Read Ladies' Night for Free Online Page A

Murphy Brown hauling her new baby into the office on a dozen screens. Across the street the mannequins in Areil posed lubriciously in silk camisoles, negligees and lace bodysuits — bringing Elizabeth, similarly attired, right to mind.
    Hands off , he thought. Both physically and mentally.
    Enough. You've got enough problems as it is.
    You bought into her , he thought. Into Susan. The problem is not Susan but that you're too damn young to have a family. You didn't buy into them and supporting them in a job you hated . Much as he loved Andy.
    It felt too damn much like the end of things.
    A light was still on in the mystery bookstore between the butcher shop and the travel agency. He'd worked in a bookstore once as a teenager one summer and knew the light on this late meant they were probably taking inventory inside.
    Beside the bookstore was a fish market and beside the market was MacInery's .
    Class , he thought.
    His favorite bar was next to a fish store.
    He peered through the plate glass window. It looked pretty lively. Bailey was behind the bar and he recognized a few of the regulars. He saw that the women were out in pretty good number. MacInery's was a neighborhood place and women tended to feel comfortable there. So instead of the usual New York quota of, say, four guys to every woman, MacInery's ratio was more like two to one, and sometimes it was dead even. He folded his Post , tucked it under his arm and pushed open the door.
    The jukebox blared. Bailey glanced up from behind the bar and smiled.
    The crowd opened up for him like a mouth always hungry for more and he moved on inside.

The Westside

    For a weekend summer night the streets were quiet.
    At the World Cafe and the Aegean on Columbus and at the trendier China Club uptown at the Beacon Hotel on Broadway the crowds were still thin and would remain so until about midnight.
    Further uptown, at Pearlie's on 84th Street, a young, early drunk stumbled on his way out the door — but here the long narrow barspace was already so crowded with people drinking, shouting over the music, hustling one another, that there was nowhere for him to go. The drunk stayed upright, blinking, spilling the beer of the guy in the cowboy shirt in front of him.
    Over on Amsterdam, the well-dressed, polite young crowd at Sweetwater were waiting for the show to start — Thelma Houston —and listening to a Marvin Gaye song on the juke in the meantime.
    On the streets the traffic was light, pedestrians few.
    ~ * ~
    The wino on the center-strip divider of Broadway at 69th had quit tap dancing. Now he was sitting on a bench, waiting for the right woman to pass by, a suitable target for attack. His attack was always the same. " When ya gonna wake up and smell the coffee? " he'd growl. The words seem to yap inside him like hostile puppies. Without a woman around they could not get out. He needed to be free of them but without the appropriate woman he could not. He pulled on the dark brown bottle and watched and waited.
    Inside McDonald's, Jim " Jumma " Jackson entered and looked around and sauntered to the counter. The girls behind the counter smiled at him. Jumma was a handsome man. He ordered three Big Macs and a chocolate shake, large order of fries.
    He carried the plastic tray to his table and sat down, arranging his coat so that the gun lay flat in his raincoat pocket against his leg and would not dislodge itself accidentally. He was not at all nervous. The nervousness would come later, when he went back to the counter and pulled the gun. For now he just looked around.
    An old woman sat muttering to herself a few tables back. Homeless, all her shit stuffed into shopping bags at her feet. He watched her pick at the ulcerous sores on her legs, scratch her dirty face.
    No trouble there.
    No trouble anywhere he could see.
    A couple of Chinese kids on dates, eating cheap. An old guy.
    A few tables down there was a brother with the twitchy kind of eyes that marked you for a