HCC 115 - Borderline (9 page)

“They get the hint.”

Cassie frowned. “He could wait outside,” she said. “Follow you, maybe beat you up.
It’s not worth it.”

The upshot of it was that Cassie pressed a five dollar bill into her palm, calling
it a loan until Lily got her first pay for working at Delia’s Place. It wasn’t a loan,
Lily knew. It was a present, and that was fine with her. She left Cassie at the Mex
place and went back across the border to El Paso.

The five, added to her twelve, gave her seventeen. She put the five with the rest
of the dough and started walking toward Cappy’s, the hotel where she had been staying.
There was nothing there that she needed, just a dirty old blouse she was planning
to throw away. But she wanted to stay away from Cassie for the time being. The flat-chested
redhead had a way of getting on her nerves over a period of time.

The night had been enjoyable enough. The novelty effect, first of all, was valuable.
She had never before made it with another chick, partly because no dyke ever put the
make on that strongly, partly because she had never thought of herself as a girl who
could enjoy lesbian relations. But now that she’d been more or less forced into it,
it wasn’t bad at all.

To begin with, the whole sensation aspect was nothing new. It didn’t make a hell of
a big difference whether you had a cat or a chick going down on you—the same actions
went on, and you felt the same way. Guys had gone down on her often enough in the
past. Frank had almost always done so before they made love, and she had always enjoyed
it. She enjoyed it even more with Cassie. Cassie was better at it, knew what she was
doing. It was a kick.

The other side of the coin took some getting used to. Being caressed was one thing,
while caressing was another. She never really managed to put her heart into that part,
but she did what she was supposed to, conquering her initial revulsion and accepting
it as part of the game. Evidently, she did it well enough. Cassie couldn’t get too
much of her; the dumb little redhead was half in love already, for Christ’s sake.

Lily found Cappy’s, went upstairs to her room. She took a bath in the bathroom down
the hall, because there hadn’t been a bathroom at the Mex place and she felt grimy
all over. That was going to be one hunk of trouble about the job, she thought. Sex
always made her feel scummy. And now she was going to take on a batch of men every
night, plus the little show-biz routine with Cassie. She could hardly wash up between
lays.

Hell, she thought. She could get used to it. And, if it got rough, she could always
get a little edge on with tequila. The stuff half-burned your throat out, but it got
to you in a hurry and gave you one hell of a buzz. And it was cheap as dishwater even
if you had to pay for it all on your own, and cheaper still when someone else was
picking up the check.

She lay back in the tub, letting the warm water hug her small pink body. She worked
soap into her breasts, rubbing her own nipples and recalling the way Cassie’s tongue
had glided over her flesh, how Cassie’s lips had closed around the nipples and pulled
at them. She wondered idly how many men she would wind up taking on in the course
of the evening. Cassie had said she earned around thirty or thirty-five bucks a night,
and they were getting ten bucks each for the act on stage and two bucks a trick afterward.
That meant she would make twenty to twenty-five from tricks and she’d be taking on
ten to twelve men, maybe more on a good night.

That wasn’t so bad. She’d been lined-up on once, back in Denver; it was the initiation
for a clique at Western High and she had become a member. Six guys took her in turn
and she had managed to live through it with no trouble, had even gotten her kicks
out of the deal. A dozen guys was only double the six she’d been had by that night,
and now it would be even easier, because she knew how to stay cool during sex, how
to go through the motions without feeling a thing. She could let her body do all the
work while her mind stayed neatly detached.

She finished her bath, dried off with a towel, went back to her room and put clothes
on. She left the hotel without bothering to return the key. If Cassie turned out to
be too much of a drag, she would just go on paying her two skins a night to live in
El Paso. If Cassie was all right, she’d stay with the redhead at the hotel in Juarez.
It would be cheaper, and it might be fun to have Cassie around.

At a cheap women’s wear shop she picked up a pair of panties, a plaid skirt, and a
fresh white blouse. She carried the bag with her when she went into a movie house
on Coronado Avenue. She walked directly to the ladies’ room, where she changed her
clothes, returning her dirty slacks and blouse to the paper bag. She stuffed the bag
in a wastebasket and went downstairs to find a seat.

