HCC 115 - Borderline (14 page)

He remembered the way she had behaved at Delia’s, the way she had acted in the room
afterward. A pig in the rutting season, he thought. And then he remembered the way
he himself had acted. Fine, he thought. I’m a pig, too. That doesn’t mean I have to
share my sty with her. One pig doesn’t have to like another pig just because they’ve
been eating slops together out of the same trough. No law says so.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. His headache was more acute
now and his whole head was splitting with the pain. He got to his feet and his stomach
started to turn over. He got to the john, closed the door, and threw up into the toilet
bowl. He flushed the toilet, found a bottle of aspirin tablets in the medicine cabinet,
spilled three into the palm of his left hand, filled the plastic water tumbler with
three inches of tap water, and swallowed the aspirin. When the pills and water hit
bottom he had to resist the impulse to heave them up again. He took a deep breath,
held it, let it out. He breathed again, deeply, and exhaled.

The headache was still there. In the television ads they showed you how the aspirins
dissolved into millions of tiny specks the second you swallowed them, and how those
specks forced their way into your bloodstream, and how your headache was gone in no
time at all. It didn’t work that way. He sat down on the toilet, resting his head
in the palm of one hand.

He wasn’t used to headaches. Generally he awoke with a perfectly clear head, with
his mind in flawless working order. He didn’t like to wake up with clammy sweat on
his skin and pain in his head and nausea in his stomach. He didn’t like it at all.

Meg was a mistake. A bad mistake, the kind of mistake that could take a well-ordered
life and flip it out of joint. Take his life, for instance. It had been a neat life,
a life that was well-ordered without being confining, a life that gave him as much
as possible of what he wanted without putting him in a bind. He had spent years in
a border town without going on a spree, had had a few drinks every day without letting
the stuff take the edge from his self-control. In one night he had thrown that control
to the winds. He’d been drunk on tequila, high on marijuana, had gone orgy-nuts in
a trap for oversexed tourists. And for what? For a headache, and a sick stomach, and
unsteady legs, and a coating of sweat.

So what if she was smart, if she was beautiful, if she spoke her mind and knew what
she wanted and went out and got it and was good in bed? Great in bed. So what?

He stood up. His legs were in slightly better shape this time and his stomach was
settling down. He opened the door of the stall shower and let the water run. When
it was the right temperature he stood under it. For a moment be thought that the spray
would knock him over, but it did not, and he let the water wash away some of the grime.
He lathered his hard body with bar soap and rinsed more dirt away. He soaped himself
a few more times, rinsed a few more times, turned off the shower and dried himself
with a towel. He felt cleaner now, but some of the griminess seemed to have lodged
itself beneath his skin. As though the filth were a part of him, he thought. As though
he’d absorbed it and it was a permanent acquisition.

His mouth had a vile taste to it. He brushed his teeth half a dozen times until the
flavor of the toothpaste had driven away some of the unpleasantness. He left the bathroom
and put on fresh clean clothes. Meg was still sleeping. He went to her side, gripped
her shoulder and shook her roughly. For several seconds she made no response whatsoever.
Then she opened her eyes, blinked, closed them. He shook her again, harder. This time
her eyes stayed open.

“I’m going away,” he told her. “When I leave, get up. You can take a shower if you
want. Then get some clothes on and get out of here. Don’t come back.”

She did not understand.

“It’s over,” he said. “I don’t know just what it was in the first place but it’s over.
You’ve still got your twelve hundred, or most of it. Take it and go. I don’t want
to see you again.”

“Why not?”

“I live my own life,” he said. “You’re not part of it. I live alone and I like it.
I want to keep it that way.”

She said, “You said you loved me.”

“I said that?”

“Last night.”

He decided he must have been awfully drunk. “I was wrong,” he said. “I don’t love
anybody. I’m leaving now. Be gone when I get back, Meg. Go to the airport and catch
a plane to Chicago.”

“I don’t want to go to Chicago.”

“Somewhere else, then. New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland. I don’t care where, but go.”

“Can’t I even stay in your town?”

Her eyes were bitter. “You shouldn’t,” he told her. “Paso brings out the worst in
you; stay here and you’ll fall apart.”

