HCC 115 - Borderline (17 page)

Until then her mind had been working frenetically. She had thought of Borden Rector,
of Marty, of the blonde. But now all thoughts gave way to reality. She was with this
man, this Mexican, and nothing else was at all relevant for the time being. She was
on his bed in his bedroom, and he was upon her, ready to take her. Nothing else mattered
at all except what he and she were about to do.

His hard-muscled chest against her breasts—that was real, that had meaning. Her nipples
were suffused with desire and the pressure of his body against them was making her
wild with lust. His body against her body—that, too, was real and meaningful. She
wriggled her hips and her body shivered at the electric charge that seared through
her.

He kissed her again, then moved away from her to kiss first one breast and then the
other. And then his lips darted away to plant a kiss high on her thigh. A tingling
kiss, a chilling feverish kiss. This was real.

And it was still more real when he threw himself once more upon her. His firmness
searched for her, stabbed for her, found her. She groaned with pain and pleasure as
he forced his way into her, and then all the pain was nothing compared with the pleasure
as their bodies moved together, strained together—

She gripped his buttocks with her hands and clawed him with her fingernails. She raked
his back with her nails, drawing blood. He thrust himself into her, again and again
and again, until she was screaming out her raw lust at the top of her lungs.

Their fulfillments were simultaneous, and complete. He lay in her arms for several
minutes, inert and half-dead. Then he rolled free of her embrace and instantly fell
asleep.

But she did not sleep. Instead she got up from his bed, put on her clothing, left
his apartment and walked on the streets outside. She had had a man, a man who had
loved her magnificently. She had had him, and her body still was warm and glowing
from his lovemaking, still tingling from his embrace.

And she still wanted the blonde at Delia’s Place.

* * *

Marty shuffled the cards. He was ahead now, nicely ahead. He was into Simon for over
a thousand dollars and it looked as though he had the Miami Beach gin player on the
run. Simon knew his game but he was rocky now. And he was getting too much of a glow
from the Chivas. The Scotch was getting to him. He was starting to do dumb things,
picking up the wrong cards on speculation, throwing Marty his card because his memory
was slipping, generally easing up on his game.

Like fish in a barrel, Marty thought. He put the pack on the table and Simon cut the
cards. He took up the pack again and began dealing. There might be easier ways to
make a quick killing, he thought. But it would be hard to name three.

Or even one.

He watched Simon pick up his cards and spread them. Simon’s lips curled downward.

“Lousy hand,” he said. “All I get is lousy hands.”

“Cards’ll do that.”

“They’ve been running bad, Granger. Ready for a drink now?”

He couldn’t turn the man down forever. “Sure,” he said. “But make it a short one,
huh?”

Simon filled two water tumblers with Chivas Regal, added an ice cube to each. Some
of the Scotch spilled on the table top. Marty took a small sip. It was good Scotch.

It was a fine way to pass an evening, he thought. Good Scotch and good cards, and
he’d leave the room with more money than he’d had in his pocket walking in. It was
enough to chase away any thoughts he might otherwise have had about the woman he’d
thrown out of his bed this morning. The one who at this very moment was probably on
a plane heading north—if she’d followed his instructions. Or who, if she hadn’t, might
still be in her room in this very hotel, perhaps even on this floor. Maybe lying naked
in bed or lounging in a warm bath. For sure as beautiful and exciting and electric
as he remembered. Not that he’d spent the day thinking about her. She hadn’t come
to mind more than eight or nine times. At most ten. He’d suspected she might, and
it was part of the reason he’d finally agreed to this session, even though gin wasn’t
his game—so he wouldn’t spend the night sitting alone and thinking and maybe regretting
his decision. There was no place for regret in a gambler’s mind. You played your hand
or you folded it and you moved on, and you didn’t look back to see what cards you
might have drawn.

Marty took another sip of the Scotch.

Simon picked up a card, fitted it into his hand, discarded. Marty picked up his discard
and filled a run with it. He discarded.

Five minutes later Marty dropped a card face down.

“Knocking?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Nuts,” Simon said.

