Marie’s words were sleepy, coming through a filter. Her eyes were half-closed now and she barely moved her lips when she spoke.
“I’ve been living uptown,” Honour Mercy said. She had to say something.
“Uptown? One of those post pads off the park. That sounds nice. Post pads off the park. All those ‘p’ sounds. Goes together real nice with a swing to it.”
Honour Mercy opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “You’re different,” she said.
“Different? Just because I like girls? That’s not all that’s different, baby. It’s my scene. You’ve got to be tolerant of another person’s scene, baby. It’s the only way.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“NO?”
“Your eyes,” Honour Mercy said. “And the way you talk and everything.”
Marie giggled. “I didn’t know it showed that much. I must be carrying a heavy load.”
Honour Mercy didn’t understand.
“C’mon out of the light, baby. Around the corner where the bugs don’t chase you. Light is evil.”
She let Marie take her around the corner to 44th Street. They walked a ways and then the older woman led her into a doorway.
“You tumbled quick,” Marie said. “You hipped yourself fast. Or are you making the same scene?”
Honour Mercy was lost. Then Marie lifted her own skirt all the way, and when Honour Mercy’s face screwed up in puzzlement she pointed to her legs.
There were marks running up and down the insides of her thighs.
And Honour Mercy understood.
“Junk,” Marie said. “H, horse, junk. Sweet little powder that makes happy dreams. You put the needle in and everything gets pretty.”
“You ever make horse? Ever put the needle in and take it out empty?”
“No.”
“Ever make pot? Ever break a stick with a buddy? Ever smoke up and dream?”
She shook her head.
“Ever sniff? Ever skin-pop and smile all night at the ceiling?”
“No.”
Marie smiled. “A virgin,” she said reverently. “A little virgin with bells on. You better let me take your cherry, Honey. Better let Marie turn you on to the world, the pink world. You come with me.”
Marie took her arm again, but Honour Mercy stayed where she was.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want to come, baby. You want to see what’s wrong and what’s right. You see the way I am now?”
She nodded.
“High,” Marie said. “High in the sky with a pocket full of rye. Four-and-twenty spade birds baking in pie in the sky. Come fly with me.”
“I... what does it do?”
“Makes the world good,” Marie said. “Makes everything fit where it should. Makes a whore a queen. And a cat can look at a queen. Right?”
She hesitated.
“Come on,” Marie told her. “No charge, no cost. Sample day, every ride a nickel at Coney Island. Ever ride the comet, baby? Or the caterpillar?”
“I—”
“You will, baby. You’ll lie down and ride them all, every one of them. This time it’ll be you riding instead of some man riding you. You just come on and ride, baby. You just come with me.”
Marie had the same room as before. Honour Mercy sat on the edge of the bed, remembering the other time they had been together in Marie’s room, remembering what they had done. She wondered what they were going to do now, what it would be like.
Marie was holding a match under a teaspoon. A small white capsule rested in the spoon, and the heat from the match melted it. When it was all liquid, she pushed in the plunger of a hypodermic needle, then sucked up the liquid with it.
“Your leg,” Marie said. “Don’t want it in your arm or the mark’ll show. Want it in your leg, so pull up your dress for me. That’s right. And we’re not going to turn you on in the vein because you don’t need it, not yet. Just a skin-fix, that ought to be enough. Ought to put you up so high you’ll fly all over God’s little acre. That’s right, that’s the way.”
Marie sank the needle into the fleshy part of Honour Mercy’s thigh. Honour Mercy sat, watching the needle go in, watching Marie depress the plunger and send the heroin into her thigh. And she waited for something to happen.
And nothing happened. For a moment or two nothing at all happened and she wanted to tell Marie to stop teasing her.
Then something happened.
And she stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes and stared at heaven through the top of her skull.
Ten
It was a big metal room full of women. High on the back wall was a barred window, above the woman-crowded metal bench. That bench, running the full width of the back wall, was the only furniture in the big square metal room. A dozen women sat hip-crowded on the metal bench, dressed in shapeless gray bags of dresses. Another dozen women sat on the scuffed black metal floor. A few more leaned against the gray metal walls, trying to talk. But it was tough to talk, because of the screaming.
Up front, draped against the metal bars like an old newspaper flung there by the wind, Honour Mercy Bane hung screaming. Honey Bane now, Honey Bane now and forever more.
Honey Bane was a mess. Her chestnut hair lay tangled, dull and streaming, stuck to her head like a fright wig. Her face was white, the white of the underbelly of a fish, except for the gray around her staring eyes and the dark red gaping wound of her screaming mouth.
She’d been screaming for a long while, and her voice was getting hoarse. They’d brought her in at three in the morning, two rough-handed cops, and tossed her in the female detention tank with the rest of the dregs scooped from the murky bottom of the city that night, and at first she’d stood hunch-shouldered in a corner, leaning against the wall, chain-smoking and glaring at the hollow-eyed broads who’d tried to talk to her.
At four, she started to pace back and forth across the metal floor and around the perimeter of the walls, pacing and shaking her head and rubbing her upper arms with trembling fingers, as though she were cold. Some of the women, knowing the signs, watched her in silence, like beasts of prey. The rest ignored her.
At five, she began to tremble and stretch and rub her cheeks with hard fingers, and the watching women licked dry lips. At five-fifteen, she fell, rolled, struggled up and lunged into the bars. She hung there, quivering, and at five-twenty-five, she started to scream.
With the first scream, three of the women had darted forward. The first one to reach her jabbed into the pocket of Honey Bane’s prison dress and pulled out the crumpled remains of her cigarettes, then ducked away form the angry, envious clutching of the other two. And Honour Mercy screamed for the second time, neither knowing nor caring that her cigarettes had been stolen. It wasn’t cigarettes she wanted.
Now it was seven o’clock, and she was still screaming, though her voice was getting hoarse. One or two guards had tried to stop her, telling her the doc would come at seven, but she neither heard nor understood. One or two of the other women, unnerved by the screaming, had tried to stop her, to pull her away from the bars, but she had clung and shrieked and they had given up.
And now it was eight o’clock, and the metal door down at the end of the long gray metal hall clanged open. Two guards came through, followed by an annoyed young man in a business suit. They came down the hall, their shoes ringing on the black metal floor, and the annoyed young man waited while the guards unlocked the detention tank door. The three of them came in, and the guards efficiently peeled Honey Bane from the bars and held her rigid, still screaming, her back against the wall.
The annoyed young man put down his black bag and slapped Honey Bane twice across the face, forehand, backhand. “Stop that,” he said, and his voice was emotionless and cold. “I’m going to give you something now.”