HCC 115 - Borderline

by Lawrence Block

  “Filthy pictures,” she said. “How filthy?”

  “Very filthy.”

  “What do they show?”

  He told her, in perfect English, what the pictures showed. He would never have dreamed of using the equivalent Spanish words in a woman’s presence, not even if the woman were a prostitute. That was an interesting thing about using a foreign language, Meg thought. You never quite realized how dirty the dirty words were.

  “How much?”

  “A dollar,” he said.

  She looked through her purse. “Ten pesos,” she suggested.

  It was a deal. The man would have taken five pesos, as it happened, but Meg was not particularly concerned about saving pesos. She gave him the bill, took a small manila envelope, and left the stand. She kept walking until she came to a public park with green benches. She found an unoccupied bench, sat down on it, and opened the manila envelope.

  The photos were filthy, all right. She looked at each of the dozen in turn, and when she had finished she went through the batch again and devoted her attention to the more dramatic ones. There were five different characters in the set, two men and three women. One man was an American, probably a soldier boy having the time of his life on a furlough. The rest of the characters were all Mexican.

  Two of the pictures showed the two men making love to one of the Mexican girls, a young one with bleached blonde hair and incredibly large breasts. Two more pictures showed the soldier, one shot involving two of the girls and the other all three. After a furlough like that one, Meg decided, the soldier would be able to live on memories for the rest of his hitch in the service.

  Another picture had all five characters represented, and what they were doing seemed interesting as hell if slightly impossible. Meg spent a long time looking at that picture.

  There were two pictures of girls only. These interested Meg, too—she had always wondered idly what it was that lesbians did, and now she knew. A picture was worth a few thousand words on the current rate of exchange. She now knew what they did, although she still wasn’t sure whether it could be fun or not.

  The rest of the pictures were one-man-and-one-woman stuff, exciting enough in their own right but overshadowed by the more involved and esoteric shots. Each picture, black and white and glossy, served to point up one fact which had already occurred to Meg. To wit—she needed a man.

  She needed a man desperately. She was looking at one of the man-woman pictures, and the part of Meg’s own body which corresponded to the area of the Mexican girl’s body that the man was kissing—that part itched. Itched furiously and needed to be scratched.

  She was still looking at the clever little picture, and still itching, and still needing a man, when she heard a voice at her elbow.

  “Well, hello,” the voice said. “What have you got there?”

  She looked up at the man who had spoken. He was an American, dark-haired and broad-shouldered and tie-less. He was around thirty-five, Meg guessed. And good-looking. And fairly sure of himself, poised, easygoing.

  “I’ve got filthy pictures here,” she said. “Have a seat and have a look, friend.”

  * * *

  After Marty left the diner, he drove home, showered the filth of the poker game from his skin, and made a cup of instant coffee. He drank the coffee and went downtown to the bank again. Or, rather, to the two banks. At one bank, where he had a checking account under the name Martin Granger, he deposited the five hundred dollars on which he was willing to pay taxes. In the other bank, where he had a safe deposit box under the name Henry Adams, he deposited a thousand dollars on which he did not intend to pay taxes. The remaining thirteen hundred dollars stayed in his money belt. A gambler had to have a roll, and he had to keep it with him all the time. Otherwise he missed too much worthwhile action for lack of funds.

  Then he had gone home again, and to bed. He was exhausted—it had literally been days since he had had any sleep and he was ready to fall apart. He sprawled nude on the bed in his air-conditioned bedroom and slept like a hibernating bear.

  He awoke at seven. He had a constitutional inability to sleep for more than seven hours at a stretch. Even after a several-day siege at a poker table, he still woke after seven hours. He showered again, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and a pair of twenty-dollar gabardine slacks, and went to the kitchen. He made himself two ham-and-swiss sandwiches and washed them down with two bottles of imported German beer. He got a pack of Luckies from the refrigerator—they stayed fresher there—and he smoked three of them. Then he left his house and got in the Olds.

  He remembered the waitress, Betty, big boobs and swinging rear. He remembered her and he realized how much he needed a woman. It was always that way after a long game, more so when he won than when he lost. Poker established necessary tensions. You couldn’t play when you were completely relaxed, because then the game didn’t matter enough to you. The tensions didn’t go away when the game was over. Instead, they transformed themselves into sexual tensions. These could be dispelled only by the possession of a woman’s body. All other forms of therapy—tranquilizers, liquor, sleep—were futile.

  Marty started the car, drove through the center of town to the border area. He drove across, parked the big Olds on one of the main streets. Otherwise, he knew, the kids would strip off the hubcaps, the radio, aerial, the side mirror. This was standard in Juarez, and on occasion, they jacked up cars and took the tires as well.

  He parked, locked the car, left it. He stopped at a tavern for a bottle of Dos Equis, the dark Mexican beer that was almost as good as the German stuff he had at home, and that cost him only twelve cents a bottle. He finished the beer and walked over by the plaza.

