"Ain"t kiddin". Like ta s.h.i.t my pants when I saw that. The Prince"a Beer throwin" "em back with Buster, Barry, Donny, and the rest of "em. I snuck out the back so"s he wouldn"t see. But I never would"a thunk in a c.o.o.n"s age that he was gay."

Lottie burst into a round of silent giggles, all the while shaking her head.

"What? You sayin" he ain"t? Then what"s he doin" drinkin" at the Spike? He"s gotta be queer."

Lottie just kept shaking her head, mouthing No he"s not, no he"s not!

Jiff gave her a stern look. "Don"t tell me you got it on with him!"

Lottie kept smiling, then grabbed a piece of candy off Jiff"s dresser and began to unwrap it.

"Hey! That"s my Chunky!"

Lottie gave him the finger, then opened her hand.

"Oh, right. Here." Jiff gave her a five-dollar bill. "Thanks."

Five bucks! Collier outraged. What a rip-off!

It just kept getting nuttier. This really is a different world. Collier slipped away and went back into the inn. His watch told him he only had fifteen minutes. I can"t ask Jiff to borrow his car when he just got done having a.n.a.l s.e.x with his SISTER, he lamented. Back in the lobby, Mrs. Butler"s old face beamed up.

"Got"cher self a hot date, huh, Mr. Collier?"

Unbelievable. "Actually, yes."

"Well I hope ya have a wonderful time." Mrs. Butler was clearly braless again, this time beneath a sleeveless snap-front blouse that shined iridescent pink.

"Thanks, Mrs. Butler."

Her pose at the desk proffered a wedge of creamy cleavage. Unbidden, Collier"s brain put a younger woman"s head on her shoulders. "Oh, I did want to ask. Are there any other towns nearby?"

"Oh, sure. Roan"s not ten miles west, and they got some nice restaurants there-"

"No, I meant-well, are there any poor towns nearby. Run-down, low-income areas? The reason I ask is because when I was coming back earlier, I saw these two young girls in the woods, and they simply struck me as not from around here. Like girls from a ghetto or something."

Mrs. Butler looked perplexed. An unconscious finger traced the edge of her blouse top. "None too many poor folk "cos here. Mostly just old money and ritzy tourist places."

"No trailer parks or anything like that, low-income housing?"

"No, you"d have to get out a speck for that...Two girls you say?"

"Yes. Sisters. They were playing by a ravine on the hill out here." The more Collier explained, the sillier he felt. What"s my point, anyway? "And, well, they had a dog-a little mutt-that looked like the one I asked you about earlier."

"I had Lottie"n Jiff look high"n low for any dogs that might"a snuck in but they didn"t find none," she said. "None"a the other guests seen it either."

When Collier thought of mentioning the other oddity-the sisters" reference to the finger clips-he suddenly determined: Forget it! "Never mind. It was just sort of odd. I was wondering something else, though. Do you...have a car I could borrow for a few hours?"

In the parking lot, Collier winced like someone who"d just discovered their fly open. Mrs. Butler"s "car" was a dented Chevy pickup truck that couldn"t have rolled off the production line after 1955. Rust riddled the flat-black paint like eczema. It looks like that hunk of s.h.i.t on the Beverly Hillbillies...He glanced, next, to the lime-sherbet Bug, sighed, and got into the truck anyway.

The dashboard had holes where most of the gauges should be. I asked for it, I got it, he reminded himself. He jammed the wobbly three-speed shifter, backed out of the lot, and headed for Cusher"s.

Whenever he looked in the rearview, he saw a sheen of blue smoke following him. Nothing happened when he turned on the radio. Another smart move by me. But at least on the main drag he got fewer looks of hilarity than his airport rental.

At the intersection, a tap on the gla.s.s startled him; then the pa.s.senger door was creaking open.

Dominique slid in.

"Hi! Right on time..." She a.s.sayed the vehicle"s interior. "Isn"t this the truck Mrs. Butler"s father bought to celebrate Eisenhower"s election?"

"I"m sure it is," Collier groaned. When he looked at her, though, he felt like someone in an inner tube floating at a sudden swell in the surf. Oh my G.o.d she"s so beautiful...

Dominique wore a white satin summer skirt with rosette accents and a lacy white bra-cami. The top ran down to just an inch above the skirt"s hem, providing a gap from which her navel could peek. She couldn"t have looked more cla.s.sily casual. Just below the hollow of her throat, the silver cross flashed.

