Songs of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

over if you want me to do you.”
    The man just says, “We’ve got time.”
    She thinks, It’s your money .
    Then the man says, “Do you believe in God?”
    She doesn’t say anything. She tries to read what he wants, give it to him. It is safest—and makes the most money—if you give the man what he wants before he asks. But he already asked, and she doesn’t know how to answer.
    â€œDo you,” he repeats, “believe in God?”
    She frowns, then says, “Do you want to fuck?”
    â€œLook,” he says, “I bought you for an hour. If I want you to answer my question, you’ll do it. Do you get it?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo. . . .”
    She remembers that once, long ago, she did believe, and still does enough to wear her mother’s cross. But that’s in memory of her mother, not Jesus. And it was two years and fifty lifetimes ago that her mother gave it to her, and now both Jesus and her mother are too far away to help. She says, “Yes, I believe—”
    He cuts her off. “Oh, I get it. You’re afraid I’m some sort of fundy and if you say you don’t believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for you I’ll spend the next hour trying to save your soul. Well, I don’t believe in souls. I’m a scientist, and so it’s against my religion to believe in superstitions.” He laughs at his own joke, then says, “It’s your body I want.”
    She doesn’t understand his joke. She says, “Should we stop here? We can go down this alley.”
    He reaches with his right hand into his shirt pocket, pulls out two more bills, and says, “Instead of buying an hour I’m buying two. Let’s go somewhere private.”
    She takes the money. “There’s a hotel on North Division, just a few blocks. We can get a room.”
    â€œA room? Where other men have fucked you? And even if they didn’t fuck you they fucked someone else and left their sperm on the sheets. It doesn’t wash out. It leaves traces even after cleaning. Do you think I want some man’s DNA all over me?”
    She doesn’t say anything.
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œWhere, then?”
    â€œSouth of town, a nice little park where we can get out of the car.”
    Again, she doesn’t say anything.
    â€œSo like I was saying, I’m a scientist. I look at things from a scientific perspective. That doesn’t mean I’m anti-Christian, though. That’s a mistake a lot of scientists make. The truth is that science and Christianity are two sides of the same coin.”
    She tries to look interested. If he wants to spend his money lecturing her, she’ll take the money. Maybe he’ll buy her something to eat.
    He continues, “Both of them are attempts to explain the universe, attempts to explain what is. They’re both articulations of systems of power. They both tell us how to live, how to experience the world, how to be in the world. They tell us how to relate to each other. Do you see?”
    â€œYes,” she says, wondering what science and what religion would cause a man to pay to fuck a woman, what science and what religion would cause another man to force a woman to have sex for money and to give that money to him. What sort of science and what sort of religion would cause people to value money over another’s freedom or happiness? What sort of science and what sort of religion would cause someone to want to wield such power over another? She says none of this, shows none of this on her face. There are very few men she does not hate.
    He says, “There’s one line from the Bible I’ve always especially liked, a line that says everything we need to know about the relationship between men and women. Do you know the Bible?”
    â€œI—” Her great-grandmother used to read the Bible to her.
    She no longer remembers much of it.
    â€œI read a lot of