That was the trouble with being broke, he thought. If he had enough dough saved up he could buy himself a front — a decent suit, a couple of shirts, a good pair of shoes. When you could come on fairly strong you weren’t stuck with the neighborhood and old broken-down wives of longshoremen and truck-drivers. You could go where the good pickings were.
59th Street, for example. He ran into a guy named Bernie a while back, a smoothie who dressed sharp and had a line you could hang your wash on. Bernie told him about the bars on 59th Street just south of the park. The classy East Side broads went there when they had an itch and needed somebody to scratch it for them. You sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. They’d give you the eye and you’d carry your drink to where they were and they’d slip you money for the next round. Then you played footsie and kneesie until the gal made up her mind that she was warm for your form and ready to play.
And you didn’t go back to a dump on Columbus Avenue. If the broad didn’t have a husband, or if the husband was out of town, you went to the broad’s apartment. You banged the broad in a bed with silk sheets and you lapped up twenty-year old brandy between sets. And the broad might not be classy, but she wouldn’t be a mess. She’d have the best beauticians in the world taking care of her, and she’d look good even if she didn’t have much to begin with.
He spat again. On top of that, you made money in the deal. Twenty bucks for a night was the minimum and Bernie said he got as much as fifty or a hundred from the right broad. And you didn’t have to go through her purse for it. She slipped it to you just as cute as could be.
That wasn’t all Bernie had had to say. Sometimes a broad would go nuts over a guy and want him around steady. Then he’d move in with her and she’d buy him hundred-dollar suits and twenty-dollar shoes and pick up all the tabs, with a little spending money thrown in. And the broads weren’t necessarily pigs, not by any means. Or eighty years old. A friend of Bernie’s had managed to latch onto a twenty-nine year old divorcee with red hair and a trim shape and the biggest pair of boobs in captivity. A good face, too. And she was keeping him. She’d even given him a Thunderbird to drive her around in. The car was in his name, too. It was his to keep, even if they split up.
Johnny threw his cigarette into the gutter. He could stand something like that. You could get sick of living on the bottom all the time. To hell with the skim milk. It was too damned thin. It was about time he started lapping up some of the cream.
But first he needed money.
He walked the streets, looking for the woman who would buy him a meal. He wasn’t looking for just any woman. It had to be one who was ready to play. Not just a broad who would let him give her a toss in the hay, but one who’d pay for the privilege.
He found her on Broadway between 100th and 101st Streets. He saw her coming the other way walking toward him, and he stopped walking toward her and leaned up against a lamp post, one foot crossed over the other and his arms hanging free and easy at his sides.
She looked at him. At once he raised his eyes to meet hers. He gazed very intently at her. He did not smile. He simply stared at her, telling her with his eyes that he knew everything there was to know about her and that he was ready to give her everything she needed.
He could tell that she understood the look. She was frightened at first — he saw that instantly — but the fear died quickly enough. She returned his glance, and her eyes said that she was accepting his challenge and ready to meet it. There was anger in her eyes, and fury, and hatred. But more than anything else there was desire.
He made his move with the simple assurance that was the product of long experience. He stepped forward, a false smile in his face, and called to her.
“Hi! I just got here myself. Didn’t expect you’d be on time.”
No one watching would have realized that they had never seen one another before in their lives.
She only hesitated for an instant. Then her face relaxed into a smile that was as painfully artificial as his own. “I’m glad I didn’t keep you waiting,” she said. He held out his arm for her and she took it. They started walking down Broadway together.
“That was cute,” she said. “Very clever.”
He shrugged.
“How could you tell? You must get your face slapped ten times a day.”
“I don’t come on like that unless I’m sure.”
“And you were that certain of me?”
He shrugged again. Hell, he thought but didn’t say, you had bang me scrawled on your forehead in letters an inch high. You’re hotter than an old stove.
“Suppose you were wrong,” she said. “Suppose I changed my mind. I almost did, you know. Suppose I got angry.”
He turned his palms up. “Then I made a mistake. I thought you were somebody else. No sweat.”
She didn’t say anything. He turned his eyes and studied her. She was in her thirties, a fairly attractive woman not badly dressed. She was wearing a wedding ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. It was just a plain gold band, nothing fancy. He smiled, thinking that almost all the women he picked up wore wedding rings. And all the husbands wore horns.
“Where do we go?”
“Your place.” he said. “That okay?”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“Where do you live?”
“On 68th Street.” she said “Near Central Park West.”
He whistled. “That’s a distance,” he said “What are you doing way the hell up there?”
“I work at Columbia University. In the library.”
“That’s up by 116th,” he said. “You walk home every day?”
She colored. “I had nothing to do,” she said. “I wanted to walk a ways. It helps me relax.”
He didn’t say anything.
“We don’t have to walk,” she said. “We could take a taxi.”
“I’m hungry.”
She looked at him.
“I’m hungry,” he repeated. “Let’s stop and have dinner first. Then we go to your place.”
She didn’t say anything. She looked away from him and he added, “You pay for dinner.”
“Of course,” she said, her voice tense. “I pay for dinner. I pay for everything, don’t I?”
“That’s the general idea.”
She didn’t say anything to that. He led her to a good medium-priced restaurant, the Blue Boar. It had been a much better restaurant twenty or thirty years ago when the Upper West Side had been an infinitely more desirable neighborhood than it was now. The restaurant was still good, with good food and pleasant surroundings. But the prices were lower.
“Is this all right?”
“Should be,” he said. “I never ate here before.”
They went inside. The manager’s face said he was surprised to see a woman like her with a blue-jeaned leather-jacketed teen-ager. But he didn’t say anything, leading them to a table in the rear.
“He gave us a look,” she said
“Probably thinks you’re my mother.”
She blushed and bit her lip. He grinned inwardly. This was a live one, he thought. He’d even managed to work her for dinner in a restaurant. She could have offered to cook for him at her place, but she didn’t even seem to think of it. She might be good for a nice piece of change if he played his cards right. She lived in a pretty decent neighborhood and she dressed well.
Hell, he thought, she might even be a little fun in the rack. She’s not too old. It might be a kick to give her a good one. She probably couldn’t even remember what a real one felt like.
She ordered liver and bacon and he ordered a very rare sirloin. She didn’t even balk when he picked the most expensive item on the menu. $4.95 and she didn’t put up a squawk. This was going to be good. Even if all he got was the steak, it was worth it. He was starving.