Tender Death
she put down the phone slowly, brooding.
    “Okay, good night. See you Monday. Have a safe ride home.”
    She dialed Kevin De Haven’s number. It rang and rang and rang.
    “Kevin De Haven’s office,” a very familiar male voice said at last.
    “Kevin, please.”
    “He’s gone for the day. Wetzon? Is that you?”
    Damn. Tom Hasher, a broker she talked to from time to time, was in that office. “Tom? What are you doing still there in this blizzard?”
    “I live only about six blocks from here, so it’s no problem. How’ve you been, Wetzon?”
    “Great. How about you?” She had never been able to tempt him out of Merrill, but sometimes he called her with a tip about a fellow broker who was unhappy.
    “Real well. Listen,” he said in a low voice, “you’ve got a good one with Kevin. He’s going to have to move.”
    “Oh?” That sounded bad.
    “Don’t worry. No real problems. Just a style of business that doesn’t blend well here. He does a lot with hedge funds.”
    “Thanks for the tip, Tom.”
    She hung up and walked to the French doors, parting the blinds slightly. The windows were steamy. She cleaned off a spot and peered out. A deep grayness covered the sky and the mounds of snow on the ground reflected grays and pale yellows from the bleary lights in the buildings above.
    The window quickly steamed up again, and she drew a big heart and wrote “Wetzon loves Silvestri” with an end of an arrow going in one side and the point coming out the other. A feeling of panic hit her as she realized what she’d done unconsciously, and, embarrassed, she rubbed her fist on the pane, obliterating the words.

13.
    W HEN SHE CAME out on the street, the ceiling of the sky was so low she felt if she stood on tiptoes, she could actually touch it. It didn’t seem as cold as it had been. A sulfurous aura hung over everything.
    The snow was still falling but it was lighter now. Still, at least a foot had fallen already and, blown by the wind, the drifts were deep. Supers or handymen from the surrounding brownstones had made an attempt to shovel the sidewalks, and she could hear the sounds of metal shovels on cement, but walking was difficult. To get the bus uptown on Third Avenue would be a major expedition.
    Dim lights made the turn from First Avenue and crawled along Forty-ninth Street toward her. The car pulled up to the house next door. It was a cab, and Wetzon, joyously, got to the door as the passenger disembarked.
    “Thank God,” she said to the driver after she’d climbed in. “And thank you.”
    The driver, a heavy black woman, with a Mets cap jammed low on her forehead, nodded. “Where to? I’m not going to Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx.” She wore red leather gloves with the fingertips cut off.
    Wetzon gave her Hazel’s address on East Ninety-second Street.
    Traffic was bumper to bumper, creeping up Third Avenue. It took over twenty minutes just to make the turn from Forty-ninth Street, normally a three-minute trip. The side streets were choked with snow, in dire need of snowplows.
    Outside Hazel’s apartment building, Wetzon hesitantly asked the driver if she would wait and take her through the Park to Eighty-sixth Street near Amsterdam. The meter already read almost nine dollars.
    “Okay,” the woman said pleasantly. “How about I turn off my clock, and we settle on twenty bucks for the works.”
    “Terrific.” Wetzon opened the door and promptly stepped into a snowdrift.
    The driver leaned out. “But make it fast. I don’t want to get stuck here for the night.” She flicked her flag up, turning off the meter.
    Hazel answered her door, wearing a quilted pink robe blooming with pink blossoms and a ruffled pink cap. She was holding a pair of chopsticks.
    “Leslie dear, you shouldn’t have come. It’s a terrible night,” Hazel said. Her eyes were bright and two round rosy spots burned on her cheeks. She looked exceedingly pleased with herself.
    “Hazel, what are you up to?”
    “Your

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