Stone Cold Fox (38)

Gale Wallace-Leicester lived on the Upper West Side, in the West 70s to be precise, like the septuagenarian she truly was inside. Why a single woman in her early thirties, arguably the sunset of her prime—or as prime as Gale would ever get—chose to settle in a neighborhood where there are almost zero single romantic prospects was just beyond me. My guess was that the apartment had been in the Wallace-Leicester family for some time, but surely she could branch out after dipping into the family trust for something more desirable? Oh well. Her body, her choice, I suppose, but her choice was a puzzle to me.

The building was still a beauty despite its decrepit inhabitants. Naturally there was a doorman, which you’d think would be a problem for prowlers when it came to security, but when you look like me and the doorman looked like Frank did that day, well, it was not exactly difficult to gain entry.

“Hello there, Frank!” I called to him, making note of his sterling silver name tag, stepping out of a cab in a crisp white blouse, the top third unbuttoned. “I just need to run a lip gloss up to a girlfriend of mine. She left it at my place after our slumber party the other night.” I winked at him suggestively and applied a quick coat on myself in the event he had an oral fixation. Most men do. Sweet Frank looked so provincial that I assumed a bit of subtle lesbian imagery would also help with my admittance. “I shouldn’t be much longer than an hour or so,” I continued. “Sometimes we girls get to gabbing and other fun stuff. I’m sure you understand.” Frank promptly turned the color of a beefsteak tomato and he let me up the elevator, unable to utter a single word, much less clear his throat.

Soon I was in front of Gale’s door, complete with a festive Independence Day wreath with red berries and a blue ribbon. Please rest assured that by festive I mean absolutely hideous, not to mention completely age-inappropriate. Why didn’t she just accept her imminent spinsterhood already?

I took the key ring from Collin’s desk out of my bag and began the process of sampling each one into the lock. There were about eight keys and the third one actually did the trick, but when I pushed the door open, I was stunned to find the dreaded interior chain as a barrier to entry, along with the disturbing knowledge that someone must be inside.

“Hello?” an unfamiliar male voice called out. “Gale? Sorry, hold on, I’m coming.”

Excuse me, there was a man in Gale’s apartment? It was distressing and perplexing at the same time. I tried to yank the key out of the lock so I could bolt down the stairwell at the end of the hall, but the damn thing was stuck. Keys or no keys, I would have to promptly get out of there. I was startled by the mew of a feline below me and watched the little creature dart out from the crack of the door.

I dashed in the opposite direction. Luckily, each of the doors in her hallway had a small alcove in front of them. Nothing extravagant or terribly roomy, but for a waif like me, it was easy to back up against a neighboring door out of sight. Well, for the most part. My one physical flaw is that my feet are enormous. One of the very few drawbacks to being a striking five-ten is that you typically have to browse the mutant section of the shop for shoes. The silver lining is that your gargantuan size is almost always available.

I remained hidden in the alcove, my toes peeking out ever so slightly, waiting for the chain to unlock. Seconds later I heard the unknown man head in the other direction, shouting out for Hemingway. The cat, I presumed. A surprise to me. Surely Gale was a Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickinson fangirl by the looks of her. To be clear, the name was a surprise. Of course Gale had a cat.

I needed to remove Collin’s keys from the door as quickly as possible, but not before taking a cheeky peek into the apartment of Gale Wallace-Leicester. It was enormous, outrageously so, with probably everything she could ever want in there. Well, everything but taste. French country and earth tones? Honestly, Gale.

I managed to extricate the keys with a firm tug and went on my merry way back to the elevator, careful to avoid Cat Man, who was making kissy sounds for Hemingway at the other end of the hallway. The curiosity about his identity was killing me. Did Gale have a new boyfriend she wasn’t telling anyone about? That seemed highly unlikely. Or was it possible that she was so unhinged, not to mention so frivolous with her cash, that she hired a cat sitter for regular working hours?

The elevator doors started to close and then jerked open again. A frenzied hand found its way inside. It belonged to Cat Man. And my God, was he handsome. He looked like a younger Al Pacino or an older Timothée Chalamet. He was all hair. A swarthy fellow with luminous olive skin that suggested a robust moisturizing regimen. Or fantastic genetics. His whole demeanor could only be described as smoldering; sex exuded from every pore, not that you could see his. Exquisite skin. Exquisite specimen. That settled it. Cat Man and Gale couldn’t possibly be sleeping together. He was way too hot for her.

“Sorry,” he apologized to me. “It’s just, uh, have you seen a black cat?” His voice was raspy and deep and sexy. His dark eyes were wide with a sweet panic over the missing cat. His dick was big, it had to be, no question. Wow. It was rare that I immediately wanted to have sex with someone purely for my own pleasure. I didn’t trust that feeling, I had to stay the course, but it was too tempting to resist. I flirted shamelessly.

“A black cat? What, do I look like a witch to you?” I smiled. Unfortunately for me, he was too frantic to nip back at me with any quips of his own.