HCC 115 - Borderline (5 page)

They didn’t even stop her at the Customs shed. She could understand that; the only
thing you could smuggle profitably into Mexico was gold, and she could hardly carry
gold in a handbag. Cars were a profitable smuggling item as well, since Mexico had
a hundred percent import duty on them, but she was on foot. The Customs man smiled
at her and motioned her on through. She took a few dozen steps and she was in Mexico
again.

Ciudad Juarez, she said to herself. Big deal.

There were no cigarettes in her sterling silver cigarette case. She found her way
to a stand that sold junk jewelry and souvenirs and cigars and tequila and, finally,
cigarettes. She looked at the display and pointed to a pack labeled
Delicados
. A Mexican with a drooping moustache handed her the pack and she gave him a one-peso
note. Surprisingly, he returned some Mexican coins in change. She looked at them oddly,
wondering what they could give you that was change for eight cents. She dropped the
coins in her purse, opened the pack of cigarettes and filled her cigarette case. She
lit one, drew on it, inhaled. It tasted exactly like any American cigarette.

In flawless English, the Mexican asked her if she would like to buy a packet of filthy
pictures.

Sober, she might have stalked away haughtily. Sober and still married to Borden Rector,
she would certainly have done so. But she was drunk and divorced and hunting for excitement.
While she could imagine more exciting fare than filthy photographs, she didn’t want
to miss any bets.

“Filthy pictures,” she said. “How filthy?”

“Very filthy.”

“What do they show?”

He told her, in perfect English, what the pictures showed. He would never have dreamed
of using the equivalent Spanish words in a woman’s presence, not even if the woman
were a prostitute. That was an interesting thing about using a foreign language, Meg
thought. You never quite realized how dirty the dirty words were.

“How much?”

“A dollar,” he said.

She looked through her purse. “Ten pesos,” she suggested.

It was a deal. The man would have taken five pesos, as it happened, but Meg was not
particularly concerned about saving pesos. She gave him the bill, took a small manila
envelope, and left the stand. She kept walking until she came to a public park with
green benches. She found an unoccupied bench, sat down on it, and opened the manila
envelope.

The photos were filthy, all right. She looked at each of the dozen in turn, and when
she had finished she went through the batch again and devoted her attention to the
more dramatic ones. There were five different characters in the set, two men and three
women. One man was an American, probably a soldier boy having the time of his life
on a furlough. The rest of the characters were all Mexican.

Two of the pictures showed the two men making love to one of the Mexican girls, a
young one with bleached blonde hair and incredibly large breasts. Two more pictures
showed the soldier, one shot involving two of the girls and the other all three. After
a furlough like that one, Meg decided, the soldier would be able to live on memories
for the rest of his hitch in the service.

Another picture had all five characters represented, and what they were doing seemed
interesting as hell if slightly impossible. Meg spent a long time looking at that
picture.

There were two pictures of girls only. These interested Meg, too—she had always wondered
idly what it was that lesbians did, and now she knew. A picture was worth a few thousand
words on the current rate of exchange. She now knew what they did, although she still
wasn’t sure whether it could be fun or not.

The rest of the pictures were one-man-and-one-woman stuff, exciting enough in their
own right but overshadowed by the more involved and esoteric shots. Each picture,
black and white and glossy, served to point up one fact which had already occurred
to Meg. To wit—she needed a man.

She needed a man desperately. She was looking at one of the man-woman pictures, and
the part of Meg’s own body which corresponded to the area of the Mexican girl’s body
that the man was kissing—that part itched. Itched furiously and needed to be scratched.

She was still looking at the clever little picture, and still itching, and still needing
a man, when she heard a voice at her elbow.

“Well, hello,” the voice said. “What have you got there?”

She looked up at the man who had spoken. He was an American, dark-haired and broad-shouldered
and tie-less. He was around thirty-five, Meg guessed. And good-looking. And fairly
sure of himself, poised, easygoing.

