CHAPTER EIGHT

The water-smooth, indifferent Italianate girl sat in a green rayon wrapper with a poorly embroidered dragon on its back in an ornate bedroom in the 41st Street house that had a big brass bed and a little pile of hand towels between the bed and the bathroom door. Utterly bored, she was staring at the window curtains, her hands reposeful in her lap. She was very dark, with large eyes, and she had large, high tits on an ectomorphic frame—long feet and hands with fingers as thin as pencils, long legs and a short waist. Her head was held fragilely high over her soft, soapy shoulders by a long, narrow neck. She was neither pretty nor not pretty, just effective-looking, her appearance emphasized with heavy make-up. She was youth racing through transition.

Mrs. Healey had set her up for the trick she would be turning. She didn’t mind. What the hell, it paid triple and her old lady got the same thing every Saturday night for exactly nothing. And it would keep her on light action for a couple of days, just fooling around with the off-duty girls and making spit-babies.

His eyes were like muddy winter water when he came into the room. He was holding himself together as if the last twenty yards had been too much to wait through. His nails were digging his thighs. The door opened, and he went in and stood at the middle of the yellow coffin shape of light as it fell into the darkened room from the hall. He closed the door. He smelled to her like the cages at the zoo. They never smelled like people when they were like this.

“You want a light on?” She felt the excitement rise in her. She wished a priest or a nun would beat her as he was going to beat her. She was guilty; she was slimy with sin and she could feel it all over her, but nobody gave a goddam, not enough to beat hell out of her the way her father would have beat hell out of her if he were alive. She didn’t wait for his answer. She tugged at the beady cords on the floor lamp with the old-rose shade and a soft light surrounded her to let him see what he was doing.

A tiny stream of spittle was leaking from the left side of his mouth. “You’re so dark you’re almost black,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You Italian?”

“Well—yeah.”

He moved toward her. Her teeth were gleaming at him as he hit her on the side of the face heavily. She fell to the floor and looked up at him groggily. “Hey! What’s with you? No marks! Use the belt!” He stared down at her, then began to kick her savagely, listening to her whimper, then scream, with sudden gratitude.