Collier attempted an explanation. "My rental car looks-"

"Yeah, I heard. Some funky green thing like in a cartoon." She tossed her head, the predusk sunlight shining orange off each separate strand of hair. "But it"s actually kind of fun riding in a car this old. A whole lot of b.u.t.ts have sat on this seat."

Collier chuckled. "I never thought of it that way. Posterity measured by posteriors."

"So how was your day?" she asked, and seemed to be examining her nail polish.

Collier drove through town, frowning each time the truck hiccupped smoke. "Great," he lied.

"Get much work done on your book?"

"Oh, yeah," he lied again. What could he say? I got drunk in a gay bar, pa.s.sed out in the woods, then watched an act of incest. "The book"s nearly done, and I"m happy to say I"ll make the deadline. Speaking of which..."

At the next light, he extracted the permission form from his wallet. "All I need is you to sign this release. It gives me your permission to comment on your beer."

She signed it without even reading most of it. "This is wonderful. Now more people will know about it than these yokels-Oh, where are we going for dinner?"

Good question. "Since I"m new in town, how about you make the choice?"

"Do you like Korean?"

"Love it." Collier hated Korean cuisine. It always sat in his belly like a corrosive.

"Good. There"s a great little Korean joint at the edge of town. You"d think you were eating in Seoul it"s so authentic."

Don"t they eat dog in Seoul? Collier didn"t care-he was with her. They chatted about beer as he followed her instructions to a tiny restaurant squeezed between a hardware store and-Collier raised a brow-a dog salon. An aroma strong as a stench greeted them once they entered: spiced cabbage and lemon gra.s.s. But Collier knew it was a good sign that every other patron in the place was Asian. "The bulgogi is terrific," Dominique enthused at their booth, "but so is the bibimbop. I can never decide which to order."

"I happen to love both of those, too," Collier lied, "so why don"t we order both and split them?"

"You"re so accommodating!"

"And since we"re both beer sn.o.bs," he continued, "I guess it"s OB."

"I like OB with Korean food. It"s probably my favorite Asian beer that"s not brewed here on a license," she was quick to add. "Oh, and it"s great with rice."

You"re great with rice, Collier dopily thought. He couldn"t believe he"d been given this opportunity. As one of the most credible beer writers in the country, Collier never needed to be told that genuine brewmasters knew more about beer than anyone, including him. He gauged her plain but vibrant beauty as she perused the menu for appetizers. Why couldn"t I have met her ten years ago? he scorned himself. Why couldn"t I have NEVER met Evelyn and met Dominique instead? We"d be the perfect match. We have everything in common...

The glittering cross around her neck suggested otherwise.

When the waitress arrived with their beers, Dominique said, "Here comes my one beer of the day."

Collier sulked within himself. How many had he had today? Jesus..."I"ll have to try your method some time," he said. "That is if I have the willpower. That"s never been my strong suit."

"It wasn"t mine, either, until..." She half smiled and half smirked. "Sorry, I"ll shut up."

Collier didn"t get it. "What?"

"You"ll think I"m Holy Rolling you again."

"Go ahead and Holy Roll me."

"Okay." She took a sip of beer. "n.o.body has willpower, not on their own. G.o.d knows we have weaknesses that are destructive, so that"s why he gives us an out. I"m not just talking about salvation, I"m talking about the s.h.i.t we"ve got to bear while we"re here-"

I love it when she says s.h.i.t, Collier mused.

"Half the apostles were probably alcoholics and wh.o.r.emongers before they met Jesus. So what did they do?"

"I...don"t know."

"They gave their burdens to G.o.d," she said very casually, "and were freed. That"s what I did."

Collier unwrapped his chopsticks. "How do you give away a weakness?"

"Ask G.o.d, that"s all. And he"ll answer." She shook her head. "You should"ve seen me in college. I was an a.s.shole, I was a tramp. I couldn"t tell you how many sc.u.mbag guys I had s.e.x with. Every night was a party: beer, booze, dope, and s.e.x."

Her candid talk astounded him...and the gutter that was his mind tried to picture the scenario. It was thrillingly crude.

"I was so hungover in college," she admitted, "I don"t know how I ever graduated. Don"t know how I managed to not get pregnant, either. I"d read things about myself on bathroom walls, and the worst part was"-she shot him a cunning look-"they were all true."

