The Pusher полностью

To say that Maria despised the sex act would be untrue. To say that she enjoyed it would be equally untrue. She neither enjoyed it nor despised it. She tolerated it. It was part of her job, and since there were many white-collar workers in the city who neither despised nor enjoyed but simply tolerated their jobs, her attitude was understandable. Her tolerance was helped by the peculiar ability of narcotics to quell the normal sex appetite. So, armed with the double-barreled shotgun of understimulation through narcotics and indifference through prostitution, Maria stalked her game and quite miraculously led the game to consider her a hot-blooded huntress.

Her stalking, by three o'clock in the morning, left her a little weary. She had thirty-five dollars in her purse, and an eighth of heroin in her hotel room, and hell, it was time to call it a day. But thirty-five dollars was not forty dollars, and forty dollars was what Maria needed for her next day's supply, and so her relief at the day's work being over was partially clouded by a reluctance to quit when that additional five dollars was still lacking.

It was perhaps this reluctance that led to a chain of events that put her in the hospital.

She was walking with her head ducked against the wind, wearing high-heeled shoes and an unlined raincoat. She wore a smart blue silk skirt and white blouse under the raincoat. She had dressed in her best because she'd had a call downtown that afternoon, one of her important friends, and she'd hoped to cop the entire forty from him. But he'd been short on cash, and he'd asked her if it couldn't wait until next time, and knowing he had done this before, knowing that payment had always followed the next time with perhaps a little bonus thrown in for her patience, Maria had smiled and said certainly next time, and then gone uptown to see what could be hustled. Dressed in her finery, she had managed very well. Still dressed in her finery, she headed now for the subway kiosk, anxious to get home for her fix, yet reluctant, but still anxious.

When she heard the footsteps behind her, she became a little frightened. Muggings were not uncommon uptown, and she didn't want to lose the thirty-five dollars she'd worked hard for all day. Her fright ebbed when a voice behind her whispered, "Maria."

She stopped, and then turned and waited, squinting into the wind. The man walked directly to her, grinning.

"Hello, Maria," he said.

"Oh, you," she said. "Hello."

"Where are you going?"

"Home," she told him.

"So early?"

There was a lilt to his voice, and Maria had been in the business a long time, and whereas she had never been very fond of this particular man, and whereas she really did want to get home to that waiting fix, she nonetheless considered the five dollars or perhaps more which could just possibly be earned in a very short time, and she accepted the jilt in his voice and answered it with a mechanical smile.

"Well, it's not really so early as all that," she said, still smiling, her voice somehow changed.

"Oh, sure," he said, "it's very early."

"Well," Maria answered, "it depends on what you do with your time, I suppose."

"I can think of a few things to do with the time," he said.

"Can you?" She lifted one brow coquettishly and then moistened her lips.

"Yes, I can."

"Well, I'm curious," Maria said, stalking her game carefully now, knowing there was no joy to the hunt unless the hunted felt he was being chased. "If it was early enough, and I'm not saying it is, but if it was, what would you like to do with the time?"

"I'd like to lay you, Maria," he said.

"Oh now, that's vulgar," Maria said.

"Is twenty dollars vulgar?" he asked, and suddenly Maria had no desire to play the game anymore. Maria wanted that twenty dollars, the game be damned.

"All right," she said quickly. "Let me arrange for a room."

"Do that," he told her. She started away from him, and then she turned suddenly.

"I'm a one-way girl," she warned him.

"Okay," he said.

"I'll get the room."

It was very late, she knew that, and perhaps she could not get a room for the usual three. But with twenty dollars promised, she could afford to risk five on a room, oh, this was wonderful, this was more than she could have hoped for. She climbed to the second flight of the tenement and knocked on one of the doors. At first, there was no answer, and so she knocked again, and then knocked repeatedly until a voice from within called, "Basta! Basta!" She recognized the "Enoughs" as having erupted from the mouth of Dolores, and she grinned in the hallway, picturing the old woman getting out of bed. In a few moments, she heard the slap of bare feet approaching the doorway.

"Quien es?" a voice asked.

"Me," she answered. "Maria Hernandez."

The door swung open. "Puta!" Dolores shouted. "Why you break down the door at… quй hora es?"

Maria looked at her watch. "Son las tres. Look, Dolores, I need…"