Bartender

"Don't expect any."

She nodded angrily, as if this show of wealth, even at her benefit, incensed her. But she took his gold, and a moment later the hamburgers came on a cloudy plate, still red around the

edges.

"Do you have salt?"

She gave it to him in a little crock she took from underneath the bar, white lumps he'd have to crumble with his fingers.

"Bread?"

"No bread." He knew she was lying, but he also knew why and didn't push it. The bald man was staring at him with cyanosed eyes, his hands clenching and unclenching on the splintered and carved surface of his table.

His nostrils flared with pulsating regularity, scooping up the smell of the meat. That, at least, was free.

The slayer began to eat steadily, not seeming to taste, merely cutting the meat apart and forking it into his mouth, trying not to think of what the cow this had come from must have

looked like.

Threaded stock, she had said. Yes, quite likely! And pigs would dance the commala in the light of the Peddler's Moon.

He was almost through, ready to call for another beer and wrap a smoke when the hand fell on his shoulder.

He suddenly became aware that the room had once more gone silent, and he tasted tension in the air.

He turned around and looked into the face of the man who had been dozing by the door

when he entered.

It was a horrible face. The odor of the devil grass was a grade miasma.

The eyes were damned, the staring, gazing eyes of one who sees but does not see, eyes ever turned inner to the sterile hell of dreams beyond control, dreams unleashed, risen out of the stinking swamps of the unconscious.

The lady behind the bar made a small moaning tone.

The cracked lips squirmed, and lifted, revealing the green, mossy teeth, and the slayer thought: He is not even smoking it again. He's munching it. He is indeed munching it.

And on the heels of that: He's a lifeless man. He should have been dead a year ago.

And on the heels of that: The ebony man did this.

They stared at each other, the slayer and the man who had gone around the rim of madness.

He spoke, and the slayer, dumbfounded, heard himself addressed in the High Speech of Gilead.

"The gold for a favor, slayer-sai. Just one? For a pretty."

The High Speech. For a moment his mind forbade to track it. It had been a year...God! centuries, millenniums; there was no

more High Speech; he was the last, the last slayer.

The others were all . . .Numbed, he reached into his breast pocket and produced a

gold piece.

The split, scabbed, gangrenous hand touched it, fondled it, and held it up to reflect the greasy flash of the kerosene lanterns.

It threw off its proud civilized glow; golden, reddish, bloody.

"Ushhhhhh!. ." An inarticulate sound of pleasure.

The old man did a weaving turn and began moving back to his table, holding the coin at eye level, wiggling and flashing it.

The room was emptying quickly, the batwings going madly back and forth. The piano player closed the lid of his instrument with a bang and exited after the others in long, comic opera strides.

"Bosz!" the lady screamed after him, her voice an odd mixture of fear and shrewishness, "Bosz, you come back here!

Goddammit!" Was that a name the slayer had heard before?

He thought yes, but there was no time to contemplate upon it now or to cast his mind back.

The old man, meanwhile, had gone back to his table. He spent the gold piece on the gouged wood, and the dead-alive eyes followed it with empty fascination.

He spun it a second time, a third, and his eyelids drooped.

The fourth time and his head settled to the wood before the coin stopped.

"There," she said gently, furiously. "You've driven out my trade. Are you satisfied?"

"They'll be back," the slayer said.

"Not tonight they won't."

"Who is he?" He signaled at the weed eater.

"Go fuck yourself. Sai."

"I have to know," the slayer said patiently.

"He—"He talked to you funny," she said. "Scot never talked like that in his life."

"I'm looking for a man. You would know him."

She stared at him, the anger dying. It was replaced with speculation, then with a high, greasy gleam, he had seen before. The rickety building ticked thoughtfully to itself.

A dog barked noisily, far away. The slayer waited.

She saw his knowledge and the gleam was replaced by hopelessness, by a dumb need that had no mouth.

"I thought maybe you know my price," she said. "I got a sensation I used to be able to take care of, but now I can't."

He looked at her steadily. The scar would not show in the dark. Her body was lean enough so the desert and grit and grind had not been able to fade everything.

And she'd once been cute, maybe even beautiful.

Not that it mattered. It would not have mattered if the grave beetles had nested in the arid blackness of her womb.

It had all been written. Somewhere some hand had put it all down in ka's book.

Her hands came up to her face and there was still some juice

left in her—enough to weep.

"Don't look! You don't have to look at me so mean!"

"I'm sorry," the slayer said. "I didn't mean to be mean."

"None of you mean it!" she cried at him.

"Close the place up and put out the lights."

She wept, hands at her face. He was glad she covered her face with her hands.

Not because of the scar but because it gave her back her maidenhood, if not her maidenhead.

The pin that held the strap of

her dress shone in the greasy light.

"Will he steal anything? I'll put him out if he will."

"No," she whispered. "Scot don't steal."

"Then put out the lights."

She would not remove her hands until she was behind him and she dimmed the lamps one by one, turning down the wicks and breathing the flames off.

Then she took his hand

in the dark and it was warm. She led him upstairs. There was no light to hide their act.