All night we talk about a ring of occultists N has heard
about and all the women they have tortured to death and their
witchcraft rites and the way they use sex and drugs ending in
death. She is sure this is true. We are afraid: we think it is a
paranoid fantasy but we believe it anyway: we know somewhere there are these dead women. We do not move all night.
The smoke has nearly paralyzed us. We fall asleep sitting up.
In the morning N examines the grass to see why we couldn’t
7 1
move. She sniffs it and rubs it between her fingers, scrutinizes
it. There are tiny fragments of glass in the weed: pieces of
glass vials. The grass has been soaked in morphine.
I am scared. So is she, I think. I want to disappear. There is
no money. I am too afraid for the streets. We are running out
of speed. I cower on the mattress. She writes in her notebook.
*
I go to a junkie doctor in the Village for a prescription. I can’t
do the streets. He rubs his hands all over me. He is sweaty
despite the air conditioning and old and pale yellow and fat.
He rubs his hands up and down my arms and all over my
breasts and my neck and up and down my legs, between my
thighs. He rubs his hands all over my bare skin and all over my
clothes. I sit still. He stares at me. He watches me as he rubs
his hands all over. I am going to give you the prescription, he
says, but the next time you come you understand what I want
don’t you? I stare at him. In the office there is a desk with a
chair behind it and an examining table, the one I am sitting
on. Here, I suppose, right where I am now. Do you understand
what I want, he asks me again. I nod. I don’t know exactly
what he wants. I think in precise acts. I am going to write this
prescription now, he says, and give it to you now, he says, but
the next time you come, he says, you be sure you remember
what I want from you. I nod. I am surprised, a little confused.
I thought because he was a junkie he would want money. He
doesn’t ask for any money. I have in my pocket all the dollars
we have. He gives me the script. He kisses my hand. I don’t
want to have to go back.
*
N has on her most flamboyant scarf, like a headband. She is
carefully dressed: flare pants, a silk blouse A has bought for
her, a belt fastidiously buckled. She has gone over the details
of her appearance a hundred times. She is tired. Her face is
drawn and dirty. Her eyes are lined with black, there are deep,
dark circles under them. She is very thin. She is in constant
movement, mostly examining herself, much motion to little
purpose. She twitches with nerves on edge. A is in his usual
dark coat. It is a hot night. I am going to stay with R, not to
be alone and to be near a phone. A has thought of a way to
help us. He and N are going to rob a store: a boutique to be
72
precise. N has some tools in a bag embossed with her last
name. I tell her not to use the bag. I say perhaps they should
not do this. It has been decided. N will call me when it is
done. Our phone is still dead. No one stays there alone. I will
be with poor R who does not know this is happening.
They go, I go. The hours pass. The night is long. A call
comes about 4 am. N is on her way to the Women’s House of
Detention. She will be arraigned in night court.
Night court is interminably dreary and hopeless. The halls
of justice are wide and dreary, the benches are wooden and
hard: after an hour or so, a group of women is brought out:
hookers and N, her scarf too high on her forehead, marking
how many times she has rubbed her hand across her head,
rubbed it back and forth, rubbing off sweat or as a nervous
gesture. She is exhausted by now, but she can’t sit still, even at
the head of this awful room where she waits with the others.
The others are mostly black with bouffant hairdos and vinyl
miniskirts and bare shoulders and nearly bare chests. The
others wear heavy, shiny makeup and high-heeled shoes. A
Legal-Aid lawyer comes over to me, N has pointed me out:
don’t worry, he says, she will only do six months. I am like a
demon possessed. She will not have to go to that prison, not
this night, not ever, I will not have her there. Bail is set at $500
and there are two hours before she will arrive there, go through
the maze of jails and holding cells and end up there, to be
strip-searched and raped by hands, by speculums, by doctors,
by police, by prisoners. I am in a frenzy. Bail bondsmen galore:
I go to them one after another: I call up everyone for money: I
get her out: I take her home. I go to an old friend who helped
me when I was in jaiclass="underline" she calls a lawyer who used to be a
prosecutor: he demands $2, 000 but she won’t do six months,
she won’t do shit. All this happens before I give a thought to
A. He eventually gets two years. He protects her. He was a
friend. Let’s hear it for that sweet pimp. We have a lot of
money to raise: have to get back to business. Can’t afford to
be squeamish.
*
The boutique, it turns out, belonged to a former lover of his,
and she is pissed. She wants him prosecuted, won’t budge. N
could have gotten away, she chatted with the police for a while
73
before they realized anything was wrong: but didn’t: wouldn’t
leave A there alone. He does two years, doesn’t implicate her
at all. We need money.
*
No more squeamishness about the streets. No more timidities.
*
Especially we try to borrow money, because we need it fast:
from old school chums: it brings rich women back near us:
near us: but we are too used, too disreputable now, for them
to want to be that close: they help a little: they eat while we
beg for coffee with hungry eyes: sometimes we get coffee. It is
bitter: school chums: rich school chums: keep N out of jail.
*
A is gone from this time on. We don’t raise bail for him. We
don’t go to court. We owe him. N is free. But we don’t think
about it now. We forget about him altogether.
*
We never sleep at the same time: one of us always has a knife.
We eat speed. We pick up tricks as fast as we can find them.
We drink as much as we can as often as we can: shot at a time
now, can’t buy our own bottles. The pace is fast. The fucks