Chapter 5
There are people who say that the secret of human survival has been resiliency-the ability to adapt to any situation that will keep a human being alive despite incredible odds.
Lily Wharton was a human animal who had received enough abuse in her lifetime to make a total collapse seem inevitable. Lily Wharton was the kind of person that suicides are made from.
She had known nothing of human love, of kindness, very little of pleasure, except the solitary appreciation of the spring flowers, of the autumn colors, of the unsullied smile of a baby.
It had taken her all of her short life to find the nerve to leave home, to come to New York to seek something better that life had never even allowed her to glimpse. But New York had put her in the hands of a group of freaks who had terrified her, threatened her and raped her-again and again and again.
After her attempted escape, they had kept her tied to the bed, always with someone to guard her with a gun. And each of them, Billy Slade, Charlene, Fat Freddie, and now Neil Cassidy, the desk clerk, took their pleasure with her as they wished. There were times she wished she could free herself from the bonds which tied her to the bed when she was left alone-only so that she could hurtle herself out the window and find an end to her pain through suicide.
And then there were worse times-when the carnal pleasure she experienced at the hands of her captors made her feel a sense of shame and degradation she had never known before.
The carnival moved out of New York City and Lily went with it. They traveled upstate to Buffalo, then across the North through Detroit, St. Paul, then south to Kansas City and New Orleans.
Little by little, without realizing it, she no longer thought of escape. They tied her up less and less frequently and the first time she had a chance to escape-she didn't. She felt as if something were holding her there-ties of affection she could barely believe she felt.
She had been taken captive by freaks-but that was what she had always been. And in the strangest way, she began to feel at home.
"How did you get to be with the carnival?" she asked Charlene one day. "Didn't you ever want to get married and have a family and settle down."
"That's for squares, for marks," she said.
"I always dreamed," Lily confessed, "that somebody someone real nice and good looking like Billy," she blushed here for she did not want anyone to realize how she was beginning to feel about Billy Slade ... "that someone like that would fall in love with me." She blushed modestly. "I don't know why ... It was a corny dream. I thought someone would find something beautiful in me and love me and we would have a pretty house and kids, and I would bake cakes and make everyone happy." She was glowing as she remembered her dream and it touched even Charlene's tough old heart.
"Guys is interested in pussy, honey ... dreams like that..." her eyes drifted off ... "dreams like that are for little girls. I had 'em once, sure I did."
"You did?"
"Sure. See, my mother was a hooker. She was a rotten woman, always belting me ... I think I must've cried the first fifteen years of my life nonstop." She laughed ironically. "So I used to take myself to the movies on Saturday ... 25 cents... I remember... and I usedta watch all them beautiful movie stars in all them beautiful houses. Hah! Then, when I was sixteen, my mother pushed me out in the street. I hadda make a living and I didn't know about anything but hooking. So that's what I did. Didn't have no room in my brain no more for dumb dreams. Those guys that lived in pretty houses with their wives all came to me ... that's what they never showed in them Hollywood pictures."
"Well, how did you wind up in the carnival?"
"I'm too old to make a good living hookin' now... besides ... old pros don't live too long you know. And while life ain't been exactly soft for me, it's all there is honey.... So I hooked up with Billy Slade 'd known him since he was this high ... since h was a little kid ..."
Wow," said Lily. "I never really knew who you ere before."
'That's me honey. That's my story."
"Tell me about Billy," she asked shyly. "Hey, kid. Are you soft on Billy Slade?" Lily didn't answer. But she blushed clear up to her hairline. Suddenly Charlene's face grew grave. "Don't fall in love with Billy Slade," she said.
"You're only askin' for trouble if you do!"
"I don't care about him," said Lily.
"Yes you do. I been watching it happen all these weeks. Soon's he comes into the room, your eyes get all soft like a cow's. You better watch it. I'm tellin' you. I love Billy Slade, but he don't have a heart like other human beings. Money ... that's his one and only love."
"But why ... why is he like that. I mean, he's so handsome and he seems so sweet sometimes-when he's not angry."
"Honey, don't you know that's his con."
"W-what do you mean."
"He's a con, honey. All us carnival people are cons. Stick around long enough, you'll be one too."
"But sometimes ... when he makes love to me...
Charlene laughed loud and hard. "Makes love! Hah! That's rich! Love might as well be a word from Mars for all it means to Billy. Love. Hah! Hah! He fucks you baby, that's all. You better not forget that ... for your own good."
"But ... but sometimes he's so nice to me ... I could just melt inside."
"Sure he is. Like I said, it's his con. He cons women real good."
"But... but why?"
"Why," said Charlene. "Why?" She laughed again. "Who knows why anything. Ya want an answer, like I was a shrink or something.. . Okay. I'll give you one ... Now that I think about it, it makes sense. Maybe there's really something in all that psycho ... psycho-..."
"Analysis ..."
"Yeah... See, Billy's mother was a hooker too... they lived in my building up in Washington Heights, you know, near Harlem. Anyway, I never seen a kid love his mom as much as Billy Slade. Then one day she got into a fight with a Puerto Rican prostitute about the street they were both hustling. They were wrestling on the cold sidewalk, tearing each other's hair out, and then the P.R. whore pulls a razor blade out from under her tongue and slits Billy's mom's throat. The kid was watching this all frim the stoop of their house. An ambulance came but she bled to death on the way to the hospital. Billy was eleven. That night he climbed in the window of that Puerto Rican whore's apartment and stabbed her to death. That's Billy Slade. So don't go fantasizing no white picket fence around him, you dig?"
Billy Slade was getting drunk in a bar in the French Quarter with Fat Freddy and Neil.