“I was all right before I met you.”

“That’s the point. Get away from me and you’ll be all right again. Get away from me
and from El Paso.”

“You’re mad about last night?”

“I’m just sick of it.”

“You showed me around,” she said. “You took me every place. I don’t see why you’re
angry at me.”

“I’m not angry,” he said. “I just want to get you out of my sight.”

“Damn it—”

“So long,” he said. “I’ll be gone for three or four hours. You’d better not be here
when I come back or I’ll throw you out on your butt. You can call a cab and take it
to the airport.”

“My bags are at the Warwick.”

“Then stop at the Warwick and pick them up. So long, Meg.”

She didn’t answer, which was just as well. He got his wallet, stuffed it into his
hip pocket, and left the house. The Olds was in the garage and the key was still in
the ignition. Sloppy, he thought. Somebody could have stolen the car. He got behind
the wheel, started the car, backed out of the driveway.

He drove to the diner where he’d eaten—when? Yesterday? It seemed more like a month
ago. He parked at the curb and went inside. The whole idea of food sent his stomach
flipping again, but he knew that passing up a meal would only make everything that
much worse. Alcohol knocked you for a loop. It drained your system of vitamins, set
you back a few pegs. You had to stuff yourself full of food to get on an even footing
again.

He ordered a large glass of tomato juice with a double dash of Worcestershire Sauce.
It was supposed to be a hangover recipe. He drank it down, coughed, and ordered eggs
sunny side with fried potatoes and toast and coffee. He didn’t have ham with his eggs.
Meat, just then, would have been too hard to keep down.

After five cups of black coffee, enough to give him a very minor case of caffeine
nerves, he got back in the car and drove to the cigar store. There were no customers
on the scene when he got there. He asked the clerk if anything was new.

“Your daily double bet ran out,” the man said.

He’d completely forgotten making the bet. He handed the man a five dollar bill and
told him to play three and five again.

“What else?”

“The feller from Miami Beach,” the man said. “He was around again, still looking for
someone to give him a game.”

“The gin rummy man?”

“The same. Says he’s leaving town tomorrow morning, him and his fishtail Cadillac.
Wants to find some action before it’s time to go.”

“He got business in Paso?”

“I’d suppose so. Why else would he be here?”

Marty nodded. “Where’s he staying?”

“The Warwick. Only the best, I suspect.”

Meg’s hotel. “He had some horse bets,” Marty said. “How’d he do on those?”

“Poorly. One winner, the rest run out of the money. He lost most of what he bet.”

Marty lit a cigarette. He had smoked three of them at the diner. This was the day’s
fourth, and the first that almost tasted the way it was supposed to. He drew on it,
inhaled, let the smoke trickle out slowly.

“You got his name?”

“Name’s Simon. Don’t know his first name, though.”

Marty nodded again. He went to the phone booth, dropped a dime and dialed the Warwick.
He asked the desk for Mr. Simon, from Florida. After a few seconds a throaty voice
asked him who he was and what he wanted.

“My name is Marty Granger,” he said. “A cigar store Indian says you play gin.”

“Whattaya know,” Simon said. “You play.”

“I play.”

“He tell you the stakes?”

“He told me and they’re fine.”

Simon paused. “No insult,” he said finally. “If you’re a sharp, I’m not interested.
I’m from Miami Beach, we play a lotta gin out there, we get a lot of card mechanics.
If you’re one of them, let’s forget it. Because I’ll know if you try anything.”

“I play straight.”

“You better.”

“That works both ways.”

Simon said, “You don’t have to worry. Me, I’m too smart to drink and too old to chase
whores. That leaves gambling, and gin’s the only game I know. I don’t have to cheat.
I just want a game.”

“Your room?”

“Fine.”

“Tonight, after dinner?”

“Fine again.”

Marty hung up. The cigar clerk said, “You playing the feller?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you didn’t like the game.”

“I don’t,” Marty said. “Listen, I’m going to sit in a Turkish bath for the afternoon,
I want to sit and sweat for a while. He’s going to drop in here, lay ten or twenty
bucks on you for setting things up, then pump you for what you know about me.”

