Madge was a junkie. She hadn’t had a shot or a sniff in close to seven years, hadn’t touched the stuff since they let her out of the federal hospital at Lexington and told her she was cured. But she was still a junkie and she knew she would be a junkie until she was dead, at which time she would become a dead junkie. She didn’t call herself an ex-addict any more than members of Alcoholics Anonymous call themselves ex-alcoholics. She was well aware that at any time she might break down, might take a needle and load it up and pop it into a vein. The physical dependence was mercifully gone but the urge remained. It wasn’t a constant thing — for that she thanked God, because if it had been she would never have lasted almost seven years. But there were times when the craving for heroin came to her, times when all she could remember was how good she felt when the white powder had been cooked in a spoon and shot home into her bloodstream.
At those times she had to remind herself of the bad part of it, the times when she couldn’t score, the one abortive attempt at cold turkey when she locked herself in a cellar and clawed her own breasts raw when the full force of withdrawal symptoms hit her. And each time she mastered the craving, and now the cravings were fewer and further apart.
Now she was an inactive junkie. She didn’t run around anymore, didn’t turn a quick trick when the money had run out and she needed a fix, didn’t have bad times like when she and Bill and Lucas had broken into that drugstore outside of Xenia up in Ohio to steal morphine, and the cops chased them for ten miles and they threw the stuff out of the windows of the car, and finally the fuzz caught them and she stood on her head in Lexington for a goddamned year...
No, now things were a hell of a lot better. Now she had a business of her own, and running a whorehouse was a damned good business to have in a town like Newport. You paid a certain amount every week to the right people, kept a lunch counter in the front of the house so that you didn’t look bad from the street, took good care of your girls, talked friendly with your customers, and generally ran a decent establishment. If a girl got sick she went out on her ear. If a girl got knocked up you saw to it that she got rid of her excess baggage in the office of a cooperative and enterprising physician. You made a good living, not enough to get rich on, but enough so that you’d be able to retire before too long, enough so that you ate too much and kept a nice apartment and dressed as well as you wanted to dress.
There were footsteps coming from the rear and Madge turned around slowly. A tall thin man in a tan wind-breaker and Levi’s was on his way out and she smiled at him automatically. He didn’t smile back and he had a guilty look on his face. Madge wondered idly who he was cheating on — his wife or his girl or his religion.
“Come back and see us,” she cooed.
He didn’t answer and the screen door banged after he had gone. “Surly son of a bitch,” she mumbled to herself, drinking more coffee and motioning to Clara for a hunk of Danish pastry.
Yes, she decided, it was a good life. The house was open from noon to four in the morning, seven days a week, and the girls worked eight-hour shifts. Long hours for whores, she thought, but there was plenty of time when they just sat around on their fannies with nothing to do. Made good money at it, too — half of every trick they turned, as much as they could get anywhere else. But they were worth it, damn it. A girl had to be a Grade-A hustler to get work at the Third Street Grill.
And they were damned good girls. Take the ones she had on the night shift now — Dee and Terri and Joan. She was one girl short ever since that tramp Lottie had run out on her, and the three of them were working like troupers to handle all the trade.
Take Dee, for instance. Dolores was her name, but that was too long a handle to be bothered with. Besides somebody had said that it meant sadness in Spanish and that was a hell of a name for a whore. Now Dee had been with her — she calculated quickly — God, Dee had been working there for a good four years, closer to five maybe. A hustler had to be one hell of a champion to last that long at one place, but as far as Madge was concerned Dee could work there forever.
Dee was tall, close to six feet tall, and she had the build to carry her height. High firm breasts that were about mouth-high for most of the customers. Legs and hips that were damn well muscled from good honest work. Thick black curly hair and a mouth that had a fine-looking smile on it even when she was working away for the fifth guy in an hour. And the men had told her how good Dee was, how she would do anything and do it perfectly. Dee was a jewel.
Not only that but the girl was good company. She wasn’t so god-awful dumb like the rest of them. Why, the pair of them could sit down and talk over coffee, talk about real interesting things. Dee had been to college for a year; she was no dumbhead like the rest.
Take Terri, now. Now Terri was stupid, so stupid she didn’t know her ass from her elbow. Fortunately there was another part of her anatomy which she was able to distinguish from her elbow, and which she used with remarkable skill. And Terri was easy to look at, damned easy to look at.
The bell rang and Madge eased herself off the stool and walked to the door. The man outside was a runt — a sawed-off little pipsqueak with a bald spot on the top of his dumb little head and a nose that was three sizes too big for him. He looked frightened.
“The counter’s closed just now,” she said breezily. “Would you like to go back and see a girl?”
He nodded quickly and she opened the door. He followed her lead and found his way to the parlor in the back where Dee and Terri were sitting. Joan was upstairs with one of her regulars. The sawed-off jerko picked Dee, just like all the little guys always headed for the biggest gal, and the two of them went upstairs.
Madge sat down again, bit off a hunk of Danish and washed it down with coffee. Let’s see, where was she? Terri — that was it. Terri was short and blonde, a little on the chunky side but not so’s anybody would mind it. The special thing about Terri was that she made a guy feel as though he was the greatest man in the world. Everybody who had Terri was firmly convinced that he had given her the thrill of a lifetime. This not only made the customers happy, but it brought them back for another go with the little blonde girl.
Joan was newer than the others and Madge hadn’t yet decided what was so special about her. She wasn’t hard on the eyes, but the little brunette wasn’t beautiful by any means. Nothing really special about her, all in all — but she was good at her work and easy to get along with. A good man, according to the song, is hard to find; a good hustler is harder to get hold of.
The man who had been with Joan left smiling. A truck driver who stopped there whenever he had a haul through Newport came in and took Terri upstairs.
Time passed.
Madge was working on a slab of chocolate cake when the bell rang again. She swore under her breath and got up to answer it.
“The counter’s closed,” she began, the suddenly stopped in amazement.
The person standing at the door was not the general run of customer.
It was a girl with chestnut hair.
Honour Mercy Bane sat with her hands in her lap and looked at her nails. There was bright red polish on them, and she had never had nail polish on before. For that matter, never before had she been wearing such a pretty dress as the red-and-blue frock she had on now, never before had her lips been lipsticked and her cheeks rouged, and never before had she sat in the parlor of a whorehouse at eight-thirty in the evening waiting for a customer.