her pink, checkered rompers and her cheeks too pink for night club fashion. She looked like two little kids, twins.
    He growled, “I ought to kick in your teeth. I need a drink. Oak-leaf Skass. The blue-eyed Luftwaffle.” He liked that, touched it with his tongue again. “Luftwaffle.” It was definitely funny and he giggled.
    Content said cannily, “You’re drunk. You don’t need another drink. You won’t get any here. I don’t keep liquor.” She was doing kaleidoscopic things with her legs in the air again. Kit closed his eyes and shuddered.
    She told him, “I have to keep on with my exercises. If you don’t like it, get out. I may get a Hollywood contract. My hips.” He could have closed one hand around them. “Why are you drunk so early in the day?”
    He demanded then, “Give me a drink, Content.”
    “Get out.” Her round mouth was too red to be that cold.
    “Just one more.”
    “Get out.”
    He was mad as hell. “So Blue Eyes can come in. O.K.” He stood up but he dropped down again fast. “Guess maybe I am drunk,” he agreed pleasantly. He wiped his forehead with his hand. It was hot in this room.
    “Sure you are.”
    “Besides he’s gone to Franconia Notch with