I stood and she began undressing me; drunk from her beauty — and three beers — I allowed her to do all the work, and finally we were both naked, standing there, the small shapely thing plastered to me, her sweet face turned upward, wanting kisses, aching for affection, hooded eyes yearning for love.
Then she was on the couch, lips open, arms open, legs open. I said I would get something, meaning a rubber, and she said, no, it’s a safe time, don’t use anything, I want to feel you inside me, and the warmth of her swallowed me, and her eyes rolled back in her lovely face as her hips churned with a desperation that made me drunker still and the intensity was dizzying, like a fever dream, and when she came, she cried, and maybe I did, too.
She kept crying, my little black-eyed blonde, and I held her and comforted her, for all the shit she’d been through, soothing her, kissing her, loving her, consoling her, assuring her I’d be there, and finally I took her hand and led her to my bedroom, where she slept with me that night.
On my back in bed, naked as the day I was born but with considerably more scars, staring at the ceiling like a man in a trance, I felt physically and emotionally drained. Making love with Vera Jayne had been a joyful carnival ride; making love with Jackie had been a different kind of ride entirely.
Jackie — who had crawled in bed in just the sheer panties — was asleep and the lights of the night were filtering in off the lake, bathing her in blue-tinged ivory. She looked lovely, childlike, her face puffy from crying, but also from youth; her mouth had a swollen bruised look that had nothing to do with Rocco’s abuse. When she turned toward me, the covers pulled down off her mostly naked form, I reached over to pull them back up, and tuck her in, like daddy’s little girl.
That was when I noticed the needle tracks.
This morning, in the cold light of day, we had talked about it, at my kitchen table, over the breakfast I’d prepared.
“I’ve been on it for six months,” she said.
“Why? Doesn’t make any sense, Jackie — a smart, talented kid like you, with ambition enough to buck her parents and pay for her own dance lessons...”
She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring down into the eyes of her sunny-side up eggs. “I got depressed. Rocky, when he was acting nice, said he could help me. Get me medicine. So I wouldn’t be blue.”
Wrapped up in the silver robe I’d first seen her in at Fischetti’s, she didn’t look at all bad — she certainly didn’t look like a junkie, and her young, pretty features, sans makeup, served her well.
“He got you medicine, all right,” I said.
She was shaking her head, stealing a look at me, now and then. “I was so damn depressed, I would have tried anything... including razor blades. Now... what am I going to do, Nate? I don’t even have a supplier — Rocky gave me the stuff, himself.”
“That fucking asshole.”
She heard the rage in my voice, and it startled her, scared her. Her eyes were wild, a hand held like a claw at the side of her face as she said, “You’re going to kick me out, too, aren’t you?” She looked down into her coffee cup; she hadn’t eaten a bite of her toast and eggs. “You’re going to throw me out on the street. Just like Rocco!”
“Shut-up.”
The wild eyes dared me. “You want to slap me? Go ahead! Slap me!”
I almost did. But instead I just said, “When’s it going to get bad for you?”
She sighed, swallowed — air, not food. “Sometime this morning it’ll start.”
“Jesus.”
“I... I might be able to call a girl I used to know at the Chez Paree. I think she’s still at the Croyden. She smoked reefers all the time... she’s got a connection, maybe I could—”
“But you don’t have any money, Jackie. It costs thirty bucks a day, at least, to support a habit like yours.”
The eyes stayed wild but the voice turned timid. “Maybe... maybe you could loan me some. If I can have my medicine, I can get myself put together and go out and get a job — maybe now that Rocco doesn’t want me anymore, I can get a job singing or dancing somewhere.”
I shrugged, stirring sugar into my coffee. “You could always strip. You did a hell of one for me last night.”
I’d meant that as a dig, but instead it had only got her going.
“I think I could do that... I think I could stand to do that. It’s dancing, right? It’s a kind of dancing.”
I looked at this girl, this sweet smalltown girl, and knew how close she was to the abyss.
“You’ll get a job, all right,” I said. “You’ll be over at the Mayfair Hotel with the other hookers.”
Horror filled the brown eyes, including the black-and-blue one. “No... No I would never do that. How can you say that? Last night you were so kind... How can you...” And she put her right hand over her face and began to cry.
She was trembling a little too, but I was afraid it had more to do with the stuff she was starting to crave than any sorrow or shame she might be feeling.
