I-I-VIII

“Hullo, Rosa,” I say. “Love the fresh meat.”

The black-haired beauty gives me a look that has been handed down through mankind’s generations ever since the first sailor took the first shore leave. I wouldn’t call Rosa a whore, but not because she isn’t one. She drops her chin and looks up at me through inch-long lashes. She beckons me to come inside. I do, dangling my dead cat. Scar-chin follows.

Rosa’s little white house is one big windowless room, four walls protecting the outside world from a woman it could never understand. Climbing roses, born and raised in the light of a thousand candles, coat three of the four walls with black-green leaves and blooms the color of a streetwalker’s lipstick.

“You be a good boy and wait your turn,” Rosa breathes at me. She rests a hand on Scar-chin’s shoulder and steers him towards the long rectangular block of basalt that sits at the center of her little domain. “Come along, Miguel, let’s have a look at you.”

Scar-chin -- Miguel, I suppose -- boosts himself up onto the altar and lies down so that he is perfectly framed by the drainage gutters. Rosa begins her inspection. She’ll buy any meat that can walk through her door, but what she’ll pay depends on how fresh it is and how long she has to wait for it. She strokes the dying man’s palm, looks into his eyes, runs her hand up under his shirt and over his belly. I take the time to reacquaint myself with the household saints.

I mentioned that three of Rosa’s walls are dripping with those niffy roses. The other is a mosaic of retablos, painted wooden icons. Ordinarily you’d want a to diversify your sacred portfolio for maximum effect -- have a shrine for the chap who looks after your money, and the one who’s in charge of your health, and the one who does your enemies a bit of no-good when they’re not looking, what? Not Rosa. The hundreds of painted figures, each of which enjoys its own row of votive candles, are all consecrated to the same woman.

Like every martyr’s retablo, these tell the story of both life and death. Where another saint might hold the executioner’s sword, this female stands amid licking flames. Her eyes and mouth are cross-hatched over, painter’s shorthand for a bit of pre-pyre needlepoint. The real artistry, however -- the bit that identifies her as Santa Rosa de Izquierda, patron of the Wicked Truth -- is in her sacred stigmata. The wounds in her hands and feet are great, toothy red mouths with lolling tongues. Her garment is slashed over her ribs. A single great and lidless eye stares from her belly.

Ah, Rosa. An egoist and a sentimentalist. It’s been a hundred lifetimes for her since the Catholic church gave up on killing her and just adopted her instead.

“Six hundred dollars,” Rosa declares. She helps Miguel to his feet and pulls out a self-inking rubber stamp. She grasps his lower jaw with one hand, and pops her mark onto his forehead. Long-timers who want a payday get her brand burnt into their hands; if Miguel’s getting ink, she plans on collecting in less than a week. That must be why she hasn’t tried to sell him any of her other services. He’s too ill to enjoy the body she’s currently wearing, and he doesn’t need a suit to be buried in because he isn’t getting buried. Rosa tucks the bills into the pocket of his jacket. “Take care of it now, yes?” she says. “Bring it back in one piece, or I find your soul and put it in a rat. Now, Spexy -- may I have my present?”

I wince a bit when she slinks up and slides a hand around the back of my neck. “What’s that? Sorry old girl, no time just now.” Rosa’s always gorgeous, but I’ve never taken her up on her various -- and believe me, they are extremely various -- offers of sensual delight. Bit of masculine chauvinism, I suppose; I don’t care to get too intimate with a body that’s had more than one owner. “Perhaps later, what?”

She stands on tiptoe and purrs in my ear. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”

“Oh, cripes, yes. Forgot.” Leave it to me -- only chap on the bally planet who could forget he’s carrying a former feline. “Here you are.”

I toss the stiff little thing in the air, aiming for the altar. Rosa springs for it, and grazes the tail with one red-lacquered fingernail. Instantly she stumbles and stops. Her eyes dull. She stands perfectly still, blinking occasionally.

The kitty, in the meantime, has righted itself in midair and landed lightly on all fours on the basalt surface. It licks its chops, and stretches with an enjoyment that’s almost pornographic.

“Well then,” I say, once Rosa’s done scratching away fleas that had almost given up hope. “Let’s do a little business, shall we? I’ve got to see dear brother Adrian tonight, which means I need threads and chemicals. If I’m not looking and feeling abso-fucking-lutely incredible at eight o’clock tonight, I’ll be dead by 8:45.”