Good Samaritan

She was beautiful. She was a belly full of burgers, or chicken wings, or fruits and vegetables when she thought he needed some balance. She was brown hair and doe’s eyes, wrapped in a long black trench that was always wrapped tight. He knew she had curves underneath, but it seemed unholy to ponder them. Sacrilegious. Pissing on a statue of Mother Theresa.

It was clockwork. Every evening before her shift she came to him. A vision in heels and lightly applied makeup. She didn’t belong where he was. She’d tarnish her wings, he knew, walking down his alley. His buddies, all booze and days-old stubble, all newspaper stuffed in their shoes, shot her lecherous looks. He loathed them. He was one of them and he loathed them, like a man hating his own face.

The food was always fresh, always warm. She came rain or shine. She came in sleet and hail. Sometimes she’d stay a while, chat a while. He knew her name was Susan, but that never sunk in. She was more than that. She was bigger. She was surely something divine, and whenever she spoke to him he felt the urge to grovel at her feet.

Then one day she stopped coming. Despite what some might think, his heart dropped because she wasn’t there, not because he didn’t get the food. Something came up, he told himself. Something important had kept her away. He didn’t resent her. He was sure she’d be there the next day.

Or the next.

Or the next.

It was the headline that told him. The headline inside the glass box, glaring out at the world. Her picture there, smiling, her hair down around her soft face. He spent precious change on that picture, on that paper. He pulled it out and stumbled down the street, fingers gauging into the passionless ink. A stripper, they’d said. Had an unruly customer. He strangled her to death. Such a pity, such a pity, such a pity. With each and every word he could see the subtext. She deserved it. She was a whore. Served her right for putting herself on display. A decent girl would have been more careful.

She danced with the devil now.

They all wore black at the funeral. Their faces were the same, like the faces in the alley, passive with glazed eyes. They were bored. Bored at the speeches, bored as the Priest told them to Hail Mary and raised his hands towards the stained glass. Their noses wrinkled. They smelled him, infringing on their perfume, rot against the frankincense. Their heads swiveled as one as he walked down the aisle. The Priest with his glaring eyes clenched his fist around his rosary beads.

This is a private occasion.

I understand.

This is for friends and family.

I am her friend. I am her brother.

I must ask you to leave.

It is my right to pay respects.

The casket was open. She was Snow White, innocent and pure, victim of the bite from a cursed apple. The world had crammed that poison down her throat. It did not understand beauty. It did not understand kindness.

They whispered behind him. Called him a lover. Tittered that she must have fucked him out of money. Fucked him dry.

White noise. He laid his flowers down beneath her folded hands. Wild flowers, the roots still showing, spreading over her chest as though they would move deep and give life. They didn’t. He stared, and brushed her hair aside to kiss her brow.

And the angel went back home again.