by Randy Salem
Cleo came across the floor toward Lee on her knees, "please take me with you," she begged. "He will kill me."
Lee looked at her for a moment. Then she said, "It wouldn't be much of a loss."
Without glancing back, she strode across the living room and banged out the front door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Where do you run, when you're running away from yourself? How far? Where do you hide, when you can't stand to look at yourself? Is there any place big enough, dark enough?
She took the ticket out from under the windshield wiper and got into the car. What the hell was a ticket more or less? A few bucks she would never miss, an envelope, a stamp. And what the hell would it have mattered, paying Tony fifty thousand dollars? It was only money and she had made mistakes that had cost Kate more. But it wouldn't have stopped there with Tony Amato. He would have been on her neck for the rest of her life. Wanting money...
Money. She had heard from people like Helga what it meant to be without the stuff. How a woman would sometimes do anything for the sake of a buck. For herself, she had never known. There had always been money. To buy cars, to buy whisky, to buy women. To buy anything she could think of, anything she might want. And always before, there had been something she could think of. Something to make her a little less lonely, a little less aware of the nagging restlessness.
Now, she could think of nothing. Wherever she went, Maggie would not be there. Wherever she went, whoever she found, it would be like Cleo. In one way or another, it would be like Cleo. A dame out to get whatever she could and with nothing to give in return. And Lee couldn't take that now. Not now...
Gingerly she touched her fingertips to the growing knob on her cheek. It hurt, but not enough to penetrate the other pain. The pain that was Maggie and the guilt. She could clobber a fool like Tony Amato, a bastard who didn't matter a damn. But when it came to something important, when it came to Maggie, she just stood there like an impotent fool...
She could go home and listen to the quiet, but she knew that she would go insane if she had to sit in that house by herself. She could go to Helga, but that wouldn't be much of an improvement. She could go to a bar—finish off the drunk she had gotten started on. Take herself a nice long, lost weekend and wake up in a strange bed beside a strange body. She had done it often before. It never helped anything much, but for a few hours...
She headed south, driving slowly, almost aimlessly. She hated the Village, she hated the bars. There was something stigmatizing, almost dirty about hanging around downtown, obviously looking for a make. But she was wearing pants and sporting a black eye. Her mood didn't belong uptown either. It was an ugly thing, nasty and sadistic. A thing that wanted to get even... with herself and with all women, for the ones like Cleo. A thing that forgot, for the moment, that now and then a Maggie appeared.
By the time she found a parking space, she could have left the car at home and walked downtown. But it didn't matter. Filled with rage, with disgust, she did not expect anything to go right, wouldn't have known what to do with it if it had.
She hadn't made the rounds for a long, long time. But she had heard the rumors. Knew that the city had been cleaned up and had supposedly remained that way. It happened every few years, around election time. For a few weeks or months, the movement went underground, the bars becoming restaurants or dress shops, the dykes and the fags hanging around on street corners like lost birds without a nest. Then somebody would find a quiet little bar that felt like home. The word would get out.
The word was out about a place she wouldn't have been caught dead in a couple of years ago. It had been a posh place then, expensive, loud with jazz and very, very straight. Now, it was the place to go... the only place.
Lee could smell the stench of beer and pizza even before she shoved open the leather-trimmed, nail-studded door. And she knew, from too many years of experience, what she would find inside. The kids—eager, too anxious, hair shorn to a bristle, fat behinds stuffed into Brooks Brothers suits. The regulars—drunk before they got there, blasé and bored. The old timers—bent, hollow-eyed and lonely over their drinks, too tired, too bored, unable to care or even to get drunk any more. The pattern didn't change. Just the bars and the faces.
She pushed past the kids, standing three deep and noisy at the bar, and went on into the back room. A waitress in a tight black uniform waved her to a corner table.
"Scotch," Lee said. She spread a ten-dollar bill on the spotty white cloth. "Bring me a bottle."
The girl snatched up the bill and went out toward the bar.
