My best friend and next door neighbor, Abby Moscowitz, is really proud of me for having the courage (she calls it the chutzpah) to stick to my girlhood goals. She says a woman has to have “balls” if she wants to make it in America ’s biggest and hardest city. And, you can take it from me, Abby knows what she’s talking about. She’s a fabulous freelance magazine illustrator (the best I’ve ever seen!), yet the only way she managed to get any work in the field was by barging into publishing offices and threatening to camp out in the waiting room-cooking beans on a hot plate and washing her stockings out in the ladies’ lavatory-until somebody looked at her portfolio.

And by using a male signature on all her work.

And by flaunting her female curves in front of the male art directors who dole out the assignments. (Abby’s breasts, you should know, are as fully developed as her hypothetical balls.)

But as bold and brash as Abby is, she never gets herself into even half as much trouble as I do. You’ll see what I mean if you read the shocking and terrifying true story I’m about to start writing (i.e., expanding into a dime store mystery novel) for you right now. You’ll see how Abby somehow rises-almost floats-above the most atrocious and hazardous of situations, while I flap around in the dirt like a beheaded chicken, blindly scratching my way toward disaster and flipping feathers all over the place.

The story starts out innocently enough (don’t they all?), but soon degenerates into a steamy tale of forbidden love, uncontrollable passion, unthinkable desperation, and-you guessed it!-murder. And that’s where you’ll find me-right in the murderous middle of things as usual-working my twitchy little tail off to get to the truth, and endangering my own twitchy little life while I’m at it.

But here, my dear reader and friend, is the 64,000-dollar question: Am I courting danger, or is danger stalking me? Is danger my greatest affliction-or my deadliest addiction?

I honestly don’t have a clue. Read the story, then you tell me.

IT WAS A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN that night. Seven o’clock on a Friday evening-July 1, 1955, to be exact-and even though the sun had slipped below the skyscraper skyline, the mercury was still stuck at a blistering 98.3 degrees. The steamy, jam-packed subway ride home from work had left me weak, wobbly, and drenched in perspiration (mine or somebody else’s?-it was hard to tell), and as I staggered down Bleecker Street toward my apartment, the hot sidewalk under my swelling feet was scorching the soles of my stilettos.

I needed a drink, and I needed it now. If Abby wasn’t at home-standing at her kitchen counter and mixing me up a tall, icy-cold Tom Collins-I’d have to kill myself.

No call for concern. The minute I opened the door to our building and began climbing the narrow chute of stairs to the small landing between Abby’s apartment and mine, I heard the ultra cool sounds of John Coltrane pulsing through her open door. Then Abby poked her head and one hand-the hand that was holding my cherry-topped Tom Collins-out into the hall.

“You’re late to the gate, Kate!” she piped, speaking in rhyme as she often liked to do, and giving me a new name in the process. She flipped her thick, black, waist-length braid of hair off her shoulder and stepped all the way out onto the landing. “Half the ice in your drink has already melted! This gunk is sunk.”

I tried to think up a clever reply, but couldn’t. My brain had melted, too. “That’s okay,” I said, wiping my sweaty forehead on my sweaty forearm and trudging the rest of the way up the steps. “I’m so thirsty I’ll drink anything-as long as it’s wet.” To prove my words, I grabbed the glass from Abby’s hand, threw my head back, and poured a good third of the diluted cocktail down my dehydrated throat.

I considered pouring the rest of the drink down inside the front of my lavender linen dress, but quickly ditched that idea. It would cool me off for a few glorious seconds, I knew, but then later-as the sugary concoction warmed to the rising temperature of my skin-I’d feel steamier and stickier than ever. And my new dress would be ruined. So, instead of giving myself a Tom Collins dunk, I guzzled the rest of the watered-down gunk. (Okay, you caught me. I don’t often speak in rhyme, but I have, on occasion-I’m thoroughly embarrassed to admit-been known to write that way.)

“Way to go, Flo!” Abby said, her stunning Ava Gardner face lighting up in a satisfied smile. Aside from drawing and painting, listening to jazz, and pursuing her bohemian interest in the taboo practice of free love, the preparing and sharing of exotic alcoholic beverages was Abby’s all-time favorite pastime. “Come on in,” she said, beaming. “I’ll make you another one.”

A welcome breeze was blowing in Abby’s apartment. Actually, three welcome breezes. One came from the electric fan sitting on the floor at the rear of the kitchen area, right in front of the wide-open back door (which led out to the rusty fire escape landing, which led down to the small, weed- and, no doubt, rat-packed courtyard behind our building). A revolving draft blew from the fan perched on the kitchen counter, and another came wafting from the tall, whirring contraption set near the easel in Abby’s living room-cum-art studio.

I plopped myself down at the kitchen table, in the spot I thought most likely to benefit from all three breezes, and lit up an L &M filter tip. “Oh, God!” I exclaimed. “Please kill me right now! I can’t endure this unbearable heat for even one more second.” (I am, as you will eventually discover, somewhat prone to hyperbole.)

“Yeah, it’s pretty awful,” Abby said, sighing. She poured a healthy dose of gin into my fresh drink, gave it a vigorous stir, then, nestling the glass in a cocktail napkin, carried it from the kitchen counter to my place at the table. “I was working on a new illustration all day,” she said, nodding toward her easel, “a cover for Husky Male magazine, and it was so crazy hot in here I thought I was going to faint.” She sat down at the table, lit up a Pall Mall, and took a deep swig of her own drink. “It got so bad I had to take off all my clothes and work in the nude.”

Uh oh. I knew what that meant. It meant the crazy heat wave had probably been of her own making-that Abby had likely worked with a handsome young Husky Male model that afternoon, and that she’d spent more time seducing (or, as she would say, shtupping) him than painting him.

“I take it you weren’t alone,” I said, letting more than a shred of sarcasm seep into my tone. (I disapprove of Abby’s promiscuous ways, you should know, while she thinks I’m a total prude.) “Anybody I know?” I asked. “Or did the model agency send you a brand-new toy?”

“Oh, shut up, Paige! You’re such a prig!”

“I am not. I’m a healthy, passionate, open-minded woman who just happens to believe that the beautiful and intimate act of procreation should be enjoyed with one’s husband, not every Tom, Dick, and Murray in Manhattan.”

“Yeah, well, that’s all fine and good if you’re married,” Abby snorted. She gave me an impish smirk, hoisted one eyebrow to the hilt, then blew a perfect smoke ring in my direction. “And need I remind you, Little Miss Morality, that neither one of us is?”

Her smoke ring hit the crossbreeze and disappeared.

“I’m not the one who needs reminding,” I said with a sniff. “I’m painfully aware of my single-woman status. You, on the other hand, seem to think you’re married to all mankind.”

Abby laughed out loud. “No, I’m a lover of all mankind, you dig? I’m not ready for marriage yet. Who knows if I’ll ever be?” Taking another big gulp of her drink, she eyed me over the rim of her glass. “And I think any woman who waits till she’s hitched to indulge in the pleasures of sex is a dope. Present company included.”