* * *

When the spotlight died, Lily got the hell off the stage. Ringo patted her gingerly
on the rump as she scurried past him. “Good show, kid,” he told her. “They loved you.”

She hurried to her room, soaked a towel under the water faucet and began sponging
off her body. Cassie had been impossible, and she didn’t care whether their little
act had been good or bad. It was an everloving pain in the neck, a drag from start
to finish.

She felt filthy all over now. Cassie hadn’t been acting on the stage, not in the least.
The redhead had been hotter than a Franklin stove and the fact that Lily wasn’t at
all interested didn’t have much to do with it one way or the other. When they were
on the stage, Lily had to play Cassie’s game. Whether she wanted to or not.

Well, it wouldn’t last much longer. She couldn’t stay in a dead-end town like this
or she would go off her nut. She had to get out.

She went to work, cleaning herself off. It was waste of time, though; as soon as she
got halfway clean there would be a man at the door, and from that point on she wouldn’t
get a hell of a lot of rest. Then, when she was done for the night, Cassie would expect
her to go to bed with her. Well, Cassie had another guess coming, dammit. She’d find
another hotel and take a room of her own. She’d rather pay a buck or two a day than
have to fight off a redhead lezzie twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

There was a knock on the door.

She sighed, got into a wrapper and went to the door. Pancho was standing there, an
American tourist at his side. Pancho stepped out of the way and the American walked
into the room. He had already paid the money, of course. They paid in advance, giving
their money to Ringo, and then Pancho took them around. She never saw the money. According
to Pancho, some of them tipped the girls. But she hadn’t gotten any tips the night
before and she was beginning to think it was a load of crap.

“Saw you on stage,” the American said. “You looked like you were havin’ one old hell
of a time.”

Lily said. “No speak English.”

“Huh? You kiddin’ me?”

“No speak English.”

“You ain’t a Mex, sister.”

“Portuguese,” she said, faking what she hoped was a Portuguese accent. It was bad
enough having to sleep with the bastards, she thought, but she wasn’t going to talk
to them, too. Balling was one thing. Companionship was another, and she wasn’t getting
paid for it.

The American was in a hurry, anyway. She got out of her wrapper, then helped him undress.
He pawed her body with his sweaty hands while she tried to pretend she was getting
excited. He called her dirty names, evidently thinking she couldn’t understand him,
and she struggled not to get annoyed by the things he said to her.

At least he only wanted to make love in a conventional manner. He had a slight variation,
in that he wanted her to do all the work. He lay on his back, she straddling him.
They made love in that position, the man smiling up at her and speaking to her in
American gutter-slang. When it was over he dressed and left. She did not even bother
to wash herself off. Then she put on the wrapper and waited for the next one.

A pair of kids came next, New York college boys having a summer sleighride in Mexico.
They took turns with her, one watching while the other made love to her. They were
young, and their experience had evidently been limited to the back seats of cars,
so they weren’t much of a problem. They had no staying power and little imagination.
In a very short time they were on their way and she was once again waiting for another
trick to make the scene.

No sooner had she re-wrapped herself in her wrapper than there was another knock at
the door. She went to it and threw it open. Pancho was standing there, a fantastic
expression on his usually expressionless face.

She saw why.

At Pancho’s side, instead of the usual man, was a woman.

The woman had long black hair, and her face was beautiful. Now she pressed a coin
into Pancho’s palm and pushed past him into Lily’s room. Her eyes were shining. She
turned to close the door, then moved toward Lily.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Meg Rector. You’re very lovely, dear.”

Oh, Christ!
Lily thought.

* * *

She’s lovely!
Meg thought.

Meg’s knees were turning to water. She could feel the dizzy wave sweep over her body,
dissolving the bones of her hips. She seemed to be unable to keep her balance except
by parting her knees.

She had to do it in a quick spasm of motion, or she would have fallen.

The blonde was staring at her.

“My God, you got it bad, don’t you?”

“Oh!—Oh, I—I can’t…” It was like trying to move underwater, caught in a terrible tide.
She reached for the blonde girl; if she didn’t reach the blonde girl, she would give
way instantly and be swept down and away, writhing and jerking helplessly in the lonely
dark.

