Gerald's Game(33)

I wonder if they have Direct Bed Service for handcuffed ladies, Jessie thought. Maybe with George Will or Jane Bryant Quinn or one of thoseother pompous old poops to turn the pages for me-handcuffs make doingthat so dreadfully difficult, you know.

Yet below the sarcasm, she felt a species of odd nervous wonder, and she couldn't seem to stop studying the purple card with its let's-have-a-party motif, its blanks for her name and address, and its little squares marked DiCl, MC, Visa, and AMEX. I've beencursing these cards all my life-especially when I have to bend over andpick one of the damned things up or see myself as just another litterbug without ever guessing that my sanity, maybe even my life, might dependon one someday.

Her life? Was that really possible? Did she actually have to admit such a horrid idea into her calculations after all? Jessie was reluctantly coming to believe that she did. She might be here for quite awhile before someone discovered her, and yes, she supposed it was just barely possible that the difference between life and death could come down to a single drink of water. The idea was surreal but it no longer seemed patently ridiculous.

Same thing as before, dear-slow and easy wins the race.

Yes... but who would ever have believed the finish-line would turn out to be situated in such weird countryside?

She did move slowly and carefully, however, and was relieved to discover that manipulating the blow-in card one-handed was not as difficult-as she had feared it might be. This was partly because it was about six inches by four-almost the size of two playing cards laid side by side-but mostly because she wasn't trying to do anything very tricky with it.

She held the card lengthwise between her first and second fingers, then used her thumb to bend the last half-inch of the long side all the way down. The fold wasn't even, but she thought it would serve. Besides, nobody was going to come along and judge her work; Brownie Crafts Hour on Thursday nights at the First Methodist Church of Falmouth was long behind her now.

She pinched the purple card firmly between her first two fingers again and folded over another half-inch. It took her almost three minutes and seven fold-overs to get to the end of the card. When she finally did, she had something that looked like a bomber joint clumsily rolled in jaunty purple paper.

Or, if you stretched your imagination a little, a straw.

Jessie stuck it in her mouth, trying to hold the crooked folds together with her teeth. When she had it as firmly as she thought she was going to get it, she began feeling around for the glass again.

Stay careful, Jessie, Don't spoil it all with impatience now!

Thanks for the advice. Also for the idea. It was great-I really mean that, Now, however, Id like you to shut up long enough for me to takemy shot. Okay?

When her fingertips touched the smooth surface of the glass, she slid them around it with the gentleness and caution of a young lover slipping her hand into her boyfriend's fly for the first time.

Gripping the glass in its new position was a relatively simple matter. She brought it around and lifted it as far as the chain would allow. The last slivers of ice had melted, she saw; tempus had gone fugiting merrily along despite her feeling that it had stopped dead in its tracks around the time the dog had put in its first appearance. But she wouldn't think about the dog. In fact, she was going to work hard at believing that no dog had ever been here.

You're good at unhappening things, aren't you, tootsie-wootsie?

Hey, Ruth-I'm trying to keep a grip on myself as well as on thedamned glass, in case you didn't notice. If playing a few mind-gameshelps me do that, I don't see what the big deal is. just shut up for awhile,okay? Give it a rest and let me get on with my business.

Ruth apparently had no intention of giving it a rest, however. Shut up." she marvelled. Boy, how that takes me back-it's better thana Beach Boys oldie on the radio. You always did give good shut up,Jessie-remember that night in the dorm after we came back from yourfirst and last consciousness-raising session at Neuworth?

I don't want to remember, Ruth.

I'm sure you don't, so I'll remember for both of us, how's that for adeal? You kept saying it was the girl with the scars on her br**sts thathad upset you, only her and nothing more, and when I tried to tell youwhat you'd said in the kitchen-about how you and your father hadbeen alone at your place on Dark Score Lake when the sun went out in1963, and how he'd done something to you-you told me to shut up.When I wouldn't, you tried to slap me. When I still wouldn't, yougrabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere else-probablyin Susie Timmel'slittle fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we usedto call Susie's Lez Hotel. By the end of the week, you'd found some girlswho bad an apartment downtown and needed another roomie. Boom, asfast as that... but then, you always moved fast when you'd made upyour mind, Jess, I'll give you that. And like I said, you always gavegood shut up.

Shu-

There! What'd I tell you?

Leave me alone!

I'm pretty familiar with that one, too. You know what hurt me themost, Jessie? It wasn't the trust thing-I knew even then that it wasnothing personal, that you felt you couldn't trust anyone with the storyof what happened that day, including yourself. What hurt was knowinghow close you came to spilling it all, there in the kitchen of the NeuworthParsonage. We were sitting with our backs against the door and our armsaround each other and you started to talk. You said, "I could never tell,would have killed my Mom, and even if it didn't, she would have lefthim and I loved him. We all loved him, we all needed him, they wouldhave blamed me, and he didn't do anything, not really." I asked you who didn't do anything and it came out of you so fast it was like you'dspent the last nine years waiting for someone to pop the question. "Myfather," you said. "We were at Dark Score Lake on the day the sun wentout." You would have told me the rest-I know you would-hut thatwas when that dumb bitch came in and asked, "Is she all right?" As ifyou looked all right, you know what I mean? Jesus, sometimes I can'tbelieve how dumb people can be. They ought to make it a law that youhave to get a license, or at least a learner's permit, before you're allowedto talk. Until you pass your Talker's Test, you should have to be a mute.It would solve a lot of problems. But that's not the way things are, andas soon as Hart Hall's answer to Florence Nightingale came in, you closedup like a clam. There was nothing I could do to make you open up again'.although God knows I tried.