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

He saw her from the back, her hair silky and tangled. She was wrapped in one of his dressing gowns, with the hem trailing on the ground behind her.
    â€œWhat are you looking for?”
    She wasn’t startled. She turned casually enough toward the bed, and the best thing was that she didn’t try to smile.
    â€œThe milk. Doesn’t it come every morning?”
    â€œI don’t like milk.”
    â€œOh.”
    Before she joined him, she stepped into the kitchenette. The kettle on the hot plate was singing.
    â€œWhat do you have in the morning—tea or coffee?”
    It moved him to hear her voice in this room where he’d never had a visitor. Just before, he had been a little upset that she hadn’t come to kiss him. Now he understood that it was better that way, with her puttering around, opening closets, bringing him a navy blue silk dressing gown.
    â€œYou want this one?”
    She was wearing a pair of men’s bedroom slippers, with the heels dragging on the floor behind her.
    â€œWhat do you usually eat for breakfast?”
    He relaxed, at peace. “That depends. Usually, when I’m hungry, I go to the drugstore.”
    â€œI found some tea and a can of coffee. Since you’re French, I took a chance and made coffee.”
    â€œI’ll go get bread and butter.”
    He felt very young. He wanted to go out, but it wasn’t like yesterday, when he’d left the Lotus and then stopped within a hundred yards.
    Now she was here, in his apartment. He was usually fastidious about the way he looked, perhaps a bit too much so, yet he almost went out unshaven, in his slippers, the way people did in Montmartre or Montparnasse or in working-class neighborhoods.
    There was a hint of spring in the fall morning. He surprised himself by humming in the shower while Kay made the bed and hummed along.
    It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders, the weight of years that had bent his back without his even knowing.
    â€œAren’t you going to kiss me?”
    And she offered him her lips as he left. He paused for a moment on the landing. He turned, opening the door again.
    â€œKay!”
    She was standing where she had been, still looking at him from her side of the door.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’m happy.”
    â€œMe, too. Go on …”
    He wasn’t going to think about it. It was too new. Even the street was too new, or rather, it was the same street, but full of new things he’d never noticed before.
    The drugstore, for example, where he’d often eaten breakfast alone while reading the paper. Now he saw it surrounded by a haze of happy irony mixed with self-pity.
    He stopped, touched by the sight of an organ-grinder on the sidewalk; it was the first one he’d seen in New York, he could swear, the first one he’d seen since he was a child.
    At the Italian grocery, it was new buying for two instead of one. He ordered little things he had never bought before. He wanted to fill the refrigerator.
    He took the bread, butter, milk, and eggs with him and had the rest delivered. On his way out he remembered something.
    â€œLeave a quart of milk at my door every morning.”
    From below, he saw Kay at the window, and she waved to him. She met him at the top of the stairs and took the bags.
    â€œDamn! I forgot something.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œFlowers. Yesterday morning I was going to get some for the apartment.”
    â€œBut isn’t it better this way?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause …”
    She groped for the words, serious and smiling at the same time, with none of the embarrassment they had felt earlier that morning.
    â€œ … well, this way it feels less new, doesn’t it? It’s like it’s been longer.”
    Then she added quickly, because otherwise it might have been too much, “You know what I was looking at out the window? There’s an old Jewish tailor across the