“I—I can’t wait!” Meg gasped out.

The blonde girl shrugged her shoulders. The wrapper slithered down her golden body,
revealing her breasts, then her belly, and then the full, round thighs that met breathtakingly
at her hips.

“Oh!” Meg cried. “I—I want my clothes off, too! I want—”

“Sure, honey,” the blonde said, moving forward. “I know what you want. The bed’s over
here.” She began unfastening Meg’s dress.

* * *

I’ve got to figure some way of getting out of this place,
Lily thought tiredly as she stripped the quivering brunette and led her—shoved her,
was more like it—over onto the bed. The brunette’s hands were all over her.
I can’t take much more of this!

But Lily was a pro, and all the time she did these things, she kept smiling.

He looked into the cracked mirror and smiled at the image of his own ugliness. There
had been a girl in Tulsa, and the cops found her in an alley with her flesh chewed
and her head beaten to pulp. There had been a woman in El Paso, and the cops found
her in her own room with her toes and fingers chopped off and her body cut to ribbons.
Now there was a girl in Juarez, a prostitute, and the cops would find her nude and
dead, with her throat neatly slashed.

Maybe he wanted to get caught. Or maybe, knowing that capture was inevitable, he wanted
to fit all sensations into the time that remained to him. But now he could not sleep.
He was alone and at peace, but he could not sleep and he could not remain in his hotel
room. He couldn’t even stay in Juarez. There was a voice now, a shrill voice screaming
inside his skull, urging him to go to El Paso. The voice did not merely urge. It commanded.
He had to cross the border once again. He had to take the chance of capture so that
he could strike again in El Paso, his razor finding another victim.

It would be simple to cross the border, he told himself. It had been simple enough
the first time, coming into Juarez from Texas. Of course, they had not had his picture
then, had not been on the lookout for a man answering his description. But the picture
was a poor one. Besides, he had killed in El Paso. The border patrol would hardly
expect him to sneak
into
El Paso, from Mexico.

All he had to do was be calm and nonchalant about it. He remembered a picture, an
old movie set somewhere in Eastern Europe, where the entire area was up in arms because
a werewolf was on the loose. He remembered how the werewolf, in human form, had gone
so far as to join in the hunt parties, biding his time in the fields and forests until
the hunt party had broken apart and he was alone with a girl.

Weaver smiled, remembering. The man had turned into a wolf then, his teeth growing
into fangs, his fingernails turning to claws. And then he sprang upon the girl, his
jaws going for her throat, his claws raking her breasts. The girl would scream, and
the girl would die.

In the end, he remembered, they pierced the werewolf ’s heart with a huge wooden stake.
He would never forget the sound the werewolf made. A long, tremulous shriek. Horrible.

He pushed the memories from his mind, combed his black hair once more over his low
forehead, and left his room. He walked easily, calmly, in the street outside. He mingled
with crowds, thick as flies in the late summer night. He headed, slowly but very surely,
toward the border.

It would be easy, he thought. Very easy. And it would strike terror into their hearts.
One day a victim in El Paso, the next day a pair of victims, one on each side of the
border.

Still, though, he could not entirely rid his mind of the death-scream of the werewolf.
Horrible, very horrible.

* * *

Meg lay on her back on the bed. Lily was kissing her now, kissing her lips, penetrating
her mouth with her warm smooth tongue. Meg opened her eyes and looked at the blonde’s
perfect body. This isn’t wrong, she thought. Wanting someone like this cannot be wrong.
This is normal, and beautiful.

Her hands moved now, settling on Lily’s shoulders and caressing them. She pulled slightly
and Lily’s body lowered itself so that the girl’s firm breasts rubbed Meg’s own. Meg’s
nipples were taut with desire. She sighed and her arms tightened around Lily.

Lily slipped away, her lips flicking out to catch Meg’s breast. Meg tightened the
muscles in her legs, stretched out her arms, letting her passion whirl her around
and wrap her up. Now the girl was kissing one nipple and rolling the other between
the fingers of her left hand, while petting Meg further down with her right hand.