Read HCC 115 - Borderline for Free Online Page B

when he won than when he lost. Poker established necessary tensions. You couldn’t
     play when you were completely relaxed, because then the game didn’t matter enough
     to you. The tensions didn’t go away when the game was over. Instead, they transformed
     themselves into sexual tensions. These could be dispelled only by the possession of
     a woman’s body. All other forms of therapy—tranquilizers, liquor, sleep—were futile.
    Marty started the car, drove through the center of town to the border area. He drove
     across, parked the big Olds on one of the main streets. Otherwise, he knew, the kids
     would strip off the hubcaps, the radio, aerial, the side mirror. This was standard
     in Juarez, and on occasion, they jacked up cars and took the tires as well.
    He parked, locked the car, left it. He stopped at a tavern for a bottle of Dos Equis,
     the dark Mexican beer that was almost as good as the German stuff he had at home,
     and that cost him only twelve cents a bottle. He finished the beer and walked over
     by the plaza.
    The thing to do, he knew, was to head across the park to the whorehouse area. There
     were row upon row of cribs there, one-room shacks where the girls went around the
     world for a dollar and a half, but he was not interested in the cribs. There were
     other places, hazily disguised as night clubs and geared to con visiting nuns from
     Nebraska into thinking the clubs were just for dancing and drinking. In these places
     the girls were genuinely beautiful, and you paid them five dollars and made love to
     them on a clean bed. He would go home to Paso five dollars poorer and able, at last,
     to relax.
    But he was in no hurry. A prostitute was better than a girl like Betty, because with
     a whore you knew exactly where you stood, you bought something and you paid for it
     and that was all. With a whore, you didn’t have to worry about getting rid of her
     in the morning. With a whore it was just business, even if the Mex girls did put their
     hearts into it well enough to con you into thinking it was love. With Betty it would
     be a pain later on, and it was well worth a fast five bucks to avoid such pain.
    But a prostitute, while better than Betty, was several shades removed from Nirvana.
     What Marty Granger wanted was a girl he could respect and lay at the same time.
    Good luck finding one on the streets of Juarez. He was a gambler, but he was also
     a smart gambler. He did not draw to inside straights. Nor did he look for a respectable
     lay when he needed a piece so bad be could taste it.
    He passed the brunette almost without seeing her. No, he saw her—but the image didn’t
     really register until he was a few steps beyond her. Then he remembered the long black
     hair, the perfect legs that showed beneath the skirt, long legs crossed at the knee
     and delicately tanned. He remembered, too, that the brunette had been looking at something.
    He turned around and saw that she was looking at pornographic photos. Now some men
     might have been able to go on walking, and unless such men were homosexuals they were
     men with whom Marty would have been unhappy to play poker. They would have been able
     to run a bluff through the entire Tenth Army.
    So he stopped and said. “Well, hello. What have you got there?”
    And she said, “I’ve got filthy pictures here. Have a seat and have a look, friend.”
    He had a seat and a look. He had a look first at the pictures, and he had a look second
     down the front of the girl’s dress. He knew, instantly, that he was not going to find
     a prostitute. Any woman with this much poise was miles out of Betty’s class. Any woman
     with this much poise would be about eighteen times as exciting as a Juarez Five-Dollar
     Businessman’s Special.
    “I like this one,” she said, showing him a picture of a five-person orgy. “Ever do
     anything like this?”
    “Never.”
    “Neither have I. I had a husband up until a day or two ago, and it was rare enough
     to