When Patrice was jilted by her boyfriend in public, Maxine took pity on her and helped her get home. The book was about two women in New York City: a young and inexperienced blonde, Patrice and an older brunette, Maxine. She went back to the book, opening it carefully so that she didn't crease the spine, and began to read. She glanced around the edge of the book rack, sharply conscious that she was still in public, but although she could hear the ringing of the cash register at the front of the store, she didn't see anyone approaching her corner. The title was Strange Season, and the tagline read, 'She couldn't escape the unnatural desires of her heart.'Īn electric thrill went through Lily. The blonde wore a pink negligee and knelt on the ground, eyes cast down demurely while the shapely brunette lurked behind her.

One of the books had two women on the cover, a blonde and a brunette. It was the women's pliant bodies, their bare legs and lush breasts, mouths like shiny red candies. There was something disturbing about the illustrations-and it wasn't the leering men. The men loomed behind them or clutched them in muscular arms, bending the women's bodies backward so that their breasts pointed up. The women on these book covers seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping their clothes on. The book rack alcove was normally deserted, but even so, Lily spun the rack self-consciously, retreating behind it so that she was hidden from view.

Lily normally bypassed that rack but today she paused, drawn in by The Castle of Blood, on which the blonde's red gown seemed about to slip off her substantial bosom, nipples straining against the thin fabric. One was full of thrillers with lurid covers depicting scantily clad women in the embrace of swarthy men. There were several rotating racks of them in a sheltered alcove beyond the sanitary napkin aisle. She had soon discovered that Thrifty had another advantage over the Chinatown pharmacy: it had a very good selection of paperback novels. Thrifty was just outside the neighborhood, so her friends didn't usually go there. She had ducked in to buy a box of Kotex, because she hadn't wanted to get them at the pharmacy in Chinatown, where she'd risk running into people she knew. The first time Lily had gone to Thrifty had been sometime last year.

Last night at telegraph club