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unpack , she thought. Get out of the window. Before somebody sees you up here stark naked and decides to climb a tree .
    Instead of unpacking she sighed and rolled back onto the bed. She ran her hands slowly over the good firm flesh of her stomach. Her skin was dry by now and warm. She remembered that Susan and some of the others had been talking at the party about smelling lollipops or something this afternoon — some kind of candy — asking if she'd smelled it too. But she was still in the air over Kennedy. She smiled mischievously.
    If she had a lollipop now, she'd suck it.
    Cut it out , she thought.
    It was still early but it had been a long day. She was exhausted.
    She closed her eyes and thoughts of Tom came unbidden while she listened to the sounds of the street and the city night. She moved a hand to her breast and felt it pulse with her heartbeat.
    You can unpack tomorrow , she thought.
    To hell with it .
    A short time later she fell asleep.

Into the Nightlife

    At the corner of 69th Street, Tom waited while a black stretch limo went by, and then he crossed the street. The entrance to the Burnside — a high-rise much like his own — was busy at the moment, not just the usual tenants coming and going but couples lounging against the big red-brick planters and a steady flow of well-dressed yuppies moving through the revolving doors. Somebody was throwing a party.
    He passed a furniture store and a lighting store, long-necked chromium lamps peering out through the windows like spacecraft from War of the Worlds . Across the street the vegetable market and butcher shop were still open and doing good business. The beauty parlor and Japanese restaurant next to them would probably fold with the next rent-hike.
    On the center strip of fenced-in scraggly grass and trees that divided Broadway a drunk was doing a tap dance for the amusement of the passers-by.
    He passed a drugstore, a Baskin-Robbins and a McDonald's. On the northwest corner of 71st Street in front of a bar, two young cops were trying to pull a middle-aged woman into their cruiser. They couldn't seem to get hold of her. She kept flapping her arms like some huge gawky flightless bird. A crowd was gathering, smiling, laughing. Tom stopped for the light and watched them.
    The woman's blue summer suit was expensive and so were the high-heel shoes. A Bloomingdales bag sat beside her on the curb. At the moment she was using the shoes against the cops, trying to kick them where it would do the most good. So far they were managing to avoid her. Then she dropped the purse off her shoulder, swung it and hit the cop on her left full in the face.
    Thwack.
    Good leather.
    "Shit!" said the cop and grabbed himself a fistful of summer suit, pulling her backward by the shoulder and forearm while his partner went for her thighs, lifting her off the ground. A homeless guy opened the back door of the prowl car for them with a flourish and they shoved her inside.
    Summer in the City.
    The woman was calling them every name in the book, banging on the windows, mad as hell. The cop she'd hit in the face climbed into the driver's seat while the other cop retrieved her Bloomie's bag and slid into the passenger side. They drove away.
    He crossed 71st Street, passed a rollerblade shop, a jewelry store, a restaurant, a Photomat , a natural food store, and a vegetable market. At a kiosk at 72nd Street he bought himself a Post , in case there was nothing doing at the bar, and a pack of Winstons . The girl who ran the kiosk was very pretty, with long brown silky hair. He'd seen her there before and wondered how a woman that good-looking wound up in a street-peddler's job. He glanced at the headline of the Post .

16 DEAD IN LOVE-SUICIDE PACT .
    He turned left on 72nd Street, wondering what the hell that was all about.
    There were still a few cigar-chomping old men in front of the OTB discussing the day's action. The TV sets were still on in the window of 72nd Street Electronics,