Jesus. I'm in outer fucking space.
He found a cassette labeled Manhattan Is My Beat and picked it up, set it down.
Then: footsteps.
Shit. Who the hell was this?
Giggling. A woman's voice: "Not here, come on. No, wait!"
He reached into his pocket and wrapped his hand around his pistol.
A twentyish woman, in a white bra and dress bunched around her waist, stopped at the top of the stairs. She looked at him. He looked at her tits.
"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded. Pulling the cloth halfheartedly up to her chest.
"Who're you?" he asked.
The way he asked it she said, "Sandra," immediately.
"You're her roommate?"
"Rune? Yeah, I guess."
He laughed. "You guess? How long you known her?"
"Not, you know, long."
He took in this information carefully, noted her body language. If she was dangerous, innocent. If she'd ever killed anyone. "How long is 'you know long'?"
"Huh?"
"How the fuck long've you known her?"
"A couple of months is all. What the hell're you doing here?"
A man, late twenties, blond, jockish, came up the stairs. He squinted, then stepped up beside Sandra.
The Meter Man ignored him.
She said, "Like, what're you doing here?"
He finished looking through the bookcase. Jesus, he didn't want to have to flip through every book. There must've been five hundred of them.
"Hey," the blond man called, "the lady asked you a question."
Sounded like a line from a really bad movie. The Meter Man loved movies. He lived alone and spent every Saturday afternoon at the Quadriplex near him.
He squinted. "What was it? The question?"
"What're you doing here?" she asked uneasily.
He pointed to his chest. "I read meters."
"You can't just come in here," the young man said. Sandra tried to shush him--not concerned so much about the words themselves as the attitude. But the boy waved her off. "You can't enter without permission. It's trespassing. That's actionable."
"Oh. Actionable. What's that mean?"
"That she can sue your ass."