The Judas Child Read Online Free Page B

short hair elongated around the curving bulb of every glass. And so, twenty little girls with shoulder-length auburn tresses moved their faces in tandem with Rouge as he swiveled his stool around to scan the room.
    Most of the tables were empty. Two women sat near the front window. One was a blonde, and the other was blonder. They both played catch-eyes with him, looking up and then dropping veils of thick mascara.
    Another woman interested him more, but this one had no face yet. As she moved across the floor, her slender hips rolled to a soft rock tune from the jukebox. Sleek chestnut hair hung down to her shoulders, making a straight line across the back of a creamy silk blouse. Her long black skirt ended a few inches above a pair of high heels.
    All the heads of the Susans in the wineglasses were nodding in appreciation. Rouge loved high heels.
    The woman sat down at a nearby table and showed him the curve of her left cheek, but no more. The slit of her skirt fell open to expose a long leg, a knee and a bit of thigh.
    Thank you, God.
    And she was wearing her own skin—no tinted stretch of nylon between his eyes and the white flesh—an ocular feast in winter. One high heel dangled at the end of her foot. The shoe fell to the floor, exposing unpolished, naked toes.
    Well, that’s it.
    He planned to give himself up without the customary token resistance. She could come and get him anytime she liked.
    The woman turned around to stare at him, and he couldn’t look away. Only two things could fascinate so; extreme beauty was one. But he was looking at the most grotesque face he had ever seen a woman wear in public. A jagged line ran down her right cheek in an angry red scar, twisting her lips up on one side and forcing her to smile with half her mouth.
    As she took in his reaction, the other side of her mouth also tilted up. Her pale gray eyes were unnaturally far apart, and the eyebrows were thick and dark, nearly meeting above a small, straight nose, her only perfect feature.
    She rose gracefully and walked to the bar. “Hello, Vanity,” she said, sliding onto the stool next to his.
    “Pardon?”
    “Well, you are vain, aren’t you?” She leaned toward him. “You’re a beautiful man, and you know it.”
    He liked the soft voice, but her eyes unnerved him. A neat trick of eye shadow made them seem even farther apart, set off to each side of her head, with a bird’s peripheral vision to encompass the whole room. Yet now she was focused on him; it was hypnotic and disorienting.
    When she spoke, the scar elongated and contracted. She leaned closer, forcing him to look only at her eyes, and he found some humor there.
    “It must be comforting,” she said, “to be in love with yourself. No fear of rejection—ever. You might be a coward. Who would know?” She sat well back on her stool, and now her lips were pulled up on only one side.
    At first, he didn’t know which end of her mouth to believe, and then he decided she must be laughing at him. “Can I buy you a drink?”
    She only nodded, and that was just a formality. He knew she had been expecting this as her due. He gathered that the scar had not interfered with the basic relationship of man to woman—the man still had to pay.
    “I’ll have what you’re having.” She passed his glass under her nose, testing the bouquet. “Cheap scotch and tap water.”
    Well, she was getting more interesting by the minute. He put up one hand to the bartender, pointed to his own drink and then to the woman beside him. While they waited for her glass to arrive, he never even tried to avoid looking at her scar. She seemed not to mind this, only smiling, indulging him, as if she were allowing a free peep show of her nude body.
    The woman had clearly mastered the art of makeup. Above the high collar of her blouse, the skin was colored with glowing good health from bottles of flesh and tubes of roses. But she had done nothing to minimize the mutilation of her face—quite the