Burning Time

49

Troland was disgusted with her. She didn’t seem to remember anything, wouldn’t even make an effort to wake up and do it right. It made him mad, reminded him of another girl, a really young one, who just wouldn’t make a sound no matter what he did. And he did a lot. Finally he got tired of it, had to dump her. This one got him so worked up he couldn’t even stay in the place and do what he was supposed to do.

He pulled the car out of the garage and headed into Manhattan for the third time that day. The traffic going into the city was lighter now, and it didn’t take long. Twenty minutes, by the clock on the dashboard. He got off the bridge and headed downtown. He figured he better stay away from the West Side, even though he’d seen a lot of girls over there and knew that part of town best. Several had talked to him in the bars where he’d stopped for a few beers at night, when he was tracking her and knew she wasn’t coming out again. He didn’t like it when girls tried to pick him up. He was the one who had to choose.

He cruised down Second, and then headed up First. There was a gang of girls on the corner of Fourteenth Street. They looked Spanish. He passed by, didn’t want a Puerto Rican. On Forty-second Street there were some black girls hanging around a coffee shop. They were too tall, were wearing elaborately braided wigs and had big asses. He didn’t like it when they were heavier than he was.

In the Fifties he found what he was looking for. One girl on her own, covering the same stretch of block over and over like she was waiting for somebody who was late. She was wearing tights and a rainbow-colored shirt so short it barely covered her ass. There wasn’t much flesh on her body, and she had the kind of fearless strut in her walk and swinging, little-girl blond hair that turned him on.

He cruised past her two, three times to be sure. He didn’t like to get it wrong. Finally, he parked the car a block away and walked back because he was embarrassed by the navy Ford Tempo. Didn’t want to be seen in it. If he had had his bike with him, he would have just roared up to her and told her to get on.

When she looked him up and down and changed direction to walk his way, he figured she was okay. Pretty much like him, didn’t have much to say. In a few minutes she had already accepted one of the cellophane envelopes left over from the flake, and was taking him someplace he didn’t catch.

It turned out to be at the end of the block in a run-down brownstone with a shabby shoe repair on the street level and an equally shabby locksmith above.

He nodded with approval. Yeah, it was right. The steep flight of stairs sagged so badly in places someone could slide right off the steps and tumble all the way down without a thing to get in the way or stop her from breaking her neck. Her two-room dump was in the back on the second floor, behind the locksmith that was closed for the night despite the sign in the window urging customers to “Come In Anytime. We’re Open Twenty-Four Hours A Day.”

It was grubby and dark. The one window was covered with a piece of faded cloth. A bare light bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling illuminated the sagging couch in the center of the room. The sofa, though older and in worse condition, was not unlike the one the real girl was lying on in Queens.

“Take off your clothes,” he said as soon as they were inside. “I want to tie you up.”

She shrugged. “Whatever turns you on.” She took the coke out of the pocket of her rainbow-colored shirt and waved it at him. “I got to do something first.”

He looked around coldly. “Hurry up,” he told her. “I’m on a schedule.”