Read Online Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online

in, order drinks. Invariably, Kay lit a cigarette. She’d touch his elbow, saying, “Look.”
    And she’d point to an unhappy couple lost in thought, or a lone woman getting drunk.
    She seemed to be seeking out the despair of others, as if she wanted to rub against it, to wear it down before it could pierce her.
    â€œLet’s go.”
    They looked at each other and smiled. They had uttered these words so many times, though in fact they had only been together two days and two nights.
    â€œFunny, isn’t it?”
    He didn’t have to ask her what was funny. They were thinking the same thing, two people who didn’t know each other and who had come together by a miracle in the great city, and who now clung desperately to each other, as if already they felt a chilly solitude settling in.
    Soon … later , Combe thought.
    On Twenty-fourth Street there was a little Chinese shop with a sign over it advertising baby turtles for sale.
    â€œBuy me one, will you?”
    They put it into a little cardboard box, and Kay carried it carefully, forcing out a laugh. She was probably thinking that it was the only pledge of love between them.
    â€œListen, Kay …”
    She put a finger to her lips.
    â€œI need to tell you …”
    â€œHush! Let’s get something to eat.”
    They lingered amid the city. They did it deliberately. It was in a crowd that they felt happiest.
    She ate as she had the first night, but her slowness no longer bothered him.
    â€œThere are so many other things to tell you! I know what you think about me. But you’re wrong, Frank, you’re wrong.”
    It was two in the morning, later perhaps, and they were walking back down Fifth Avenue, a distance they’d already covered twice.
    â€œWhere are you taking me?”
    No sooner had she said it than she changed her mind. “No, don’t tell.”
    He didn’t know what he was going to do, what he was hoping for. He stared straight ahead as he walked. For once, she kept silent, too.
    And gradually, this silent nighttime walk took on the solemn aspect of a wedding march. Both knew that from now on they’d cling to each other even harder, not as lovers, but as two creatures who’d been alone and at last, after a long time, had found someone to walk with.
    They were hardly man and woman. They were two beings who needed each other.
    Their legs weak, they reached the peaceful environs of Washington Square. He knew Kay was surprised, wondering if he wasn’t leading her back to their starting point, the diner where they’d met, or perhaps to Jessie’s house, which she’d pointed out to him the night before.
    He smiled to himself a little bitterly. He was afraid, very afraid, of what he was about to do.
    They hadn’t said they loved each other. Were they both superstitious about that word? Ashamed of it?
    Combe recognized his street, and the door he’d passed through two nights earlier as he was running away, at wits’ end, from his neighbors’ commotion.
    Tonight he was more composed. He walked with his head up. He felt like he’d done something that mattered.
    But then he wanted to stop, to turn around, to plunge back into their unreal vagabond life.
    He pictured, like a haven, the sidewalk in front of the Lotus, the purple neon sign, the shabby night clerk. It was all so easy!
    â€œHere,” he said at last, and he stopped in front of his stoop.
    The moment was definitive, like opening the doors of a church, and she knew it.
    She went into the little courtyard bravely and looked around without surprise.
    â€œFunny,” she said, straining to sound lighthearted. “We were neighbors, and yet it took all that time for us to meet.”
    They went into the foyer. There were the mailboxes with the doorbells underneath and nameplates over most of them.
    Combe’s name wasn’t there. He saw she’d noticed.
    â€œCome on. There’s no