Marijuana Girl (14 page)

"I can't make that," Joy said. "I'm beat. I got no loot."

"Gee, that's a drag." Roy said. "I'd fix you up, but you dig what's with my connection. It's all gold in front. I got to lay it out, and then get it back."

"Listen, Roy. I got to have that stuff. I'll get gold for you tomorrow, but I got to have a fix right now. I got to have enough to carry me the whole day and tonight."

He didn't feel sympathy. He just felt good, and this was no time to stop feeling good. You couldn't let a thing like this drag you; not when you felt so gone, so really sent. And the kid was getting hysterical. She knew where you lived. You had to do something.

"Joyce," Roy said, his sallow tanned face reflecting what sympathy it could, "I got six decks in a stash, right around here. I don't know when I'll get more. I may even have to find a fix man myself tomorrow. But I'll lay half of it on you."

"Great!" Joyce said. "The end! You saved my life, man."

"I dig," Roy said. "I'll make it back here in fifteen minutes. Now, don't cut out, now."

"I won't man. And I'll have the loot for you tomorrow ..."

15 ~ Insecurity

That was the morning when Tony saw Joyce. He had just come out of New York University Commons, and was walking slowly across Washington Square Park toward the subway. He had left his car in Jamaica and come in on the Eighth Avenue subway that morning, and now he was undetermined whether to go back out to Jamaica and pick it up before his afternoon class began, or whether to go up to the Griddle on Eighth Street and just hang around.

Then he saw her. She was standing at the edge of the big fountain among a clutter of loungers and women airing their children, talking to a deeply tanned man wearing sunglasses who might have been, and probably was, a race track tout.

He saw the man hand her something which she put in her handbag. He was still on the other side of the broad thoroughfare that bisects the Square--and still not quite sure. She was more slender than he remembered her, and a little better dressed. For a moment or so he just stood there, trying to be sure before crossing the street to approach her. Then she left the tanned man and walked toward a Fifth Avenue bus. The walk was what made him sure. The even, unhurried pace, with something approaching a regal dignity.

He started to run across the street but a line of traffic halted him for a moment. When it had passed he started across again, but Joyce had disappeared and the bus had started.

She was on the bus. He knew that, and ran after it, yelling after the driver. But the bus caught the lights and was gone up past the arch before he could reach it.

He remembered the number of the bus and looked for a cab, but it took nearly two minutes, and when he had located one and followed the bus, they were unable to catch up through the heavy traffic until it had passed Forty-second Street. Then he clambered aboard the bus and looked on both decks. But Joyce was gone.

He went to see Frank Burdette that evening and told him about seeing Joyce. Frank said, "I don't see that it helps us much, except that we at least know she's alive and all right." Somehow it didn't occur to Tony to communicate his news to the Taylors--so he didn't.

Joyce sat in the bar with a drink on the table in front of her, because she couldn't think of anything else that she wanted to do. She didn't much want the drink, but it gave her an excuse for sitting.

She was full of a sort of quiet desperation, realizing that tomorrow or the day after, whenever the two remaining decks of the white powder ran out, she was going to be through.

She had been able to get the three decks from Roy today by something that lay, in Roy's estimate, halfway between blackmail and sympathy, but that was really more the former than the latter. She knew that the pusher had said he had only the six decks of the stuff. That though, was to keep her from turning herself in to a hospital and then telling who supplied her in pique because he had refused her. Now, though, with official notice that he had no more of the stuff--even if it weren't true--she could hardly blame him for failing to supply her without payment.

And there was no chance of paying for any. She looked at her pocketbook. There was still a little more than four dollars left in her purse. She thought of Jerry Best. But he wasn't at the Golden Horn anymore. He was playing somewhere out of town, she didn't even know where. Maybe she could find out where he was--from an agent, or Down Beat or something. But Jerry was down on junkies--real down. She pictured him giving her the quick brush-off once he found out about her.

Then a man came and sat down at the table opposite her. "Hello, honey," he said. "You look lonesome."

