Free The Hustler by Walter Tevis Page A

collar that came up to her ears. Her hands were jammed into her pockets; she looked sleepy. But one thing he noticed well; she was wearing more lipstick, and her hair was carefully combed. Somehow he felt nervous; she looked good.
    For a moment he felt a tinge of panic. She would sit somewhere else and he would be left feeling like a fool. But she didn’t. She came, limping over toward him, sat down, and said, “Hi.”
    “Hello,” he said, and then grinned. The grin, this time, was not part of the hustle. He felt it. “Waiting for a bus?”
    “That’s right,” she said, settling down into the seat, her hands still in her pockets as if she were badly chilled. “Leaves at six o’clock.”
    “Couldn’t sleep?” he said.
    “God no.” She was becoming more expansive. “Did you ever wake up in an empty apartment at 4 A.M. and hear a Greyhound bus shifting gears outside your windows? Were you ever so wide awake that you thought you could never sleep again? Until you got out of bed, and felt like you were going to pass out?”
    He grinned at her. “No.”
    She shrugged her shoulders. Then she said, “My name—you may not believe this—is Sarah.”
    “Eddie. What do you do for a living, Sarah?”
    She laughed lightly. “By trade, I drink. Also a student, at the university. Economics. Six hours a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
    That did not seem right. “College student” to him meant convertibles and girls with glasses. Nor did he think of college people sitting alone at night in places like this one. They were supposed to come in groups, singing, drinking beer—things like that.
    “Why economics?” he said.
    She smiled. “Who knows? To get a Master’s degree maybe.”
    He wasn’t sure what a Master’s degree was; but it sounded impressive enough. The girl was obviously an egghead type, which was fine. He liked brains, and he admired people who read books. He had read a few himself. “You don’t look like a college girl,” he said.
    “Thanks. College girls at the university never do. We’re all emancipated types. Real emancipated.”
    “I don’t mean that—whatever it means—I mean you don’t look young enough.”
    “I’m not. I’m twenty-six. I had polio once, and missed five years of grade school.”
    Immediately he had an image of her as a little waxy girl on a poster, the kind of cardboard gimmick that sits by a collection jar on the counter of a poolroom, next to the razor blades.
    “You mean braces and crutches and wheel chairs; all that?” His voice was not being particularly sympathetic; merely interested. Seeing her that way was like a look into a strange world he had heard of but never seen, had hardly felt existed save on the posters in drugstores and poolrooms. And once he had seen a movie trailer, where they had turned on the lights and tried to hustle him for his pocket change. He remembered wondering if the sick little kids in the movie knew they were being put on the make when the man had come around to take their pictures.
    “Yes,” she said, “all that. And books.”
    She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Look, let’s have another cup of coffee. It’s still an hour until six.”
    There it was, his opening. He suddenly felt nervous again, and cursed himself silently for feeling that way. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said.
    She looked at him quizzically. Then she said, “I think I know what that means. Only I’m not going.”
    He tried to grin. “I didn’t expect you to. I’m meeting you halfway. I’ve got a pint of Scotch in my pocket.”
    Her voice immediately became cold. “And you want me just to step out in the alley, is that it?”
    “No,” he said. “Hell, no. You know better than that. Right here.”
    She looked at him a moment, then shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. “Can this be done?” she said. “Legally?”
    “I thought you were an old hand.” He slipped the bottle out of his pocket, under his coat, down to the seat