Collier felt impacted and aroused at the same time.

"Then one day it occurred to me that I was letting my weaknesses destroy a child of G.o.d. So I asked G.o.d to relieve me of my burdens so that I could one day find salvation, and he did."

"Is it that simple?" Collier asked, then noticed that his own beer was half drained already. He knew he was only listening in part, but trying to act like she had his full attention.

"It"s not like rubbing a magic lamp and then the genie grants your wish, no. Look at it this way. G.o.d"s forgiveness is a million times bigger than our sins, so we"re covered. You just have to do some stuff in return."

Collier wanted to make out with her under the table, on the floor. In my case, he thought, G.o.d"s forgiveness would have to be TWO million times bigger than my sins. Suddenly his falseness seemed as solid as the chair he sat on. If human beings really did have auras, he knew that his was black with l.u.s.t. Say something, you moron..."Stuff in return? What kind of stuff? Go to church? Give to charity?"

"No, no. Deeper than that," she said. She crunched on some spicy bamboo shoots and pickled radishes. "That"s between you and G.o.d. But it"s like charging on your credit card. You have to pay for it someday. And declaring bankruptcy doesn"t cut it."

Her a.n.a.logies were interesting. He wanted to be engaging, he wanted to be involved with what enlivened her, but his l.u.s.t nagged at him. And that"s when the truth hit him, rearranging her own words: My l.u.s.t is a million times bigger than my desire to be forgiven...

Every time he looked at her bosom, his eyes were repelled by the cross, like a vampire.

"But enough of that," she said, beaming. "Here comes our dinner."

The waitress set down fragrant, steaming entrees. They"d also ordered a dish of squid flanks in scarlet hot sauce. "Be careful with that." She pointed a chopstick to the latter. "It"ll torch you up."

Collier was already torched up, by the l.u.s.t boiling over in his psyche, which only made him feel more fake, more despicable. She could pick a phony like me out in a crowd, he knew. The worst thing I can do is pretend...He tried a piece of some kind of sweet barbecued beef. "Great bibimbop."

"That"s bulgogi."

"Ah, of course. It"s been a while for me." The bibimbop looked like a hodgepodge of greens and meat submerged in broth, with a half-cooked egg on top. He tried some squid instead, which was tender, delicious, and- "Wow, that"s really-" He chugged his entire gla.s.s of water.

"I told you it was hot. It"s better to eat it with some rice."

Collier followed her lead with the food, eating it in the same way.

"So how was your lunch with the venerable J.G. Sute?"

"Do I detect sarcasm in your tone?" he asked after his mouth cooled.

"Just a tad," she laughed. "He"s a legend in his own time-just ask him. Actually he"s quite a nice man, and he does know more than anyone about this area"s importance during the Civil War."

"Well, his knowledge of regional history seems very detailed," Collier said. "But I wasn"t asking him as much about the war as I was-"

"About the house," she guessed. "And the legends. The cursed fields, the murdered slaves. The mansion of evil, and Harwood Gast and his railroad to h.e.l.l."

"Sute told me it was built privately by Gast, with his own funds."

"Funds that were never depleted, by the way," she added.

Collier remembered. "Oh, yes, he talked about that, too. So what did he pay his men with? They weren"t all slaves."

"No. The white workers on his crew were paid a small fortune, and the slaves were well clothed, well equipped, and well fed-all thanks to Gast"s money."

"So how did he buy the materials? All that track and railroad ties, spikes, tools, supply cars?"

"n.o.body knows." Dominique smiled. "Some say Gast sold his soul to the devil."

The word flagged him. "And you said that there really is a devil."

"Um-hmm."

"So if there really is a devil, maybe people really do sell their souls to him."

"People sell their souls to the devil every day, for a whole lot less."

Collier found that if he ate the food without looking at it, it was much less radical. When Dominique excused herself for the restroom, his gaze covered the back of her body as effectively as a paint roller. He ordered another beer from the waitress and had her take the other bottle after draining it, then drank the new bottle down to the first bottle"s level. Yeah, that"ll fool her, all right...

When he saw Dominique coming back, he dug his fingernails hard into his leg. Don"t look at her b.o.o.bs anymore, you s.e.xist pile of s.h.i.t! Instead, he sensed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s riding ever so slightly in the clinging cami-top.

"What were we talking about?" she asked. "Oh, yeah. Deals with the devil."