He was young, a little over-dressed with lemon yellow tie and a dark shirt, but his face was pleasant, and having someone to talk to was suddenly vital. She had dinner with him and, at the end of the evening, took him to her room.

When she awoke in the morning he was gone, but on the dresser was a twenty-dollar bill that had not been there the night before. The money relieved all of her panic and some of her guilt. And by the end of the week her indoctrination into the profession was complete.

16 ~ Integration

The worst were the mornings because you woke up in the mornings with the feeling you had done something particularly awful the night before--though you could not quite remember it clearly. You wondered if it was the horse that made forgetfulness, or shame for your actions.

Joyce's first recollections, in that hour of the early afternoon that had become morning for her, always had to do with men, except on one or two rare occasions when there had been a woman somewhere in the evening's confusion. That had happened, too.

But, by and large, Joyce's "Johns" were little different from other men. The things they demanded from Joyce, that they could not demand from their wives or mistresses, were as much because they were paying her as because they wanted those things to happen. And the demands were more often self-imposed than coming from the men themselves. "Johns" were surprisingly undemanding--more giving, in fact, than taking!

But each demand seemed, to Joyce, only like a fresh degradation--like one more step down into the abyss into which her life teemed continually to be descending.

The problem of the "fix" seemed almost providential relief from those morning thoughts--those matutinal despairs. The remembered feeling and the taste of heroin did not come immediately when she awoke. Those first moments were dedicated to black despair. Then--next--came the thought to be seized upon, to be clung to, to be emotionally rebuilt into a problem that obliterated all other problems. The problem was: How be assured of a sufficient supply of the stuff to ward off the dire moment when you were out--beat?

You could concentrate on that, once you got around to it in your mind. You could concentrate on it while you had that special taste in your mouth, while your hands had that light sensation, while all the little nerves under your skin seemed to itch for the fine feeling of a charge. And if you kept concentrated on that one fear, all the others somehow would become pressed down--would sink out of sight. Still, with practice, the fear of being without had come to be reinforced with all the other fears until it was a ceaseless thing, and the pleasure was gone from the charge itself. The "mainline" shot was only the relief that permitted you to go in search of the next shot.

Sometimes, as this morning, Joyce looked at herself in the mirror and wondered that there were no marks or signs to indicate what went on behind the facade of flesh. She looked at her body, searching for the scars of her disintegration, and the body was firm and rounded and beautiful--as virginal as before so many hands had fondled it, molded it, compelled it into variant male-factions.

Then she went to the telephone and tried to reach Roy Mallon, looking at her watch and knowing that it was almost deliberate that she was trying at a time when he could not possibly be at home.

It felt almost as though she didn't want to reach him, as if she wanted to hear the phone ringing unanswered in that basement apartment on West 21st Street where he lived. Now and again she let herself think about that-as though she were preserving the urgency of the "fix" problem so that, all through the long evening it might press on her mind, and distract her from present reality.

When the phone had buzzed enough, and all hope had long since vanished, she dressed and made herself up. Suspants and Maidenform, Halfmoon and Arts & Ends, Bonwit's and Lord & Taylor, Chen Yu and Helena Rubenstein, Andrew Geller and Barra, John Frederics and Ohrbach's. Then a dash of perfume from Saks, a scarf from Peck & Peck, a pocketbook from Hermes. She could tell from which of her "Johns" each of them had come.

Then she went out to meet Eric.

Eric Tanger was waiting for Joyce in the bar near Madison and Fifty-third. He stood there looking exactly what he was--a man, youngish, balding, well dressed in a flashy sporting manner--a successful sharp businessman of thirty-five who some day hoped to grow out of the garment district.

Joyce said, "Hi, baby," then stepped back a little to admire him. "Very sharp," she said. "Very sharp, indeed." She flicked highly imaginary ashes from his lapels, and slipped her arm into his.

"How," Eric said, "would you like to go for a walk in the park this beautiful afternoon."

Joyce pouted. "Oh, Eric! My feet!"

