To Make Death Love Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

about halfway to his belly
button.
    "Godamighty!" He
was staring at Paulette in the door­way. It was a double door. Even so, she was making it an
effort to squeeze through. "Jesus H. Particular Christ! I thought my Aunt Hattie was fat but I
never seen the like of that one."
    Paulette made it
through the door and moved over to the soft-drink case. It was the only thing in the room big
enough for her to sit down on.
    Will tugged at his
chin thoughtfully. Almost shyly he said, "Now what's that worth to you."
    The man, however,
wasn't listening. He was staring with no lessening wonder at Serena. She stood in the doorway,
framed there in the morning light, looking like something that had escaped from the land of
dwarves, trolls, and fairies.
    "She looks like a
big . . . like a big, white rabbit!" breathed the man. The flyswatter dropped from his
hand.
    He glanced back to
Paulette who, with incredible nim-bleness for one her size, hoisted herself up on the soft-drink
case and smiled ecstatically, as though she could feel the coolness beneath her through her
bloomers.
    "Are you over by
the gentleman who is talking, Will?"
    Serena said in her
honeyed voice. It was not really a ques­tion. She already knew.
    "I'm here, darling.
Come along. There's nothing in be­tween."
    Serena walked
hesitantly across the floor, unafraid but careful.
    "Godamighty!" the
man said again.
    It wasn't bad
enough that Serena had been born an albino, with no pigment in her skin and hair. Not curse
enough to be born with moon-pale eyes and gone blind to boot. The real horror was that nature had
given her a beautiful face. It had given her a long, graceful neck, like a column of shimmering
talc, and gave her a pair of breasts like white downy peaches and arms that were so
graceful—along with the perfectly formed hands at the ends of them it—made you want to weep.
Because that's where it all stopped. From the hips down, her legs were stunted, misshapen, and
thin as rails. The little baby shoes she wore on her feet made it all seem the more horrible,
somehow.
    "Now, what's that
worth to you, you cold-hearted son of a bitch?" Will said in the softest of voices, so that the
man couldn't really hear it all. He said it in a way that blamed the man for Serena and what she
was.
    Serena came over to
the counter and sat down grace­fully upon a stool. The counterman stared at her some more and
then looked at Will. The counterman hadn't been born yesterday. His eyes grew hard as
marbles.
    "You got some money
to pay for breakfast? No? Then get the hell out of my place," said the man, returning to himself
and to what he was.
    "Oh, it's yours, is
it. Mighty lucky man. Pretty well set up, you are. Other people," said Will pointedly, "are not
so lucky. See here, I'll make you a bargain."
    "Both parties have
to have something to make a bar­gain."
    Will handed Serena
the menu.
    "This poor girl
can't see. She's blind as a stone. You don't believe it? Test her any way you want to. Light a
match and poke it in her eye. Go on. Go on," urged Will.
    The man shook his
head.
    "Then if you
believe me, I'm going to show you a most wondrous thing. You think this poor creature's been put
upon by the Lord? Well, she has, that's clear enough. But He gave her a gift for the mistake He
made in the fashion of her. The tips of her beautiful fingers."
    The man looked down
at Serena's hands and beautiful they were.
    "The tips of her
beautiful fingers are so sensitive that she can read print with them. Not raised print like they
make for the blind. No sir, not those little dots. No sir. Common old print of the page.
Newspaper, book, or this menu she holds in her hand. Now the bargain's this," and here Will came
alive with new energy, for this was what he was all about. "If she can read the menu with only
the tips of her beautiful fingers, will you stand six poor wayfar­ers to a decent
meal?"
    "Six? Six of you?"
echoed the man