“I’ve got filthy pictures here,” she said. “Have a seat and have a look, friend.”

* * *

After Marty left the diner, he drove home, showered the filth of the poker game from
his skin, and made a cup of instant coffee. He drank the coffee and went downtown
to the bank again. Or, rather, to the two banks. At one bank, where he had a checking
account under the name Martin Granger, he deposited the five hundred dollars on which
he was willing to pay taxes. In the other bank, where he had a safe deposit box under
the name Henry Adams, he deposited a thousand dollars on which he did not intend to
pay taxes. The remaining thirteen hundred dollars stayed in his money belt. A gambler
had to have a roll, and he had to keep it with him all the time. Otherwise he missed
too much worthwhile action for lack of funds.

Then he had gone home again, and to bed. He was exhausted—it had literally been days
since he had had any sleep and he was ready to fall apart. He sprawled nude on the
bed in his air-conditioned bedroom and slept like a hibernating bear.

He awoke at seven. He had a constitutional inability to sleep for more than seven
hours at a stretch. Even after a several-day siege at a poker table, he still woke
after seven hours. He showered again, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and a
pair of twenty-dollar gabardine slacks, and went to the kitchen. He made himself two
ham-and-swiss sandwiches and washed them down with two bottles of imported German
beer. He got a pack of Luckies from the refrigerator—they stayed fresher there—and
he smoked three of them. Then he left his house and got in the Olds.

He remembered the waitress, Betty, big boobs and swinging rear. He remembered her
and he realized how much he needed a woman. It was always that way after a long game,
more so when he won than when he lost. Poker established necessary tensions. You couldn’t
play when you were completely relaxed, because then the game didn’t matter enough
to you. The tensions didn’t go away when the game was over. Instead, they transformed
themselves into sexual tensions. These could be dispelled only by the possession of
a woman’s body. All other forms of therapy—tranquilizers, liquor, sleep—were futile.

Marty started the car, drove through the center of town to the border area. He drove
across, parked the big Olds on one of the main streets. Otherwise, he knew, the kids
would strip off the hubcaps, the radio, aerial, the side mirror. This was standard
in Juarez, and on occasion, they jacked up cars and took the tires as well.

He parked, locked the car, left it. He stopped at a tavern for a bottle of Dos Equis,
the dark Mexican beer that was almost as good as the German stuff he had at home,
and that cost him only twelve cents a bottle. He finished the beer and walked over
by the plaza.

The thing to do, he knew, was to head across the park to the whorehouse area. There
were row upon row of cribs there, one-room shacks where the girls went around the
world for a dollar and a half, but he was not interested in the cribs. There were
other places, hazily disguised as night clubs and geared to con visiting nuns from
Nebraska into thinking the clubs were just for dancing and drinking. In these places
the girls were genuinely beautiful, and you paid them five dollars and made love to
them on a clean bed. He would go home to Paso five dollars poorer and able, at last,
to relax.

But he was in no hurry. A prostitute was better than a girl like Betty, because with
a whore you knew exactly where you stood, you bought something and you paid for it
and that was all. With a whore, you didn’t have to worry about getting rid of her
in the morning. With a whore it was just business, even if the Mex girls did put their
hearts into it well enough to con you into thinking it was love. With Betty it would
be a pain later on, and it was well worth a fast five bucks to avoid such pain.

But a prostitute, while better than Betty, was several shades removed from Nirvana.
What Marty Granger wanted was a girl he could respect and lay at the same time.

Good luck finding one on the streets of Juarez. He was a gambler, but he was also
a smart gambler. He did not draw to inside straights. Nor did he look for a respectable
lay when he needed a piece so bad be could taste it.

He passed the brunette almost without seeing her. No, he saw her—but the image didn’t
really register until he was a few steps beyond her. Then he remembered the long black
hair, the perfect legs that showed beneath the skirt, long legs crossed at the knee
and delicately tanned. He remembered, too, that the brunette had been looking at something.

