HCC 115 - Borderline Read Free Page B

of cheating now and then; not out of need as much as out of boredom. Four years of
     dullness and drabness, of having money without enjoying it, of living, damn it to
     hell, with Borden.
    For excitement, she had told the clerk. What did it mean? God, how did she know what
     it meant? Maybe it meant getting laid or getting drunk or shooting dice or taking
     dope or driving in a fast car. She hadn’t seen any excitement in too long. She hardly
     remembered what it was like.
    She had a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette with it. El Paso, she thought. And
     Juarez. Somewhere in one town or the other, there was going to be a little excitement.
     Somewhere in Texas or Mexico there was going to be a reprieve from the boredom, a
     respite from the monotony. Call it excitement, or call it something else. It hardly
     mattered.
    She paid the tab, tipped the waiter. Outside it was hotter than hell—that was the
     trouble with air-conditioning; you couldn’t stand it when you were out in the open
     again. She headed automatically for the Warwick, then stopped halfway there, turned
     on her heel and headed off in the opposite direction. That wasn’t what she wanted.
     She’d had her fill in Mexico City in the hotel on Reforma. Sit in the room, drink
     Beefeater, go out for dinner, go back to the room and drink some more. No, thank you.
     That was no way to find excitement.
    She stayed on Carleton Boulevard until she found a cocktail lounge that looked inviting.
     It was air-conditioned, it had low ceilings and dim lighting, and it looked expensive
     enough to keep the riff-raff out.
    She went inside. She took a table on the side, asked the waiter for Beefeater and
     ice. Then she waited for something to happen.
    * * *
    Lily was on the road for twenty minutes before a car stopped. It was a flat, empty
     stretch of road, a chunk of Route 49 halfway between Dallas and El Paso. Desert country,
     dry and desolate. Her last ride had dropped her there, and she was beginning to wonder
     if maybe she hadn’t made a mistake taking the last ride. The driver had dropped her
     in this godforsaken middle of nowhere, said he was turning off another mile down the
     road. Maybe she should have waited for a ride clear through to El Paso.
    She was a small girl, just a few inches above five feet. She was seventeen. Her face
     looked about two years younger than that until you saw her eyes, which looked twenty-five.
     Her figure was petite but perfect. Chunky breasts pushed out the front of the short-sleeved
     boy’s shirt she wore, and neatly rounded hips filled the khaki slacks. On her feet
     she wore simple leather sandals that had been hand-made by a Negro leatherworker in
     San Francisco’s North Beach area. The sandals were very comfortable.
    North Beach, and S.F. She hadn’t started out there. She was a Denver girl who ran
     away from home three weeks after her sixteenth birthday, and S.F. was a natural place
     to stop running, and the Beach was a natural spot to grab for a home. She liked the
     area. She spent a year there, living here now and there now, meeting people and doing
     things. Her parents never found her. Maybe they didn’t look.
    A year in S.F. A year that didn’t age her face a day, but that turned her eyes from
     child’s eyes to woman’s eyes. A year that made her rock-hard inside. A year that taught
     her many things.
    Then she was hooked up with Frank, who was tight with Spider Graham. And then one
     day S.F. was too hot for the Spider. Spider, thin and tight-lipped and nervous, had
     robbed a liquor store with a toy gun. The rollers had a make on him and the Spider
     had to run. Frank was his friend, so Frank went with him. She was Frank’s steady lay,
     so she went too.
    They stole plates from a Cadillac and slapped the plates on a Ford and stole the Ford.
     They drove the hell out of the car, running south, skirting L.A., cutting out through
     Death Valley and across Arizona. The car died somewhere in the middle of