Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Michael McDowell Page A

attention to the insults that were directed at her by the gaudily dressed women who lounged in the ground floor windows of the whorehouses along the way. These prostitutes might direct a remark at anyone who came within their sight, but they seemed to take particular umbrage at this well-dressed, well-deported woman, who could pass for a lady but for the very fact of her being on such a street at such a time.
    Her amber spectacles had been removed and her white-gloved hands with the numerous rings she kept tight within her muff, to deflect attention from herself, but her carriage and her habit stood forth plainly in that street of license and dishabille. She was spoken to by several gentlemen, but their flattering remarks she ignored as studiously as she had the insults. One tall, drunken, bearded gentleman in a long fur coat placed his hand on her arm and wondered thickly if she were in need of protection for the remainder of her journey home—he would be honored to serve as her escort.
    “Pardon me,” replied Maggie, in a voice that charmed him when it was meant only to discourage. She broke away and continued down the street, but he lurched after, undaunted. She did not hurry her pace, but a few numbers down, turned suddenly into a small drugstore, which was placed between two of the cheapest whorehouses on the street—a favorable location since the bulk of the apothecary’s business was with the prostitutes. Women who could not afford Daisy Shanks came to him for remedies for unwanted pregnancies, and he dealt in substantial quantities of opium, chloroform, and morphia.
    The gentleman hard upon Maggie’s heels did not follow her in, for he was not so drunk that he forgot the danger often attendant upon a gentleman’s entering a store alone. He crossed the street, walked a space, crossed the street again, and then lounged outside the door, waiting for Maggie to emerge. But standing there, he was so much taunted by the women hanging out the windows of the neighboring establishment that he gave over the game and stumbled away, out of reach of their shrill abuse.
    In the drugstore, which was neither larger nor brighter nor appreciably cleaner than Lena Shanks’s pawnshop, three fat, gaudy whores, whose vermilion lay half a dollar deep upon their cheeks, huddled at a small low table, on which stood three large glasses of absinthe. There was a short candle jammed in the mouth of a bottle and its guttering flame shining through the liquid in their glasses cast green shadows onto their pallid, pudgy hands. Their gossip hushed when Maggie entered and they watched her closely and with evident mistrust.
    The shop was run by a young man whose hair had fallen out, whose skin was scarred with the smallpox, and whose eyes worked at cross purposes.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said slyly to Maggie, “what can I get for you?”
    “Powdered opiate,” replied Maggie. “Three ounces.”
    “Twelve dollars,” the druggist replied and, plucking out of a little wooden box his one- and two-ounce weights, dropped them onto one side of his scales. Then from a large jar filled with white powder he measured the opium, slipped it into a pink envelope, and slid it across the counter to Maggie. “Can’t sleep?” he inquired in an oily voice. “Bad dreams? Pain in the tooth?” Mischievously he had listed the common lies of the addict.
    “No,” replied Maggie, coolly, handing him the money in notes and silver, “it’s for my aged mother who is dying of a cancer of the breast.” There was some sharpness in her voice, as though she expected him to disbelieve her and did not care what he thought. The druggist’s leer abandoned him as he stared at the jewels on her white-gloved hands. But almost immediately the red and green jewels, the white hand, and the pink envelope disappeared beneath the blue cloak. Maggie plunged out of the shop, not even hesitating at the door to see whether the gentleman in the fur coat lay in wait for her.
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