The back room, big and brassy and filled with couples gazing into each other's eyes, was like many she had seen. But with a difference that jarred. Most of the places were so dark you needed a guide to get to the john. But here, a candle burned too brightly on each table and orange bulbs flickered near the ceiling. She turned her head to watch an elderly woman, sleek in black with a tight knotted bun of blonde hair, approach a couple sitting close together on the padded leather seat. The woman held up thumb and forefinger, stretched as far as she could get them. Sheepishly the girls grinned and moved apart.
She let her eyes rove over the room, looking at faces that were nothing but faces, bodies that were nothing but bodies. She saw the big signs plastered around die wall. NO DANCING. NO TABLE HOPPING. And she sighed, almost wistful, remembering the old days when bars had been dark, and women, in the darkness, had seemed mysterious. There was no mystery now, nothing to lure her out of the morbid depression rapidly creeping over her.
The waitress came back after what seemed hours and banged the bottle down on the table. "The bartender didn't like it," she said, holding the change clutched tight in her left hand.
Lee smiled. "Of course not," she said. "He makes more of a profit when he gets to water it down." She nodded toward the fistful of singles. "Keep it."
Deftly, the girl folded the bills around two fingers and stuffed the wad down the front of her dress. "Thanks," she grinned. "I'm Julie."
"Julie," Lee repeated. Carefully she worked the cork out of the bottle and set it into the ashtray While she did so, she let her eyes move slowly up Julie's frame to the pale white face.
It was an okay body. An okay face. Nothing you'd flip a lid about, but it would do just fine once you got too drunk to care anyhow. She poured herself a drink, aware that Julie had not moved, except to take the cork out of the ashtray.
"Look," Lee said after a moment, "I haven't been in the Village for a couple of years. What's a person supposed to do for fun?"
Julie laughed. "Same thing you always did, butch," she teased. "Pick up a girl and..."
"I didn't mean that," Lee said quickly. "I mean, well, this place is like a morgue. I'm used to... " She shrugged.
Julie tilted her head, then sighed deeply. "Yeah," she said. "It used to be great, wasn't it? But you know the damned cops. They never let anybody have any fun."
Lee laughed. "Anyhow, where's to go in this town?"
"No place," Julie said. She picked up the ashtray and wiped out the inside with a napkin. "Unless... "
"Unless what?"
"Well, I'm finished here at three, unless you've got something better to do."
Very slowly, Lee emptied her glass, letting the scotch burn over the surface of her tongue. It was barely eleven o'clock. By three, she might be out under the table. By three, she might be dead. By three...
"Why not?" she said finally. She cocked an eyebrow and frowned. "But I'm warning you, Julie. You might have to carry me out of here. I aim to get very, very—"
"I know," Julie said abruptly. "Your behind was dragging when you walked in here."
She grinned suddenly and Lee saw the glint of gold caps on her back teeth. But they could have been solid brick for all she cared. Julie was just another body, after all. Just another night she had nothing better to do with.
"But that's okay," Julie went on. She patted the hollow between her breasts. "Besides, I've got enough for a cab."
But that was fine. Just fine. She could use Julie tonight. And she leaned back, watching the girl go off to another table. Feeling the itch in her fingers, the need to smash, to beat, to hurt. She would give Julie what she wanted. And more.
She tilted the bottle over her glass and poured it full. Then she drank and smoked and tilted the bottle again. It felt like hours, the minutes between drinks. It felt like hours that she sat, getting stiff in the behind and achier in the head. People came, people went. Julie bustled around the smoky room, ignoring Lee except once to brush against her knee when she stopped at the adjacent table.
Still Lee sat and still she drank. And she knew after a while that she couldn't make it as far as the ladies' room if she had to. And she had to... But she waited, shifting uncomfortably, feeling like a swimmer beyond his depth.
Eventually, candles flickered and sputtered out, tables remained empty, singles became couples. One by one, the orange lights along the ceiling died. Still Lee did not move, except to reach for the bottle. Finding it empty, she set it beside her on the floor and blinked around for Julie.
