Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

what I want, he asks me again. I nod. I don’t know exactly

what he wants. I think in precise acts. I am going to write this

prescription now, he says, and give it to you now, he says, but

the next time you come, he says, you be sure you remember

what I want from you. I nod. I am surprised, a little confused.

I thought because he was a junkie he would want money. He

doesn’t ask for any money. I have in my pocket all the dollars

we have. He gives me the script. He kisses my hand. I don’t

want to have to go back.

*

N has on her most flamboyant scarf, like a headband. She is

carefully dressed: flare pants, a silk blouse A has bought for

her, a belt fastidiously buckled. She has gone over the details

of her appearance a hundred times. She is tired. Her face is

drawn and dirty. Her eyes are lined with black, there are deep,

dark circles under them. She is very thin. She is in constant

movement, mostly examining herself, much motion to little

purpose. She twitches with nerves on edge. A is in his usual

dark coat. It is a hot night. I am going to stay with R, not to

be alone and to be near a phone. A has thought of a way to

help us. He and N are going to rob a store: a boutique to be

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precise. N has some tools in a bag embossed with her last

name. I tell her not to use the bag. I say perhaps they should

not do this. It has been decided. N will call me when it is

done. Our phone is still dead. No one stays there alone. I will

be with poor R who does not know this is happening.

They go, I go. The hours pass. The night is long. A call

comes about 4 am. N is on her way to the Women’s House of

Detention. She will be arraigned in night court.

Night court is interminably dreary and hopeless. The halls

of justice are wide and dreary, the benches are wooden and

hard: after an hour or so, a group of women is brought out:

hookers and N, her scarf too high on her forehead, marking

how many times she has rubbed her hand across her head,

rubbed it back and forth, rubbing off sweat or as a nervous

gesture. She is exhausted by now, but she can’t sit still, even at

the head of this awful room where she waits with the others.

The others are mostly black with bouffant hairdos and vinyl

miniskirts and bare shoulders and nearly bare chests. The

others wear heavy, shiny makeup and high-heeled shoes. A

Legal-Aid lawyer comes over to me, N has pointed me out:

don’t worry, he says, she will only do six months. I am like a

demon possessed. She will not have to go to that prison, not

this night, not ever, I will not have her there. Bail is set at $500

and there are two hours before she will arrive there, go through

the maze of jails and holding cells and end up there, to be

strip-searched and raped by hands, by speculums, by doctors,

by police, by prisoners. I am in a frenzy. Bail bondsmen galore:

I go to them one after another: I call up everyone for money: I

get her out: I take her home. I go to an old friend who helped

me when I was in jail: she calls a lawyer who used to be a

prosecutor: he demands $2, 000 but she won’t do six months,

she won’t do shit. All this happens before I give a thought to

A. He eventually gets two years. He protects her. He was a

friend. Let’s hear it for that sweet pimp. We have a lot of

money to raise: have to get back to business. Can’t afford to

be squeamish.

*

The boutique, it turns out, belonged to a former lover of his,

and she is pissed. She wants him prosecuted, won’t budge. N

could have gotten away, she chatted with the police for a while

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before they realized anything was wrong: but didn’t: wouldn’t

leave A there alone. He does two years, doesn’t implicate her

at all. We need money.

*

No more squeamishness about the streets. No more timidities.

*

Especially we try to borrow money, because we need it fast:

from old school chums: it brings rich women back near us:

near us: but we are too used, too disreputable now, for them

to want to be that close: they help a little: they eat while we

beg for coffee with hungry eyes: sometimes we get coffee. It is

bitter: school chums: rich school chums: keep N out of jail.

*

A is gone from this time on. We don’t raise bail for him. We

don’t go to court. We owe him. N is free. But we don’t think

about it now. We forget about him altogether.

*

We never sleep at the same time: one of us always has a knife.

We eat speed. We pick up tricks as fast as we can find them.

We drink as much as we can as often as we can: shot at a time

now, can’t buy our own bottles. The pace is fast. The fucks

are fast. There is no time for style or pretense. We don’t look

around, ahead, behind.

We have been going four days straight: drink, speed, fuck,

hustle, no sleep: the last night we took acid for R & R : we

walked a hundred miles in the city and rolled in the sewers:

the sun burns: we walk: we pick up what we can: bodies are

giving out, tired: we are on our way home: we get home: she

sprawls out on the mattress, I sit across the room: suddenly

she says, I see something big and black crawling on you: I say,

shit N it’s the acid you just aren’t down yet: she is quiet: she

says, I fucking see them all over: and she is right: they are all

over: huge water bugs the size of small fists: crawling

everywhere: crawling all over us, all over the room, all over

the walls. We run out into the night screaming, trying to rub

them off us, feeling them all over us, inside our clothes,

up our legs, in our hair: we keep shaking ourselves not knowing

where they are on us, can’t get clean, we are exhausted, we

must sleep, no matter how much we tell each other they aren’t

on us we can’t believe it, we keep inspecting each other but

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can’t stand still long enough to really look, we keep hopping

down the streets kicking and scratching and twisting and

turning, we feel them creeping and crawling, we bang on poor

R ’s door, she lets us in, we vibrate from the acid for days.

*

An exterminator has put a pink powder all around the storefront. The water bugs now crawl around all pink. It is a spectacular effect. Eventually they die but nothing keeps them

out. Especially they drown in coffee cups. The neighbors say

they are coming back. Hey puta we coming. There is no money.