"Just a stroll, my little trollop. Nothing to louse up those shapely gams. Incidentally," Eric said, "you're rather well turned out yourself this afternoon. Shall we try the Tavern on the Green?" It went like that, most of the time, with Eric. Underneath, she knew, Eric and Edsel and Marty, and John and Pelvin and Lee, were after the somewhat standardized offerings of harlotry. But on the surface they were willing to go along with her self-protective fiction that these were love affairs.

As they crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the Park they came into the full afternoon sunshine and Joyce put on sunglasses. Eric waited until they were safely in the park before he unhooked her arm from his and swung her around to face him. "Take off those glasses!" he said.

"What for?"

"Never mind, just take them off."

Reluctantly she lifted the green lenses from her eyes, blinking at the brilliant sunlight. The pupils were dilated, and seemed almost opaque.

Eric's voice was suddenly harsh. "I thought I told you I didn't want to see you when you were on that stuff."

She stood there, completely miserable, unable to say a word.

"Joy, you're no good this way. Not to me. Not to yourself. Not to anybody or anything."

She could feel the words, and the meaning of the words. But the misery was not because of the words. It was because he was dragging her--bringing her down. But the horse, singing in her blood, that could be a shield. She could let the words flow by without hurting, never really hurting, never really meaning anything, only this kind of words brought you down, down, down.

"Joy! I don't see you as just another goddamned tart. You're smart. You're on the ball. You could get out of this if you wanted to. All you have to do is try."

The words hammered against her face.

"You're not paying any attention. You're not listening. You go into this filthy dope and turn yourself off like a radio. What's the matter with you, kid?"

Joyce didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. The words had no meaning.

"Can't you see you're just going in a circle? You think I don't know what's going on with you? You think I don't see that you hate what you're doing, and you take this--this filth to hide behind while you're doing it? But can't you--haven't you enough intelligence left to see that it works the other way, too? That all you do this hustling for is to buy the rotten crap you take to hide from yourself that you're hustling? Oy! Talk about vicious circles!" Then, louder, "Joy! Do you hear me?"

"I can hear you," Joyce said. There were other things she wanted to say. But she couldn't say them because--because Eric had the money to buy her; because she had to have that money.

"Can't you turn yourself in?" he demanded. "Can't you go to a hospital and get off this stuff?"

Then whatever it was that was guarding her broke. Suddenly the utter agony of living descended upon her, and tears streamed down her cheeks. All she could say was, "Eric, leave me alone. Leave me alone. Stop it!"

Angrily then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a wallet.

He opened it and snatched out bills. "All right. That's what I'll do. Here s your goddamned money." He almost threw the bills at her. "Take it and go to hell. I don't want to see you. I don't even want to smell you--you disgusting little tramp."

And then he was walking away. It was the second time it had happened like that ...

Frank had walked home in the pleasant May evening, disdaining the crowded bus. He heard the telephone ringing as he came up the steps of the front porch and, from upstairs, he heard Janice's voice. It said, "Oh, damn!"

He called, "I'll get it, Jan," and stepped into the hallway where be snatched up the receiver.

"Frank," the telephone said, "That you, man?"

"Jerry! Where are you?"

"I'm at the station, man. You want to drive downtown and meet me someplace?"

"Why meet you? Come on up here." Then, realizing the thoughtfulness that had prompted Jerry, he said, "Don't be a dope, Jerry. Grab a cab and get up here for dinner."

"It ain't just that," Jerry said. "I can't talk about this to front of Jan. It's about that old chick of yours, Joyce."

"Yes you can, Jerry. Do you know where she Is? How is she? Jan knows all about it."

"All right," Jerry said. "I'll make it on out there in a few minutes."

Jerry told them about it over dinner.

"I guess it was a lot my fault," he said. "But I was so damned mad at Ginger I didn't even think what it might do to Joyce, leaving her with Gin like that. Then, when Gin told me that Joyce was on the stuff, I guess I was so busy trying to swing things for Ginger that I just plain forgot about the kid."

Janice said, "The poor thing."