Read Alice Close Your Eyes for Free Online Page B

not?”
    “I already know about women.”
    “Hmm. So what did you find out?”
    “That most men are perverts. That they collect weird things
like agates and toy race cars and Asian porn. That every guy has at least one
picture of his dick—God knows why.”
    He laughs, and I find an odd, sagging comfort in the sound.
    “That they always hang their pictures too high—present company
excepted—are strangely attracted to futons and can’t keep their houseplants
alive.”
    I take up my chopsticks.
    “That’s it?” he says.
    “Pretty much.”
    “And what do you leave with?”
    “Just the box.”
    “Not the stereo, not the TV. Just the box?”
    “Right.”
    He tips back in his chair, watching me eat.
    “You’re an odd little chick, Alice Croft.”
    I shrug. “Everyone’s odd.”
    “So how long were you following me before I found you in my
closet?”
    “I don’t know. Two or three weeks, maybe?”
    The corner of his mouth twitches. I feel his gaze on me and a
tumbling fullness in my stomach.
    “So for three weeks,” he says, “I’ve had this gorgeous little
thief following me around, just dying to get into my bed, and I didn’t even know
it.”
    I set down my chopsticks and wipe my mouth. Take a sip of
tea.
    “Your bedroom, maybe. Not your bed.”
    His gaze slides from my face, down the front of my Pink Panther
T-shirt and up again.
    “My mistake,” he says.
    By the time we leave the restaurant, the ever-present clouds
have dissolved into rain. Jack opens his umbrella and pulls me underneath, his
arm around my waist. His sweater feels comforting against my cheek, a nubbled
cushion over the firm bump of his shoulder. The city around us vibrates with the
energy of a million lives, with ten million boxed-up secrets. I feel myself at
the center of them, small but protected, my feet slapping the rain-sluiced
sidewalk and Jack’s falling into step as he shortens his stride to match
mine.
    “My friend has a boat,” he says. “Would you like to see it? We
could walk there.”
    A warm, fragile bubble of happiness swells inside my chest.
    “Yes, I would.”
    * * *
    The boat turns out to be a small motor yacht, moored in
a slip at the end of a long wooden dock. With a long sleek nose and shining
chrome rail, it bobs on the dark water like a shard of wet ice.
    “You have some fancy friends,” I say as Jack reaches out to
help me on board.
    He grins. “This one thinks so. I keep having to remind him
about the time he pissed his pants in second grade, just to keep his ego in
check.”
    I turn in a slow circle on the wooden deck, looking around. The
rain has subsided, leaving a blanket of fat raindrops over the seats and metal
railings. Jack unlocks a metal box under one of the benches and takes out a rag.
He wipes down a seat and part of the railing, then tosses the rag back where
he’d found it.
    “I have some weed,” he says.
    “So do I.”
    He laughs and pulls a plastic-wrapped joint from his pocket.
“Well, make yourself comfortable.”
    We settle on the vinyl seat, half facing each other. The seat
is too high for me and my feet dangle, so I curl one leg up and tuck my foot
behind my knee. He gives me the joint and lights it with a yellow Bic. We pass
the weed back and forth as we talk.
    “Where did you grow up?” I ask.
    “Upstate New York. My dad owns a chain of liquor stores in the
city. I came out here to go to school.”
    “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
    “A brother. Much older than me. He was already in high school
when I was born.”
    “You were an afterthought.”
    He squints at me through a curl of sweet-scented smoke. “Yeah.
Thanks for noticing.”
    “I’ll bet you were spoiled.”
    “The hell I was. My dad was a hardhanded son of a bitch.”
    “But your mother stuck up for you, didn’t she. A middle-aged
Italian lady with a baby? Don’t tell me.”
    He leans back, drapes an arm over the back of the seat.
    “You’ve had a head start. You’ve already been in my