The girl came up behind her and put her hand on Lee's shoulder. "Come on, lover," she murmured. "It's closing time."
"Want a drink," Lee mumbled. "What?"
"Want a drink," Lee repeated.
Julie looked from Lee's battered face to the empty bottle and back again. "You had enough," she said shortly.
With her fists, Lee shoved herself up from the table. "I want a drink," she roared angrily.
The blonde in the sleek black dress touched Julie's arm. "Get that lush out of here," she muttered.
Suddenly, Lee was fighting mad. Drunk as she was, she wasn't so drunk that she couldn't hear. And the woman had said the wrong thing... No matter what she had said, it would have been the wrong thing.
Groping beneath the table, Lee found the neck of the empty bottle and her fingers closed over it tightly.
But the woman in black was not drunk. And she moved a hell of a lot faster. Before Lee knew what had happened, she was on her knees with the woman's spike heel grinding through her palm.
She let out a shriek of pain. "You damned bitch!"
The woman released her, then glanced at Julie. "Throw her in a cab," she said. She took a ten-dollar bill from the tiny waist pocket of her dress. "We don't want the cops snooping around here."
"I will," Julie promised. She stooped down beside Lee and took hold of her arm. "Come on, baby."
Furiously, Lee shook off the restraining hand. She got to her feet under her own steam and started toward the door.
Julie was right beside her when she reached the sidewalk. She felt the girl's soft breasts pressed against her side, moving her like a tug boat toward the corner and a cab.
Julie opened the door and shoved Lee inside, then gave an address to the driver. Dimly Lee knew that it was not her house Julie had mentioned. She reached out to grab the girl's hand and yanked her inside.
Julie landed full on her lap. And Lee, knowing only that she was there and that she was warm and that she was a girl, put her arms around Julie and hugged her close Furiously her mouth smashed down on Julie's, her tongue parting the girl's lips. Her hand was on Julie's knee. Then moving along her thigh.
"Hey, can that crap!" the driver barked. "A cop'll see you."
Julie's thighs slapped together, pinning Lee's hand. "Save it, baby," she muttered against Lee's ear. "We got all night."
Foggily, Lee considered for a moment, then decided Julie was right. She had all night, didn't she? And all day tomorrow. And all day the year after that. What the hell?
Dimly, something tried to come through. She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something itched inside her brain like a bit she couldn't reach. Something about...
When the cab stopped, Julie took her hand and led her into the grease-scented hallway of a tenement she knew could only be somewhere on the Lower East Side. Not that it mattered—any more than anything else mattered. She let herself be led by the hand, like a child afraid of the dark. And when they reached the entrance of Julie's flat, she took the key from the girl and opened the creaking door.
The room smelled as though it didn't know about fresh air. There were maybe three pieces of furniture in the place and none of it looked sturdy enough to sit down on. Lee looked around for Julie, waiting to be told what to do.
Julie waved her toward the bed. "Sit," she said. "Let me get out of this uniform."
Docilely, because there was nothing better to do, Lee sat. She leaned back against the wall and tried to focus on a cockroach crawling up the cracked plaster beside her arm. Finally, when she got him in range, she swung her hand in a wide arc. Her palm caught him squarely and squashed him across the wall. For a moment, she stared at the sick looking mess in her palm.
"I can't get rid of them," Julie said. "Especially in summer."
Lee's tired, swollen eyes followed a line up from the flat bare feet. The girl was naked. She had looked better in the uniform somehow. Now Lee could see the too heavy thighs, the roll of fat around her middle. But the breasts were nice. Firm, big. She watched the girl turn slowly, giving her the full show. And she saw the welts, thick and ugly, some still half raw, that striped the girl's back like caning.
Lee wanted to say something. Throw some line of bull. Not that Julie wanted or needed it. But Lee herself liked a bit of polish. Her tongue felt a foot thick and stiff as a board and the inside of her mouth tasted like a summer sewer. She opened her mouth, trying. Nothing came out.
