And this is important, too. Although we faced each other, the street had no lights, and the darkness had thickened enough that I couldn't see her features. For the first time since I'd arrived in town, I felt as if I was having a normal conversation. It wasn't hard to pretend, as long as I forced myself not to remember the horror of what she looked like.
I managed a shrug, a laugh of despair. "My car broke down. I'm stuck out there." Although I knew she couldn't see my gesture, I pointed down the pitch dark road. "I hoped you'd still be open so I could get something to eat."
She didn't answer for a moment. Then abruptly she said, "I'm sorry. The owner closed a half hour ago. I stayed to clean up and get things ready for tomorrow. The grill's cold."
"But just some beer? Potato chips or something?"
"Can't. The cash register's empty."
"But I don't care about change. I'll pay you more than the stuff is worth."
Again she didn't answer for a moment. "Beer and potato chips?"
"Please." My hopes rose. "If you wouldn't mind."
"While you spend the night in your car?"
"Unless there's a hotel."
"There isn't. You need a decent meal, a proper place to sleep. Considering the trouble you're in."
She paused. I remember the night was silent. Not even crickets sang.
"I live alone," she said, her cadence even more musical. "You can sleep on the sofa in the living room. I'll broil a steak for you."
"I couldn't," I said. The thought of seeing her face again filled me with panic.
"I won't turn the lights on. I won't disgust you."
I lied. "It's just that I don't want to inconvenience you."
"No trouble." She sounded emphatic. "I want to help. I've always believed in charity."
She began to walk away. Paralyzed, I thought about it. For sure, the steak sounded good. And the sofa. A hell of a lot better than sleeping hunched in the car.
But Jesus, the way she looked.
And maybe my attitude was painfully familiar to her. How would I feel, I wondered, if I was deformed and people shunned me? Charity. Hadn't she said she believed in charity? Well, maybe it was time I believed in it myself. I followed her, less motivated by the steak and the sofa than by my determination to be kind.
She lived three blocks away, on a street as dark as the one we'd left. The houses were still, no sounds, no sign of anyone. It was the strangest walk of my life.
From what I could tell in the dark, she lived in an old two-story Victorian house. The porch floor squeaked as we crossed it to go inside. And true to her word, she didn't turn on the lights.
"The living room's through an arch to your left," she said. "The sofa's against the wall straight ahead. I'll fix the steak."
I thanked her and did what she said. The sofa was deep and soft. I hadn't realized how tired I was until I leaned back. In the dark, I heard the sizzle of the steak from somewhere at the back of the house. I assume she turned the kitchen lights on to cook it, but I didn't see even the edge of a glow. Then the fragrance of the beef drifted toward me. Echoing footsteps came near.
"I should have asked how well done you like it. Most customers ask for medium rare." Her wispy voice sounded like wind chimes.
"Great." I no longer cared if she was ugly. By then I was ravenous.
In the dark, she cautiously set up a tray, brought the steak, bread and butter, A-l sauce, and a beer. Although awkward because I couldn't see, I ate amazingly fast. I couldn't get enough of it. Delicious couldn't describe it. Mouth-watering. Taste-bud expanding. Incredible.
I sopped up sauce and steak juice with my final remnant of bread, stuffed it in my mouth, washed it down with my final sip of beer, and sagged back, knowing I'd eaten the best meal of my life.
Throughout, she'd sat in a chair across the room and hadn't spoken once.
"That was wonderful," I said. "I don't know how to thank you."
"You already have."
I wasn't sure what she meant. My belly felt reassuringly packed to the bursting point.
"You haven't asked," she said.
I frowned. "Asked what? I don't understand."
"You do. You're dying to ask. I know you are. They always are."
"They?"
"Why the people here are horribly deformed."
I felt a chill. In truth, I had been tempted to ask. The town was so unusual, the people so strange, I could barely stifle my curiosity. She'd been so generous, though, I didn't want to draw attention to her infirmity and be rude. At once, her reflection in the mirror at the BAR-B-CUE popped up terribly in my mind. No chin. One eye. Flat slits where there should have been a nose. Oozing sores.
I almost vomited. And not just from the memory. Something was happening in my stomach. It churned and complained, growling, swelling larger, as if it were crammed with a million tiny darting hornets.
"Sins," she said.
I squirmed, afraid.
"Long ago," she said, "in the Middle Ages, certain priests used to travel from village to village. Instead of hearing confessions, they performed a ceremony to cleanse the souls of the villagers. Each member of the group brought something to eat and set it on a table in front of the priest. At last, an enormous meal awaited him. He said the necessary words. All the sins of the village were transferred into the food."
I swallowed bile, unaccountably terrified.
"And then he ate the meal. Their sins," she said. "He stuffed himself with sins."
Her tone was so hateful I wanted to scream and run.
"The villagers knew he'd damned himself to save their souls. For this, they gave him money. Of course, there were disbelievers who maintained the priest was nothing more than a cheat, a con man tricking the villagers into feeding him and giving him money. They were wrong."
I heard her stand.
"Because the evidence was clear. The sins had their effect. The evil spread through the sin-eater's body, festering, twisting, bulging to escape."
I heard her doing something in the corner. I tensed from the sound of scratching.
"And not just priests ate sins," she said. "Sometimes special women did it too. But the problem was, suppose the sin-eater wanted to be redeemed as well? How could a sin-eater get rid of the sins? Get rid of the ugliness. By passing the sins along, of course. By having them eaten by someone else."
"You're crazy," I said. "I'm getting out of here."
"No, not just yet."
I realized the scratching sound was a match being struck. A tiny flame appeared. My stomach soured in pulsing agony.
"A town filled with sin-eaters," she said. "Monsters shunned by the world. Bearable only to each other. Suffering out of charity for the millions of souls who've been redeemed."
She lit a candle. The light grew larger in the room. I saw her face and gaped again, but this time for a different reason. She was beautiful. Stunning. Gorgeous. Her skin seemed to glow with sensuality.
It also seemed to shimmer, to ripple, to -
"No. My God," I said. "You put something in my food."
"I told you."
"Not that foolishness." I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn't respond. My body seemed to expand, contract and twist. My vision became distorted as if I peered at funhouse mirrors. "LSD? Was that it? Mescaline? I'm hallucinating." Each word echoed more loudly, yet seemed to murmur from far away.
I cringed as she approached, growing more beautiful with every step.
"And it's been so long," she said. "I've been so ugly. So long since anyone wanted me."
Reality cracked. The universe spun. She stripped off her uniform, showing her breasts, her… Her body was…
Despite the torture in my stomach, the insanity of my distorted senses, I wanted her. I suddenly needed her as desperately as anything I'd ever coveted.