The movie was about a crowd of juvenile delinquents in Los Angeles. She kept breaking
up all the way through it. Either the movie had its head up its tail or they did things
a hell of a lot differently in L.A. She could tell them plenty.

* * *

Meg was happy. She had a cigarette between her lips and she drew on it now, taking
in a lot of smoke. She relaxed in her seat in the front of the blue Olds and looked
at Marty. He was driving, his hands on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead. He drove
as he made love, letting nothing interfere with the attention he devoted to the subject
at hand. She guessed that he played poker with the same single-minded dedication.
If so, she could understand why he won. He was a perfect lover and a perfect driver,
and he was probably a perfect card-player as well.

He had come in the door that morning just as she was finishing breakfast. She had
awakened with a hangover, and breakfast had been in the form of an orange blossom,
a glass of orange juice spiked with gin. He’d had the gin in a liquor cabinet in the
living room and it had been no trouble finding it. The gin was Beefeater. There was
also a fifth of Dewar’s, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, a fifth of Old Overholt, and a
quart of Smirnoff. They were, respectively, the best Scotch on the market, the best
bourbon, the best rye, and the best vodka. She was beginning to understand something
about Marty Granger. He did not bother with things that were second-rate. He liked
the best.

She was flattered. He liked her, and this flattered her.

When he came home that morning he stood for a moment, looking at her, liking what
he saw.

Then he said, “Let’s go back to bed. I want you.”

They went back to bed. He made the earth go around for her once again, made the top
of her head come off. He kissed life into her big breasts and then he moved her thighs,
plunging into her warmth and thrilling her to the depths of her being.

“We’re going to the Casino Lupo,” he told her now. “It’s a gambling house on the outskirts
of Juarez, a little ways south of the city. They’ve got roulette and baccarat and
craps and chuckaluck. You ever gamble?”

“No.”

“I’ll give you two hundred to play with,” he said. “You can see how you do. You ought
to stick to the roulette wheel. Craps gives you a better percentage but you have to
know the game. The rest is a way to toss money away, that’s all. Baccarat, chuckaluck—the
house gets too big an advantage. But you can move around if you want. We’re not going
there to win money. We’re going so you can get a taste of gambling.”

“What will you be doing?”

“They have a poker table,” he said. “The house dealer stays out of the game. The house
gets two bucks a pot. The game is stud, dollar ante, three dollar limit.”

“Is that a lot?”

“It depends on what you’re used to. I like table stakes. A betting limit just slows
things down. But it’s a fair-sized game.”

“Can anybody walk in?”

“It depends.”

“Will they let us in?”

“They know me,” he said simply.

Casino Lupo was a stucco Spanish-style place, sprawling in the middle of three acres
of neatly landscaped grounds. A Mexican kid parked the Olds. Marty led her up four
steps to a door. A Mexican with a waxed moustache greeted Marty by name and led them
inside. “Two hundred,” he said, handing her a bundle of bills. “The cashier will sell
you some chips. See what you can do.”

“When will I see you?”

“A few hours. I’ll be through that archway over there. Drop in if you run out of chips,
or if you get bored.”

She went to the cashier’s window and bought a hundred dollars worth of chips. She
went from there to the roulette wheel, stood watching for a few spins. Then she put
a chip on Red. Black came up and the croupier took her chip away.

She played Red again and won. She left the two chips there and won again.

She had four chips now. She left one on Red, moved the other three to Low Third, numbers
one through twelve. Seven-Black came up. She lost the chip on the Red but collected
twoto-one on the other stack. She had nine chips now, and she bet five on Odd, four
on Black. Seven came up again and she collected on both bets. Now she had eighteen
chips. She played six each on 18, 4, and 23. The number was 4, the payoff 35-to-1.
She now had 210 chips.

She went on playing. Her luck slowed down some but held. She let the wheel absorb
her, let herself fall into the pattern of it. The ball whirled around, bounced from
one number to another, dropped in a slot and stayed there. Men lost and other men
won. Once she had a hundred dollars riding on Black and lost. She played fifty dollars
on Low Third again and won. She let the chips stay where they were and won again.