“What do I say?”

“The truth. I’m a gambler and my game’s poker. I don’t play much gin but I figure
this is an easy way to make a fast killing. I’m honest. I just think he’s a lousy
gin player and I can beat him with my eyes closed.”

“Is that last part the truth?”

Marty thought about it. “No,” he said. “He’s probably good enough. But let him think
I’m cocky about it. It never hurts.”

* * *

Lily was drinking a Cuba Libre, sipping it slowly, She was in the bar where she had
met Cassie and the others the first time around. Benno was off somewhere. The rest
of them were at the table with Lily, drinking rum Cokes of their own.

“How’d it go last night, baby?”

She looked at Paul. He sat with one arm around Didi while his other hand gripped his
rum Coke. “It moved,” she said. “It was all right.”

“You dig the stage bit?”

“I made it.”

She looked at Cassie. The girl with red hair had a strange expression in her eyes.
She’s in love with me, Lily thought. The stupid dyke is in love with me. If I say
I just managed the bit on stage her feelings get hurt. I got to be nice to her.

So she said, “It was kind of a gas. But I didn’t exactly dig having the whole world
tuned in, you know? I didn’t know balling was a spectator sport, like.”

Cassie beamed. Actually, Lily thought, the reverse was a little closer to the truth.
It was better on stage than it was alone with Cassie. When they were on the black-sheeted
bed it was just part of an elaborate con, just a balling act to break up the customers
and put them on in spades. But when they were alone in the hotel room it was just
her and Cassie. It wasn’t an act then and she wasn’t a performer. She was a dyke’s
sweetheart, a butch’s femme. She couldn’t write it off as part of the job. Cassie
was gay, and Lily was gay when she slept with Cassie. And, like, who needed it? Not
her, not Lily Daniels. Not at all.

“And the tricks?”

“The tricks were a big drag.”

“No kicks?”

“No kicks at all,” she said. “Where’s the kick in balling somebody who’s paying for
it? No kicks there, man.”

That, at least, was the truth. She had had thirteen men, one after the other, in the
little room where Ringo put her to work. Somehow she had managed to preserve her cool,
had managed to isolate her mind and keep it from tuning itself in on what her body
was doing. That was the vital part—retaining your cool, holding on to remoteness.

Twice, the cool had faded. One time she was with a young kid, a boy only a year or
two older than herself, a kid without experience or confidence. He had had trouble,
had been impotent at first, and she saw his face contort with tears of frustration
and embarrassment.

“Cool it,” she had told him. “Lie down, relax.”

Then her hands roamed his body and her lips had found him and fondled him. He responded,
slowly but surely, and when he took her his passion was real and honest and strong.
That time her cool had vanished. That time, somehow, the boy was genuine and important,
and her mind synchronized itself with the motions of her loins.

She actually cried after he left her.

The other time was the reverse. That time she was reached not by passion but by revulsion,
not by empathy but by contempt and disgust. The trick was a drunk with red eyes and
a pot belly, a Midwestern banker on a holiday spree. He had her strip, had her parade
the room naked, had her come to him on hands and knees. He told her to turn around,
then, and he used her as he might have used a young boy, taking her from behind with
his soft hands gripping her by the buttocks and his body punishing her, hurting her.
She had been used in that manner before, by Frank in San Francisco one night when
he wanted her and her period had prevented more relations. It had been unpleasant
enough then, and it was worse now.

So her cool vanished again. And she cried again when he left her, cried bitter tears
that stained her cheeks.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she told Paul now. “All I had to do was hang onto my cool.”

She lifted her rum Coke and sipped it; the Coke part was flat and the drink sickening
sweet. She put her glass down, wishing that somebody would spring for a bottle of
tequila. For a moment she considered buying it herself, then decided against it. Damned
if she would pay out her own bread for a batch of vultures. To hell with that.

Because she had to save her money. The more money she earned and the more of it she
held onto, the sooner she could get the hell away from Ciudad Juarez. It didn’t take
a hell of a lot of thinking to lead her to the conclusion that she didn’t want to
spend the rest of her life with Cassie on a stage and putting out for tourists in
a back room. It was easy money, but she could live without it.