Free Airtight Willie & Me by Iceberg Slim Page B

pocked hideously with an ancient smog of nicotine. She was sleazed and greasy from the legions of junkie joy-poppers who had fouled her rotten with their shooting galleries.
    Oh, I was turned off. I despised her leeched-away glory. Her bed raiment was splotched and frayed. Her panoramic windows, once so clear as to be almost invisible, were now cracked and glaucomitized by soot and pigeon offal. They now afforded only a myopic view of Sixty-third Street’s festival of lights. My impulse was to desert her instantly. But, inexplicably, I could not. Even in her ruin, she held me captive!
    I used the phone to keep in constant touch with my girls in the cathouse salt mines. The loneliness in the bleak suite became almostunendurable. Since I was an escaped fugitive, I felt imprisoned in the suite.
    As the Christmas holidays approached, I was beginning to think it was a wrong move back to Chi. But I had Rachel, my youngest star, coming in to keep me company through the holidays. I sent the bell captain in my ride, camouflaged by counterfeit registration with plates to match. He delivered the package. He set her bags down and split.
    We embraced, and she kissed me with zest. But I saw her face spasm with disgust as she swept her emerald-flecked eyes about the pad. It was a comedown all right, from the glamorous high gloss of cribs prior to where I had headquartered.
    I took her to Milwaukee for a riotous several days of cabarets and parties. Too quickly, the holidays were over. To bypass loneliness, I decided to let her kick street mud on Sixty-third. I hoboed heroin’s express train to you know where for company while she was away humping from seven P.M . to four A.M . She was stand-up, four-square in my corner for almost a month. I mean, her bread was consistently up to par when she checked it in.
    Then one morning at dawn, quite a bit past her customary show time, I noticed an odd, preoccupied radiance about her. Now, I knew that the stem where she worked was infested with young ho masters. But I was Rasputin; well, at least Svengali.
    After all, I had liberated her from a third-rate greasy spoon and turned her out. I had transformed her from a grease-splattered chippie nobody into a chick and irresistible lure for tricks. But anyway, I couldn’t quiz her. I couldn’t tip any sucker emotional shit to her. That could blow her fast to one of the gaudy novices on the stem.
    The one morning, close to eight A.M., she pranced home, reeking of alcohol, and her head bad. Now, I won’t try to describe my agony on the ego rack waiting for that sugar-faced bitch. Let’s just say, my pain was inexpressible. Oh, I wasn’t in love or anything close to it. Itwas worse! I mean, I was threatened by the pimp chattel thing. The threat of losing her could maim my delicate ego at thirty-five.
    Well, anyway, I watched her from the bed in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. I glanced at the thick wad of bills she’d flung on the bed. Christ! It was short. Was she splitting my bread with some downy-cheeked peacocker? It was a helluva struggle not to cross-examine the truth out of her. She darted a culprit look my way in the mirror.
    I said, “Baby sis, the scratch is light . . . you feeling all right?”
    She shackled her breath for an instant. “Yeah, Daddy, I feel fine. The track was lousy slow all night. That fifty on the bed, I got from a trick an hour ago. Except for him, I’d a shot a blank.”
    I said, “Damn, baby, you’re a star. I better get on the phone now . . . Maybe I won’t put you down another night out there. . . . Why, it’s easy, I’ll cop you another gig in a top joint. . . . Maybe up at Grace’s in Montana.”
    I reached for the phone to test her.
    She whirled and pleaded, “Please, Daddy! . . . I just had a bad one . . . first I’ve had . . . Let me stay on the track