The title of this bald and brutal story is about as euphemistic as it gets. “There are lots of girls like Mildred,” goes its more characteristic first sentence, “homeless, yet never without a roof – most of the time the ceiling of a hotel room, sometimes that of bachelor digs, of a yacht’s cabin if they’re lucky, a tent, or a caravan. Such girls are bed-objects, the kind of things one acquires like a hot water bottle, a travelling iron, an electric shoe-shiner, any little luxury of life … they are interchangeable.”
Terms defined, Highsmith proceeds to chronicle Mildred’s life, from her leaving home at fifteen to “the danger age” of twenty-three at which the value of a woman in her line of work diminishes. “Want[ing] to continue the same life but with a greater sense of security”, she attaches herself to wealthy, jet-setting Sam Zupp, who provides her with everything but that one big “nest egg” she needs to retire and escape this grim existence. If you’ve read any other of Highsmith’s Little Tales of Misogyny, in which disturbing book this story was collected, you’ll know not to expect a happy ending.
First published in a German translation as part of Kleine Geschichten für Weiberfeinde, Diogenes Verlag, 1975. The collection came out in English under the title Little Tales of Misogyny, Heinemann, 1977 – and reissued as a Virago Modern Classic in 2014. This particular story was published in the New Review in August of the same year
A Personal Anthology 