Finally, feeling almost desperate, she reached out clumsily to grab the girl.
Julie caught her wrist and held it still. "Not yet," she murmured. "Wait."
She went to the unpainted dresser in the corner and opened the top drawer. Lee watched her take out a heavy leather belt. A lethal looking thing, studded with diamond shaped metal slugs and with a buckle the size of a saucer. Julie turned from the dresser and tossed the belt onto the bed.
Lee looked at it curiously for a moment, knowing what was expected of her, yet hesitant. She had never beaten a girl before. Oh, she'd hit a couple, when they needed it. But this? Julie would want to see her own blood flow.
She would want to be smashed like the cockroach. And when she was bloody and half dead, then she would want Lee. Then she would want...
Lee slid the end of the belt through the buckle, making a grip for her hand. Then she made herself stand up, holding onto the wall to steady herself. Julie threw herself face down across the unmade bed, her arms hugged to her sides.
Lee brought her arm up, then swung. The sound of the crack nearly split open her head.
Julie turned onto her side. "Not that way," she said, her eyes betraying her impatience. "The other end. The buckle."
Lee took a deep breath and hunched her shoulders. Earlier, she remembered, she had wanted to tear somebody apart. Earlier, she had been mad enough about something to want to kill. But now...
Now there was nothing but the throbbing ache behind her eyes, the pain from her swollen cheek. And the memory, the damned memory that kept niggling, wanting her to hear.
And suddenly she did hear. Not clearly. But something. A word... a name. Maggie... Maggie, who loved her...
"Maggie," she said aloud, her voice thick, slurred.
"I'm Julie," the girl said, shoving her with bare toes. "Remember me?"
Lee stared down at her stupidly, not remembering the girl nor where she had found her. Not remembering where she was or how she had gotten there. And searching through her brain, she could find nothing that went with the face, the figure. Nothing but a blank, where a night should have been.
"Well, for chrissake," the girl complained, "either come across or beat it."
Le
e didn't even hear her. She unwrapped the belt from around her hand and let it fall to the floor. Then she groped in the pocket of her slacks for the wad of bills she always kept there.
Julie turned onto her back and propped herself on her elbows. "I lifted it in the cab," she said matter-of-factly. "A girl has to get something out of a sot like you."
“Yeah," Lee said. Then she tried to smile around the aches in her skull. "Do you suppose you could let me have enough for a taxi?" Julie laughed. "Sure, big shot. How far you goin'?" Lee put her palm against the back of her neck and sighed. "To hell," she slurred.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Helga was anything but glad to see her. She shoved Lee away and stepped back out of her reach.
"What's a matter?" Lee grinned. "Aren't you happy I'm here?"
"Are you crazy?" Helga screamed. "It's five o'clock in the morning." She took a deep breath and jabbed a finger at the air. "If you think you can come sneaking in here…”
Lee clapped her hands over her ears. "Don't shout," she mumbled. "I've got a glass head."
"I’ll shout all I damn please," Helga shouted. She glared at Lee with fists on hips, daring her, challenging…
"All right," Lee said gently, still holding her head between her hands. "I'm sorry. Now, will you please try to be a lady. Just this once."
Helga relaxed enough to snatch a cigarette from the box on the coffee table. Still, she watched Lee warily.
Lee pulled out a lighter for Helga's cigarette, waited till the girl had taken a couple of puffs, then took it for herself.
Helga sighed and sank down onto the couch. "Your hands are shaking," she commented. "It must have been quite a binge."
"It was." From the pain thumping behind her eyeballs, she knew that it had been. But the details? Those she didn't remember and it was probably just as well.
"What happened?" Helga said, a twist of curiosity creeping into the words. She smoothed the pillow beside her, inviting Lee to sit.
Lee remained standing. Not because it was more comfortable, but because she didn't trust her knees. If she tried to sit, she would probably wind up sprawled on the floor. She took a drag on the cigarette and closed one eye against the sting of smoke.