Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [2]
“Don’t make me go anyplace. I hurt too much.”
“They can give you something for the pain. I’ll get a gypsy cab to take us. It’s only fifteen blocks.”
“I’m ashamed. ‘What happened to you?’ ‘Oh, my pimp beat up on me.’ In the morning I’ll go to my own dentist. You take me down to him in the morning. Otera on Canal. You call him up at nine-thirty in the morning and tell him to take me right away. Now hold the ice against my cheek.”
“Dolly, how do you know Geraldo won’t come charging up here?”
“Consuelo!” Dolly drawled her name in a long wail of pain. “Be nice to me! Don’t push me around too! I hurt, I want to rest. Be sweet to me. Give me a little yerba—it’s in my purse. At the bottom of the cigarette pack.”
“Dolly! You’re crazy to run around with your face bleeding and dope in your purse! Suppose the cops pick you up?”
“I had a lot of time to sort my purse when I was leaving! Come on, get it for me!”
She was fumbling through Dolly’s big patent leather bag, clumsy prying in another woman’s purse, when she heard heavy steps climbing. Men in a hurry. She froze. Why? Men ran up and down the steps of the tenement all night. But she knew.
Geraldo pounded the door. She kept quiet. In the bedroom Dolly moaned and began to weep again.
Geraldo hit the door harder. “Open the door, you old bitch! Open or I’ll break it down. Bust your head in. Corne on, open this fucking door!” He began kicking so hard the wood cracked and started to give way.
He would break it down. She yelled, “Wait! Wait! I’m coming!”
Not a door opened in the hallway. Nobody came to look out. She undid the locks and hopped back, before he could slam the door to the wall and crush her behind it. He strode in, thumping the door to the wall as she had known he would, followed by a scrawny older man in a buttoned-up gray overcoat and a hulking bato loco named Slick she had seen with Geraldo before. They all crowded into her kitchen and Geraldo slammed the door behind.
Geraldo was Dolly’s boyfriend. He had been a vendadero and done well enough, keeping Dolly and her little girl, Nita, from her marriage. But some squeeze in the drug trade had cut him off after he had been busted, although he had not ended up serving time. Now he made Dolly work as a prostitute, selling her body to all the dirty men in the city. He had three other girls that perhaps he had been running all the time on the side. Dolly made four.
Connie hated him. It flowed like electric syrup through her veins how she hated him. Her hatred gave her a flush in the nerves like speed coming on. Geraldo was a medium-tall grifo with fair skin, gray eyes, kinky hair—pelo alambre—that he wore in a symmetrical Afro. He was elegant. Every time her eyes grated upon him he was attired in some new costume of pimpish splendor. She dreamed of peeling off a sleekly polished antiqued lizard high-heeled boot and pounding it down his lying throat. She dreamed of yanking off his finger the large grayish diamond he boasted matched his scheming eyes and using it to slit his throat, so his bad poisoned blood would run out.
“Tía Consuelo,” he crooned. “Caca de puta. Old bitch. Get your fat and worthless ass out of my way. Move!”
“Get out of my house! You hurt her enough. Get out!”
“Not anything like I’m going to hurt that bitch if she doesn’t shape up.” The back of his arm striking like a rattlesnake, he shoved her into the sink. Then he strolled over to lounge blocking the bedroom door. Always he was playing in some cold deathshead mirror, watching himself, polishing his cool. “Hey, cunt, stop blubbering. I brought you a doctor.”
“What kind of doctor?” Connie shrieked. She had slid under his blow and caught only the edge of the sink. She cowered, half crouching. “A butcher! That’s what kind of doctor!”
“That bughouse taught you all about doctors, um?”
“You leave her alone, Geraldo! She wants to have your baby so bad, she can stay with me.”
“So you can cut it up, you nut? Now turn it off or Slick will bust your lip.” Geraldo leaned on the doorframe, lighting a