It seemed no time at all when Marty was holding her arm. “Wait a minute,” she said.
“A few more plays.”

“Three more,” he said.

She lost twenty dollars playing Red, won thirty with a ten-dollar bet on one-through-nine,
won twenty more playing Even. He helped her carry her chips to the cashier’s window.
She found out, and was surprised to learn, that she had won twelve hundred dollars.

“In no time at all,” she said.

“You’ve been playing for three hours.”

“Really?”

“Really. Let’s go get dinner.”

“All right. How did you do?”

“I had lousy cards,” he said. “I folded straight off on the first twelve pots.”

“Did you lose?”

“No. I caught a few good hands and milked them, won fifty or sixty dollars. But I
didn’t go crazy the way you did. You’ll make debauchery profitable.”

She laughed.

They left the casino, went to his car. He tipped the attendant with a dollar chip.
“Play a good number,” he said. The boy smiled.

“Where to now?”

“Dinner,” he said.

“In Paso?”

“In Juarez. The town isn’t just tacos and tamales. There’s a good steakhouse near
the plaza. Can you eat a steak?”

“I could eat ten of them.”

She only ate one. It was a top sirloin, charcoal broiled, burnt on the outside and
raw in the middle. They had tequila with the meal and she went through the ritual
with salt and lemon. It burned wildly but the jolt it gave you was nice. Between them,
they killed a small bottle. She was nicely lit by the time they left the place.

“Now where?”

“Bernardo’s,” he said. “You sit next to me on a divan and we listen to guitars. Some
mariachi music, too. We put down some more tequila and neck a little. Okay?”

“Fine.”

They sat on a small sofa and killed most of another bottle of tequila. A boy brought
a tray of sandwiches and she had some kind of hot sausage between two halves of a
sesame seed roll. The music was soft and sensual. Marty kissed her, squeezed her breasts.
Her head swam.

Then he was saying, “Had enough? Let’s go somewhere else.”

“Why?” She rubbed the back of his neck.

“Just to catch another scene.”

“Can’t we just stay here?”

Her other hand was rubbing his chest now.

“You’ll like it there,” he explained.

“Not as much as I like this.”

She continued rubbing.

He put his hand on the hand she had on his chest.

“Let’s go now, ah?”

“Back to your home? I’d like that,”

“No. Not right now anyway. We’ll go someplace else first.”

“Where?”

“A night club I know.”

“Night clubs aren’t so exciting.”

“This one is,” he said. “Good food and good drinks. And a good floorshow.”

“I’ve seen floorshows.”

“Not like this one.”

“Oh,” she said. “You mean they have a woman make it with a Shetland pony? That kind
of thing?”

“That kind of thing. I don’t know about Shetland ponies, but that’s the general idea.
They do it on stage.”

“Let’s go, Marty.”

They left Bernardo’s, found the Olds again. Marty unlocked the door, then changed
his mind. “I don’t want to park around there,” he said. “The kid’ll ruin the car.”

He hailed a cab, helped her in. She leaned against him and moistened her lips with
her tongue.

“Delia’s Place,” he told the driver.

When Weaver woke, he bathed in the tub down the hall, then took his time combing his
hair very carefully, plastering the long strands over his low forehead. He went to
the dresser next, opened a drawer, pushed aside clothing until he found the straight
razor. He carried it to the bed, sat upon the bed’s edge, and opened the razor.

It was very sharp. He rubbed his thumb across the face of the blade, testing the sharpness,
and smiled when he saw how keen the edge was. He held the weapon to the light and
noted how the sides of the blade gleamed with newness, how the steel shone with a
mirror’s brilliance. Reluctantly, he closed the razor, pocketed it.

He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air. His sleep that day, a clammy sort
of sleep in a hot room, had been filled with dreams. Girls screamed in Weaver’s sleep
that day. Razors flashed and blood flowed. Twice he had awakened, his hands dampened
with his own sweat, his heart pounding with hysterical excitement. Each time he had
drifted back to Fantasyland, back to sleep, back to more screams and more razors and
more blood.