desperate spark. You know baby, that awful sweet electricity that makes a farm boy kiss a ewe. The same power that yowls a hot torn cat in the alley. You hip to it? Now just relax. I’m gonna roll you up a bomber. Baby, your luck has changed. You’ve hit the jackpot. You found me. Oh yea, my name is Blood.”
She said, “‘Blood’ it’s nice to meet you. I’m Christine. Chris I like better. I can’t stay long. I have to be careful. My old man is very jealous.”
I said, “Chris, you are gonna find out I’m a wild groove. You may stay a lifetime thinking it was only an hour. All we need is an understanding. All you need is a man.”
Over the top of Chris’s head I saw the runt flash her eyes up at the window. She was just getting into a white trick’s car. Twilight was sweeping away daylight with a deep purple broom. I went to the bedroom. I loaded an outfit and tilted it spike up in my pocket. I rolled two bombers. One with reefer, the other in cigarette tobacco. I snorted a thumb tip of cocaine. I got a towel and put it next to the gap under the front door. I lit some incense.
I gave Chris the bomber. I lit it and my dud. With a package like Chris, reefer might confuse me. I might wake up swindled. If she had been Garbo, I still wanted scratch before snatch.
I got another chair. We sat there facing each other in the twilight. I waited for the reefer to fill her skull. The bomber in her hand was now a roach. I cock-tailed it for her. Her eyes were dreamy.
She said, “Goddamnit sweetheart, I’m high. You know Blood you’re going to laugh when I tell you something. Guess what I was thinking when I saw you the first time in that towel?”
I said, “You thought, ‘Oh my itching cat! That pretty brown bastard looks like a pimp. I wish to hell I was still whoring. I sure would like to kiss “Mr. Thriller, the killer” under that towel.’ Am I right, sweet freak?”
She giggled and scooted her chair flush against my knees. She slid her back down in the leather chair. She put the heels of her pink shoes on the seat of my chair.
I was sandwiched between her big yellow legs. The street lamp came on, spotlighting her. She was still giggling. I fingered the ready jolt of cocaine in my robe pocket. I took it out and hid it against the side of my chair. I saw blue veins pulsing on her inner thighs.
The cocaine had me strung on an icy rack. I raised her right leg and rubbed my cheek against it. I crushed her knee-cap between my teeth. She moaned. I gazed deep into her eyes. She had laughed tiny pearls of tears that clung to her long, silky lashes. Under the street lamp her face was innocent and soft as a yellow fawn’s. I felt old as Methuselah.
She said, “Don’t look at me like that. I know you can read minds. You give me the creeps with that look. It’s like you’re Svengali or that crazy Russian Monk I read about”
I said, “Chris, you’re gonna be my whore. We gotta share things. That reefer was just an appetizer. Reefer is for low-class skunk broads. Heroin is for chumps bound for the graveyard. Cocaine is for brilliant, beautiful people.
“Chris, banging cocaine will spin a magic web of music and bells inside your skull. Every pore in your body will feel like Daddy’s jugging his swipe in all over you. It will torch off a racy secret fire of life inside you. It’s a miracle, Chris. You get all that thrill and no habit. I know you ain’t chicken shit. Are you game to try?”
She said, “If it won’t scar me or hurt me. If it hurts, promise you’ll stop. Don’t give me a lot, Baby. Where you going to put it in?”
I took her left leg and put it on the arm of my chair. I saw a fat line high up on her thigh. I eased the spike into it. She flinched. The dropper flashed red. I pressed the bulb slowly. Her eyes widened. Her white teeth bit into her bottom lip.
I emptied the dropper. I pulled out the gun. She sat there stiffly. She took her leg off the chair arm. She rubbed the inside knobs of her ankles against my sides. I saw her Adam’s apple spasm.
I remembered how I puked the first time. I slid my chair back and raced to the bedroom to get the wastebasket. I just made it back. She dumped a load into it. I flushed the mess down the toilet and rinsed the basket out. When I got back to her she was smiling and stroking her legs.
She said, “I’m sorry I did that naughty thing, Daddy. Oh! Oh! But now I feel heavenly. Baby, I’m so glad I came over and got this feeling. Aren’t those bells something? Baby, you got a lot of this? I want to do this every day. Stay like this every minute. Let’s lie down. I want a formal introduction to Mr. Thriller.”