  The thing to do, he knew, was to head across the park to the whorehouse area. There were row upon row of cribs there, one-room shacks where the girls went around the world for a dollar and a half, but he was not interested in the cribs. There were other places, hazily disguised as night clubs and geared to con visiting nuns from Nebraska into thinking the clubs were just for dancing and drinking. In these places the girls were genuinely beautiful, and you paid them five dollars and made love to them on a clean bed. He would go home to Paso five dollars poorer and able, at last, to relax.

  But he was in no hurry. A prostitute was better than a girl like Betty, because with a whore you knew exactly where you stood, you bought something and you paid for it and that was all. With a whore, you didn’t have to worry about getting rid of her in the morning. With a whore it was just business, even if the Mex girls did put their hearts into it well enough to con you into thinking it was love. With Betty it would be a pain later on, and it was well worth a fast five bucks to avoid such pain.

  But a prostitute, while better than Betty, was several shades removed from Nirvana. What Marty Granger wanted was a girl he could respect and lay at the same time.

  Good luck finding one on the streets of Juarez. He was a gambler, but he was also a smart gambler. He did not draw to inside straights. Nor did he look for a respectable lay when he needed a piece so bad be could taste it.

  He passed the brunette almost without seeing her. No, he saw her—but the image didn’t really register until he was a few steps beyond her. Then he remembered the long black hair, the perfect legs that showed beneath the skirt, long legs crossed at the knee and delicately tanned. He remembered, too, that the brunette had been looking at something.

  He turned around and saw that she was looking at pornographic photos. Now some men might have been able to go on walking, and unless such men were homosexuals they were men with whom Marty would have been unhappy to play poker. They would have been able to run a bluff through the entire Tenth Army.

  So he stopped and said. “Well, hello. What have you got there?”

  And she said, “I’ve got filthy pictures here. Have a seat and have a look, friend.”

  He had a seat and a look. He had a look first at the pictures, and he had a look second down the front of the girl’s dress.
He knew, instantly, that he was not going to find a prostitute. Any woman with this much poise was miles out of Betty’s class. Any woman with this much poise would be about eighteen times as exciting as a Juarez Five-Dollar Businessman’s Special.

  “I like this one,” she said, showing him a picture of a five-person orgy. “Ever do anything like this?”

  “Never.”

  “Neither have I. I had a husband up until a day or two ago, and it was rare enough to do much of anything with him. Now I’m divorced. Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been married?”

  “Never.”

  “It’s horrible. Never marry, friend.”

  He took out his Luckies and shook two from the pack. He lit both cigarettes and gave one to her.

  “Looking at this picture is making me horny,” she said. “Do you like straightforward and direct women?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, “I want to get laid and I haven’t had a man in awfully long. I’m being straightforward and direct as hell, friend. I’m horny as hell, too. I want to get laid. I don’t even know your name but I want to get laid.”

  “It’s Marty.”

  “Mine’s Meg. Interested, Marty?

  “I’m interested.”

  “Just look at these lovely pictures,” she said, spreading out three or four of them on her lap. “I want to do it this way and this way and this way. I don’t know about this one, though. Ever do it this way?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Is it fun?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Then this way, too. I’ve never been in Juarez before. Do you go to a hotel or just make love in the park like the natives?”

  “I’ve got a house.”

  “Here?”

  “In Paso,” he said. “I’ve got a car and we can be there in five minutes.”

  “That sounds about right,” she said. “I think I can hold out for five minutes. God, I’m horny. I’m a little bit drunk, too. Very drunk, actually. But I won’t pass out on you or anything. I’ll be fine.”

  “Will you hate yourself in the morning?”

  “Only if you’re lousy in bed. If you’re good, I’ll love myself in the morning. Let’s go, Marty.”

  She got to her feet and he helped her shovel the filthy pictures back into her purse. She took his arm. He led her to the Olds, deciding that he liked this Meg, that she was all right. She was drunk, and she probably would be a little different when she was sober, but the direct and straightforward routine seemed honest enough.

  She was going to be good in bed, he knew. Very good in bed. She was horny and hungry and ready to go, and he was hot from need and hot from the pictures and hot from her, and it would be a long night.

  He grinned at her. “If I’m real good will you do more than love yourself in the morning?”

  “I’ll love you too,” she replied with a sly smile.

  “How?”

  “The same way I did during the night.”

  “The same way,” he said with a sigh of disappointment.

  “Well,” she explained, “by morning we may have to repeat ourselves and do it one way for the second time.”

  “Are you up to it?” he asked.

  “I’m up to it as long as you’re up to me,” she said.

  “I will be—close up to you—in five minutes.”

  They were at the side of his Olds now. He unlocked the door on the passenger side and held it open for her. She seated herself gracefully and he looked down her dress again. She had better breasts than Betty, he saw. Very fine breasts.

  His hands itched with need to touch, to hold. He drew a breath, walking around the Olds and pitching his half-smoked cigarette into the gutter. She leaned across the seat to open the door for him and he had another look at her breasts. She was wearing a bra. It would be a pleasure to take it off.

  He got into the car, rolled down his window, started the car. She leaned forward and switched off the ignition.

  “First give me a kiss,” she said.

  He kissed her and her tongue leaped into his mouth. She drew close, thrusting her breasts against his chest, clutching at his hair with her fingers.

  “Now give me a feel,” she said.