"Shit, man," said Billy. "I tell you, I'm goddamn sick of bein' poor, and that's the truth... Goddamn sick of it ... Hey, baby," he called out to the waitress, eyeing her voluptuous body beneath her skin-tight uniform ... bring us some more beers, will ya."
"Everybody's poor," said Fat Freddie. "Ain't hardly no one's rich." In his dumb simplicity Fat Freddie often spoke more truth than anyone else.
"Aw, shut up," Neil told him. "What do you know?"
"No... Freddie's right," said Billy. "Ain't hardly no one's rich . .. But I don't wanna be rich like no Rockefeller ... just wanna make more money ... just a little more money ... buy me a nice car, instead of that funky old carny truck ..." He sighed. "Yeah. I'd buy me one of them Jaguar cars... shee-eeiiit! That's a hot little car."
"But I can't fit in them little foreign cars," said Freddie dolefully.
"Well, we'll buy you a special made car with a giant front seat, so's you don't have to ride in the back of the truck no more like you was cattle or something."
"Would ya... would ya really get me a special car if we all had money, Billy? Would ya?"
"Sure I would ... What about you Neil, baby? What would you do if you had money?"
Neil blushed. "If I tol' you Billy, you'd just make fun of me ..."
"Aw cut the shit... Hey!" he called out to the big-busted waitress again. "More beer, I said. Move that gorgeous ass of yours, honey!"
She placed a large pitcher of beer on the table and Billy poured out three glasses.
"Join us, honey?" Billy asked.
"No thinks, Romeo ... I seen your type before." And she walked away, swinging her hips as if to taunt them.
"So, Neil," said Billy wanting to have some fun at Cassidy's expense... "What did you say you'd do if you had some money ... It's good fairy time ... What's your wish?"
"Aw Billy, don't make me tell..."
"Come on," said Billy. "Tell Uncle Billy ..."
Neil was weak. It didn't take much manipulation to make him give up.
"Well," he said. "I get kinda lonely, sometimes ..."
"You got us for company, and that Lily broad for pussy ... even Charlene for a change of diet ... What the hell are you complainin' about..."
"You mean, if you had some bucks you'd just waste it on more pussy?"
"No, Billy, that's not what I mean." Neil looked frustrated at Billy's lack of understanding.
"Don't tell me you're tryin' to say you want a wife!" He howled with laughter. "A wife! A wife! Oh, Neil, you're really nuts. What guy in his right mind wants a wife ..."
Now Neil was embarrassed but he felt the need to defend himself. "You know, Billy, just someone to hold you at night, and listen to thunderstorms and go to the zoo."
Billy was howling with uncontrollable laughter now. "Thunderstorms ... hah! hah! hah! The zoo! Oh Neil, you crack me up. You just crack me up... I'm talking about makin' a few bucks and you wanna little nest... wit' little birdies too, I bet."
Neil was shamed into silence. But he had spoken the truth. He was a lonely man and he wanted a woman for company. That was the simple truth.
Just then three men in double-knit suits walked into the bar. Each of them was wearing a pair of white shoes, each of them had the identical short haircut, and each of them wore plaid jackets- though of a different material.
"Whoa ..." said Billy. "A couple of fine marks just walked through the door. "Now all we gotta do is figure the angle, and we can be rollin' in bucks..."
"Yeah," said Freddie, who always felt sad to call people marks.
"Yeah," said Neil, who knew no other way of life, and much preferred being on the road with the carnival to sitting behind a hotel desk.
"Got it," said Billy, thinking to himself. "That broad has been eatin' our food and stayin in our hotels, and now its time she paid her way." He got up from the table and approached the three marks.
"How do you do, gentlemen," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself ... I'm Billy Slade ..."
"Howdy," said the men. They each extended their hand in friendship.
"Sit down," said one of the plaid-suited men, whose head was almost totally bald. "Can we buy you a beer?"
"Many thanks ... many thanks ..."
"I'm Morris," said the bald-headed man ... and this here's Willie," he said, introducing a man with curly red hair and a choir-boy face, "and this clown, with the glasses who could use a Charles Atlas course ..." they all laughed here at what must have been a standard joke about their skinny friend ... "this here's Grover."
"Howdy do... pleasure to meet you gentlemen."
Then Morris leaned across the table. "Say," he asked Billy. "We're strangers here in town ... you don't perchance know where we could find a tasty bit of pussy do ya?"
Billy grinned. "I sure do," he said. "The best there is. This girl's no pro, you know ... so it'll cost ya plenty ..."
"How much is plenty," said Morris suspiciously.
Billy raised a speculating eyebrow. "Hundred apiece," he said. "And I guarantee an experience like nothing you've ever had before." A hundred apiece, he thought to himself, wouldn't buy no Jaguar, but it was noting to sneeze at either.
"That's a lot of money," said Willie, the redheaded middle-aged choir boy.
"Yeah," echoed Grover. "A lot of money."
"Oh, gentlemen," said Billy warming to his subject, "Let me ask you this... You all have wives, am I right?"
They all nodded.
They've gone a little too fat, their tits are sagging a bit, and they have headaches every night. And, when they finally do let you have a little nookie, they lay there like yesterday's white bread ..."
The men began to giggle.
"But we've had whores before," Morris said. "What's the big deal..."
This girl is just barely out of her teens."
"Yeah .. go on ..."
"She's never taken money for sex in her life ..."
The men were still looking at Billy with the suspicion of a used-car buyer.
"And she's built like a dream ... slim like a teenager, but with a pair of knockers that'd bring tears to your eyes ..."
"So ... ?" said Morris. "I still don't hear a hundred bucks worth of pussy ..."
Billy was thinking fast. "And," he said, not losing a beat... "she takes you all at the same time ..."
And Billy knew he had them hooked. Tell you what... for another hundred clear, you got all the liquor and-he leaned closer... "all the marijuana you need for a real good time ..."