I said, “Bitch, when you come to me as my whore I’ll keep your skull mellow. Now you gotta be joking about Mr. Thriller. He won’t have anything to do with a broke bitch that claims a square horn blower as her man. Let’s go over there while he’s away and get your clothes. You’re not married to him are you?”
She said, “How many girls do you have? Maybe your stable is too big for comfort. I get salty standing in a long line for my loving.”
I said, “Whore, answer my question. What are you, a roller or something? When you are my whore you don’t worry about anything but your own ass and scratch. Now answer my question.”
She said, “Blood, I didn’t want to answer because I am married to him. Leroy, that’s my husband, saved my life really. He’s been wonderful to me. He used to be good looking. He didn’t get so insanely jealous until after his accident.
“We’ve been waiting over two years for a settlement. Blood, honestly, you are my kind of stud. My life is so screwed up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to tell you. Would you believe that you’re the first fellow I’ve talked to in over two years? Blood, I don’t love Leroy.”
That cocaine had her speed rapping. I couldn’t cop her tonight unless I croaked Scarface. My plans had to change. I had to unhook her from Leroy soon. She’d make bales of scratch. Maybe I could work an angle to get her and a slice of that settlement. Of course, I couldn’t wait forever. If I had to, I’d cop without a slice of the settlement.
I knew Leroy was going to blow her. He didn’t have a chance to hold much longer with that ugly face and that jealous bit. I had to find out if she would level with me all the way. Silas had told me she was an ex-whore.
I said, “Chris, give me a fast rundown of your life story. I’ll have all the answers for you when you finish.”
She said, “If you let me sit in your lap.”
I nodded and she climbed onto my lap. She hooked an arm around my neck. Her cheek was against my ear. The cocaine thudded her ticker against my breast. Out of the side of my eye I saw the runt go into the greasy spoon. I was hoping she wouldn’t use the phone just inside the door and interrupt the rundown.
I felt her balloon bottom blasting heat to the throbbing cup of my lap. Too bad I worked so hard at the pimp game. Mr. Thriller was playing stiff con on me. He was just a fool at heart. The poor chump wanted to sucker out in that bed with this luscious doll. Good thing he had me to stand guard over him.
She said, “I remember nothing but good until I was twelve. Then my mother died. My father had been a kind, good man, until then. He always worked. He was a good carpenter. He changed quickly after Mama died.
“He took my bed down. He said he wanted me to sleep with him. He told me how lonely his bed was after all those years with Mama. Nothing happened at first. One night a month later I had a nightmare. A wild ferocious animal was sucking my breast. It was terrible. I woke up. It was Papa.
“I screamed. He slapped me hard. His face was all twisted and hateful. He looked like a crazy stranger. I blacked out. When I came to Papa was crying and begging me to forgive him.
“After a while I would just lie there, numb and let him use me. I hated his guts. In school I had the crazy feeling the students could see and feel my shame and filth. By the time I got fifteen I was a skeleton. By now he had me doing everything to him. I’m glad he’s dead in Hell.
“Papa, the beast, was killing me. I was so nervous I couldn’t wash dishes. I broke dozens. I wasn’t eating enough to keep a bird alive. I collapsed one day coming from the grocery. I woke up in a hospital. My system was shot and I was pregnant. I stayed in the hospital a month. I stayed at Papa’s a week after I got out. I took some money while he slept and left Wichita with the clothes on my back.
“I came here and got a waitress job. A young pimp named Dandy Louee started picking me up when I got off. I thought he was a millionaire. He dressed me up and turned me out. He was a cruel black bastard. He liked to beat me, and then screw me. He worked me in a house run by one of his whores. He kept his foot in my ass.
“Funny thing, I made money even when my belly was stuck way out. A lot of tricks who came there wanted a pregnant girl. I lost the baby while turning a trick. Dandy got five years on a white slave rap two months later.
“I got a bar-maid job and met Leroy. He was playing a gig in the spot. I was a sick girl. I fell out twice while serving the bar. The doctor said I needed rest. He said I couldn’t expect to live long unless I rested. Leroy nursed
