Read Carla for Free Online Page A

glance across the table and the touch of his hand at the door. It might be nothing more than his way of being polite. A man as sophisticated and smooth as Charles could probably order ham-and-eggs in a restaurant and let the waitress think he was propositioning her.
    And, she reflected, he would probably be successful with the waitress—when he was just trying to order a plate of ham-and-eggs.
    But she couldn’t be wrong. She sensed his desire with the intuition she had developed over the years, a sense of intuition which could spot the hunger in a man with no difficulty. She had never been wrong before. Charles must want her.
    She had just finished lunch and returned to her room again when the telephone rang and Lizzie announced that it was for her. She jumped up from the bed, wondering who in the world it would be. It would have to be Ronald, she decided, but he rarely called in the afternoon unless he was going to be home late, and he had said last night that he definitely wouldn’t be working late. She hurried to the phone and held the receiver to her ear.
    â€œCarla?”
    â€œYes—who is this?”
    â€œThis is Charles.”
    Charles! Then he did want her, but how come he was calling so soon?
    â€œCharles?”
    â€œThat’s right,” he went on, his voice as smooth as silk. “I wanted to talk to you.”
    â€œWhy, Ronald isn’t home now—”
    â€œI know. It’s you I want to see.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI think you know why, don’t you?”
    She didn’t answer. She felt herself going all weak inside and the right words wouldn’t come to her.
    â€œWhy don’t you come up to my place, Carla? I’d like to see you this afternoon.”
    â€œI—I couldn’t,” she stammered.
    â€œOf course you could. I’m in Room 715 at the Tiffany, and I’ll be waiting for you. I’d really like very much to see you, dear.”
    The last word sounded like a caress. She tried desperately to think of a reply, realizing seconds later that he had hung up and she would be talking to an empty phone. Dimly, she replaced the receiver on the hook and tried to concentrate.
    Room 715, Hotel Tiffany. The number stayed with her, something numbers rarely did. She was the type of woman who had to look up phone numbers and addresses again and again. But she knew at once that she wouldn’t forget Charles’ address.
    Oh, what was wrong with her? She stormed into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, trying to find some hint of her inner turmoil by staring at the mirror image. She simply couldn’t go to Charles, not today.
    Suppose Ronald found out? And he would find out, in fact he couldn’t help it if she played around so close to home. She remembered the time when she was a little girl and a man across the street came home early and surprised his wife in bed with a delivery boy. He almost murdered them both, she recalled, beating the boy with his fists hard enough to send him to the hospital and striking his wife all over her face and body.
    Ronald wouldn’t do anything like that. Ronald would never be violent with her, but she could imagine the look of sadness and anger that would come over his face, the tone of his voice when he spoke to her. He would divorce her, of course, and she would be right back where she started from, a little Polish blonde from the East Side with nothing to show for her life but a body for men to amuse themselves with.
    All the arguments told her to stay home, to let Charles wait in his room forever. But the arguments weren’t enough. Even as she told herself how wrong the course of action would be, she felt her will power weakening rapidly. She returned to her bedroom and changed her clothes again, dressing in a skirt-and-sweater combination that showed off her figure and made her look girlish and desirable, the skirt clinging to her long legs and the sweater showing off her