  He put his hand on her breast and cupped it, feeling the weight of it, the warmth of it, the softness of it.

  “Now drive like hell,” she said. “Drive like hell.”

  He increased the movements of his hand over her breasts and turned his body slightly toward her.

  “No,” she protested. “Drive the car like hell. You can drive me like hell later.”

  He slipped his hands from her breasts to the ignition and steering wheel.

  The engine roared.

  He shifted and then stepped on the gas.

  The car lunged forward and Meg’s body jerked. She steadied herself but her breasts kept moving. They jerked upward and then back, and then bounced.

  Marty kept watching them and began to remove one hand from the steering wheel.

  “The road!” she screamed. “Watch out!”

  He heard the scraping sounds of wheels on gravel and felt the hard bounces as the car went onto the shoulder of the road.

  Then his eyes were back on the road and he jerked the wheel quickly to the left.

  The car shot back onto the road and then continued to roar straight ahead.

  Marty’s head was throbbing and his heart was pounding and his breath was heavy.

  But was it from that near accident or from her, he wondered.

  “Take it easy, Marty,” she said, “If we’re going to get our-selves killed, let’s at least do it after we try those positions.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lily was on her way across the border when the blue Olds roared past her. She looked up and saw the man at the wheel and the long-haired brunette at his side. Then the car was gone and she forgot them. She was across the border now, in Juarez, and it wasn’t such a big deal after all. Just another town, full of Mexicans instead of Americans, and that was about it.

  Still, she thought, almost anything was a hell of a distance better than the Paso hotel where she was staying. Cappy’s Hotel, the home of every flying ant and palmetto bug in Texas. A humming fan and a squeaking dripping sink and tenants who never washed. A wiry and ugly gink who stared at her when he passed her in the hallway. They could take Cappy’s Hotel, she decided, and they could shove it. It was cheap enough, and it would do until she could either connect with somebody or get her hands on some long bread. All she had for the time being was what remained of the two tens she’d gotten from the jerko who had driven her to El Paso. Two bucks had gone to Cappy, whoever he was, and three bucks and change had gone for food, and two bucks more had gone for a clean blouse. That left her with somewhere between twelve and thirteen dollars. Hardly enough to retire on. Hardly enough to feel particularly secure about.

  Juarez. The first step was to find the right people, the kind of people she could swing with. These were the sort of people she had known in North Beach and she knew that she would find them again in Juarez. Border towns were attractive areas for that sort. They would avoid the American side and stay on the Mex side because things were cheaper and freer and easier there. You paid less for food and drink, and you bought marijuana with relative impunity, and if you were on the harder stuff it was easier and less expensive to make a connection with a pusher.

  She was in Juarez, and she was cruising. She stopped at a corner to catch her breath, spat with annoyance when a pair of dirty-faced Mexican urchins tried to beg a few coins from her, then continued onward. Her feet led her along almost intuitively. Denver had had its own little hard core of the hip cognoscenti and S.F. had had many more, and Lily had known them well in both towns. It was easy to guess what street might hold a place where particular people would be congregating. It was easy to pass some bars without a second glance, easy to turn at the proper street and walk into the proper Mexica
n tavern. She did all this intuitively and it took her less than a half hour before she found precisely the place she had been looking for from the beginning.

  A small frame building, painted years ago and drab now. A scattering of sawdust on the floor. Brown wood, varnished once, the varnish long worn away by time. A small bar with six stools. A Mex behind the bar, old and white-haired. Four or five tables, two of them round, the rest square. Five kids in their twenties at one of the round tables, with a bottle of tequila in the middle of the table. Two Mexicans and one bearded American wearing an army field jacket at the bar. Two gaunt girls at one of the square tables. A couple—an old man with a young wife—at another square table. No one else in the place.

  Lily’s eyes took all this in quickly. She walked directly to the big round table. There was a chair open between a flat-chested redhead and a boy with a scraggly brown beard. She sat at the chair, took the redhead’s empty glass and poured an ounce or so of tequila into it. She threw the firewater straight down and didn’t choke on it.

  Someone said, “Who, baby?”

  “Lily Daniels. Out of Denver by North Beach. No money and no friends. This seat wasn’t taken, was it, man?”

  “It is now. Stay as cool as you are, baby.”

  She smiled at a clean-shaven man with horn-rimmed glasses. He pushed the bottle back at her. “Have some more juice, Lily girl. We’re way out in front of you.”

  She poured another short shot and tossed it off. “Solid,” she said. “Solid.”

  “You in town long?”

  “Just today. I thumbed from Big D to Paso, got in a little past noon. What’s happening?”

  The flat-chested redhead laughed. The scraggly brown beard said, “I been around S.F. You know a cat name of Randy Kapper?”

  “Tall thin cat,” she said. “A cocaine habit.”

  “When I knew him he sniffed a little. He hooked now?”

  “Through the bag and back again.”

  “That’s a bitch,” the scraggly beard said. “He was a nice cat, when I knew him. He was padding out with Renee, I don’t know her last name, a big blonde with a fat can. Then she turned around to make a lesbo scene and Randy was all hung up. That’s a bitch, though, him on a coke needle. You never know.”