Read Online The Ex by John Lutz - Free Book Online

beginning to treat her the way other people often did. As if there might be something wrong with her.
    Didn’t she know that could be dangerous?

9
    Silver’s Gym in midtown Manhattan was crowded that evening. All of the Nautilus equipment was in use, and four exhausted-looking women were riding the stationary bicycles side by side. Two men were waiting for David to finish his bench presses with the free weights so they could use them. Herb Mindle, a psychiatrist whose office was nearby, was spotting for David, as David, on his back on the padded bench, struggled to raise the heavy barbell for the fourth time and set it in its supports. He was doing three sets of four with the weights near his maximum capacity, trying to build bulk.
    “You’re there!” Mindle said, staying back but ready to jump in and support the weight if David’s strength failed.
    David let out a long whoosh! of air as he let the barbell drop into the cradle of the bench’s vertical supports.
    “Want to use this thing?” he asked as he sat up and wiped his face with a towel.
    “No thanks,” Mindle said. “I’ll spot for these guys.”
    David got up and walked toward the locker room, noticing that the clock over the door read seven-fifteen. Molly was expecting him at eight.
    He showered, dressed, packed his workout clothes in his small blue nylon duffle bag, then left the gym. Mindle, just standing up from having done his sets of bench presses, waved to him as he went out the door. The women on the stationary bicycles were still at it.
    He was three blocks away from the gym, walking along the crowded sidewalk toward his subway stop, when he heard Deirdre’s voice.
    “David! Again! My God, I don’t believe it!”
    He couldn’t hold down his pleasure at seeing her, but he knew this seemingly chance meeting had to have been planned. “Listen, Deirdre, this is more than coinci—”
    He stopped talking as he noticed the man who was obviously with Deirdre. He was tall, balding, a businessman of some sort, apparently, with his muted checked gray suit and conservative tie. He was slender through the chest and shoulders but had put on weight around the middle so that his stomach bulged noticeably over his belt beneath his unbuttoned suit coat. His face was bland and amiable, and he wore thick glasses without frames that made his eyes look immense and strangely innocent.
    “David!” Deirdre almost squealed with pleasure. “I was sure we’d never meet again!”
    Before he could move, she’d leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek. Her red hair looked particularly wild and attractive in the summer breeze, and she was wearing a simple but low-cut beige linen dress and matching pumps. When she moved in close to kiss him, a disturbing and not unpleasant scent of perfume and perspiration came to him.
    “Where are you going?” she asked.
    “Subway station, then home.” He’d sounded curt, surlier than he’d intended. The man glanced at him.
    “Oh!” Deirdre said, stepping back. “This is my very good friend Craig Chumley. Craig, meet David Jones, my ex.”
    Chumley looked surprised. “As in ex-husband?”
    “Uh-huh! He sure is.” She seemed oddly proud of David. She squeezed Chumley’s arm. “Well, what’d you think, my ex would be old and bald as a cucumber?”
    Chumley laughed, a bit ill at ease, perhaps because he was one of those men who tried to disguise baldness with long strands of hair plastered sideways across their heads, like loosely thatched lids at the mercy of the wind. He had yellowed teeth and oversized bicuspids that gave him a faintly canine look when he laughed.
    “Craig and I were on our way to dinner,” she said. “He promised to show me the Rainbow Room. Ever been to the famous Rainbow Room, David?”
    “No.”
    “You really oughta take Molly there sometime. Hey, why not tonight? You want to join us? Four’s company.”
    David smiled. He was feeling better every second. Maybe it was Chumley’s presence,