He turned around and saw that she was looking at pornographic photos. Now some men
might have been able to go on walking, and unless such men were homosexuals they were
men with whom Marty would have been unhappy to play poker. They would have been able
to run a bluff through the entire Tenth Army.

So he stopped and said. “Well, hello. What have you got there?”

And she said, “I’ve got filthy pictures here. Have a seat and have a look, friend.”

He had a seat and a look. He had a look first at the pictures, and he had a look second
down the front of the girl’s dress. He knew, instantly, that he was not going to find
a prostitute. Any woman with this much poise was miles out of Betty’s class. Any woman
with this much poise would be about eighteen times as exciting as a Juarez Five-Dollar
Businessman’s Special.

“I like this one,” she said, showing him a picture of a five-person orgy. “Ever do
anything like this?”

“Never.”

“Neither have I. I had a husband up until a day or two ago, and it was rare enough
to do much of anything with him. Now I’m divorced. Are you married?”

“No.”

“Ever been married?”

“Never.”

“It’s horrible. Never marry, friend.”

He took out his Luckies and shook two from the pack. He lit both cigarettes and gave
one to her.

“Looking at this picture is making me horny,” she said. “Do you like straightforward
and direct women?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said, “I want to get laid and I haven’t had a man in awfully long. I’m
being straightforward and direct as hell, friend. I’m horny as hell, too. I want to
get laid. I don’t even know your name but I want to get laid.”

“It’s Marty.”

“Mine’s Meg. Interested, Marty?

“I’m interested.”

“Just look at these lovely pictures,” she said, spreading out three or four of them
on her lap. “I want to do it this way and this way and this way. I don’t know about
this one, though. Ever do it this way?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Is it fun?”

“It’s okay.”

“Then this way, too. I’ve never been in Juarez before. Do you go to a hotel or just
make love in the park like the natives?”

“I’ve got a house.”

“Here?”

“In Paso,” he said. “I’ve got a car and we can be there in five minutes.”

“That sounds about right,” she said. “I think I can hold out for five minutes. God,
I’m horny. I’m a little bit drunk, too. Very drunk, actually. But I won’t pass out
on you or anything. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you hate yourself in the morning?”

“Only if you’re lousy in bed. If you’re good, I’ll love myself in the morning. Let’s
go, Marty.”

She got to her feet and he helped her shovel the filthy pictures back into her purse.
She took his arm. He led her to the Olds, deciding that he liked this Meg, that she
was all right. She was drunk, and she probably would be a little different when she
was sober, but the direct and straightforward routine seemed honest enough.

She was going to be good in bed, he knew. Very good in bed. She was horny and hungry
and ready to go, and he was hot from need and hot from the pictures and hot from her,
and it would be a long night.

He grinned at her. “If I’m real good will you do more than love yourself in the morning?”

“I’ll love you too,” she replied with a sly smile.

“How?”

“The same way I did during the night.”

“The
same
way,” he said with a sigh of disappointment.

“Well,” she explained, “by morning we may have to repeat ourselves and do it one way
for the second time.”

“Are you up to it?” he asked.

“I’m up to it as long as you’re up to me,” she said.

“I will be—close up to you—in five minutes.”

They were at the side of his Olds now. He unlocked the door on the passenger side
and held it open for her. She seated herself gracefully and he looked down her dress
again. She had better breasts than Betty, he saw. Very fine breasts.

His hands itched with need to touch, to hold. He drew a breath, walking around the
Olds and pitching his half-smoked cigarette into the gutter. She leaned across the
seat to open the door for him and he had another look at her breasts. She was wearing
a bra. It would be a pleasure to take it off.

He got into the car, rolled down his window, started the car. She leaned forward and
switched off the ignition.

“First give me a kiss,” she said.

He kissed her and her tongue leaped into his mouth. She drew close, thrusting her
breasts against his chest, clutching at his hair with her fingers.

“Now give me a feel,” she said.

He put his hand on her breast and cupped it, feeling the weight of it, the warmth
of it, the softness of it.