"Maybe I will," the john answered. He was already on his feet, pulling on his flowered undershorts. "You're better than most of the girls," he said. "Maybe you just haven't been at it as long." He dressed quickly while she lay there watching him. When he had his clothes on he turned to leave. "Aren't you going back down to the street?" he asked.
"I'll be along," she said. "I just want to lie here for another minute. It's been a rough day." The john walked out of the room closing the door behind him.
When he was gone, Connie heaved a long sibilant sigh. Her life had become an endless procession of johns closing the door behind them as they left her alone and unsatisfied on the spongy mattress of the cheap Eighth Avenue hotel. But she had already passed the point of self-pity, now finding her solace in the needle and the snowy white powder with which she chased her daily cares away.
Johnny Walker had finished her off, all right. But not with a bullet and cement overcoat. He had been too sadistic to end it quickly. Instead, he was making it last, punishing her by letting her die gradually, by her own hand. He had made her his slave, lavishing elaborate sexual attention on her and teaching her body all the tricks of physical pleasure that he had spent years acquiring.
He had allowed her to ride to glory on the shaft of his stiff black cock, carrying her away with it to a place where pleasure was a way of life and sex was a magic carpet on which a journey to paradise was routine. And he taught her about the needle, and about heroin.
At first she bad liked the euphoric trance that it put her into. She would lie naked in his bed while be jabbed the needle into her body, allowing the drug to blanket all her thoughts and to bring a rich rosy glow to the world around her. Then, as she drifted on a junk-induced cloud of ecstasy, he would toy with her body, playing it like a violin to produce a celestial music that only the two of them could hear.
She would lie for hours, naked on his bed while he stroked and petted her – the junk, his fingers, and his tongue separating her from reality. The junk narrowed her world until, at last, it encompassed nothing more than Johnny's bed, the pleasures of the flesh, and the needs of the body. She spent three months languishing in his apartment, seeing the sun only when it appeared on television, serving Johnny's wants and awaiting Johnny's pleasure. She had been his sexual slave, satisfying all of his perverse sexual cravings and loving it.
In return he had given her a "jones" the heroin addiction which slowly robbed her of the ability to feel anything at all, including sexual pleasure. Finally the drug became something which she needed rather than enjoyed, and the last of life's pleasures was denied to her. And then, a month earlier, when Johnny was sure that she had passed the point of no return, he threw her out, telling her that he had no further use for her and suggesting that she join the ranks of the Eighth Avenue whores.
"Maybe you'll still be young and pretty enough to compete with the other junkie whores. For a while, anyway," he had said, his face twisting into a contemptuous sneer. "Just get out of here! And don't come back! I can't stand the sight of you!" His words hit her like a kick in the gut, sending her reeling against the wall and taking her breath away.
"But, Johnny," she had cried, "I thought I was your girl. I thought you were my lover man."
"Maybe I was," he had answered. "But not anymore." He threw a glassine envelope of heroin at her as he spoke. "Here's your only lover man now," he had said. "Now take it and get out! It's the last free fix you'll ever get from me."
The junk that he had given her didn't last more than a couple of hours. And when it had worn off, she was panic stricken. She had never bought her own dope before. She didn't know where to go or what to do. But a junkie learns fast. And if that junkie is a pretty girl with a nice ass and a good pair of tits, she can always earn enough to make a living. That is, if you called a twenty-dollar bag of dope a day and an occasional greasy hamburger a living.
Connie thought about the money in her purse. There was the ten that she had just gotten. And another five that she had earned earlier that day by giving a bearded young college student a fast blowjob. She needed more. And she needed it fast.
She got out of bed and began putting her clothes on, thinking of nothing now but the dope that she would soon have enough money to buy. She didn't even bother to straighten out the blanket before leaving the hotel room. The john's weren't interested in the bed. It was her pussy they were after.
She walked down the stairs and into the hotel lobby, barely glancing up at the desk clerk who gave her his usual lewd wink as she walked by. He looked after her, her firm young ass wiggling around inside her tight pants, and resolved to throw her a fast one one of these days. A little tip. When she strode out into the street, he returned to his newspaper, reading, for the third time, a lurid account of the rape-murder of a teenage hitchhiker.
Connie blinked her eyes in the brightness of the late afternoon sun. It was already mid-November and the air was getting cold. She would have to get herself a jacket one of these days. Maybe the Salvation Army had something warm – and cheap. She stood leaning against an Eighth Avenue lamp post and waited to be picked up. Most of the other girls on the street were skinny and pallid looking, already having bartered away their youth and vitality for the few bags of dope. They really had to hustle to make enough to keep them in junk. But Connie hadn't lost her good looks yet. They were her best advertisement.
She knew that it wouldn't be long before she, too, had to walk up and down the avenue swishing her ass inside some shockingly bright-colored miniskirt and winking at the passing johns. She saw most of the other girls doing it all day long. "Sportin', mister?" they would ask as the johns looked them up and down. But Connie hadn't sunk that low yet.
She looked down at the ground, not really thinking of anything but the dope that she would soon have the money to buy. She hoped. Then she felt a man's hand on her elbow. She could see his shoes – black and highly polished – and the knifelike crease of his trousers where they showed beneath the hem of his topcoat. She didn't even bother to look up at his face.
Allowing him to hold her elbow as they walked, she led him up the street to the hotel and walked with him up the steps into the lobby. She gave the desk-clerk a wave and headed for the staircase, still looking down. When they got to the second floor, she turned right and walked up the hall until they stood in front of the door to her room. Taking the key from her pants pocket, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. She went directly to the bed and sat heavily down on its edge. She began unbuttoning her sweater. When she had opened two of the buttons and her grimy white bra peeked through, she said, "That'll be ten dollars if you don't mind. In advance."
"Ten dollars, Connie? Is that all?"
She looked up in surprise, glancing for the first time into the face of her john. It was Lieutenant Blumenthal.
"I'm sorry, Connie," he said. "But I had to see for myself whether it was really true."
"Well, it's true, all right," she said. "I'm a whore. A lousy ten-dollar whore. And you know why? Because I'm a dope fiend, that's why! Does that surprise you?"
Lieutenant Blumenthal's voice was soft and troubled. "No, Connie," he said. "It doesn't surprise me in the least. I've known you were a drug addict ever since that day, three months ago, when you walked into my office and told me you were quitting the force. I saw it in your eyes. And in the way you walked. You can't be a cop for as long as I have without learning a few things, you know."
"Yeah?" she said. "Well what good does it do you?"