Lisey's Story(123)
Good idea. Lisey could get to Greenlawn ahead of her older sisters, that wouldn't be much of a horse-race, but she couldn't afford to dawdle, either. Keep your string a- drawing, she thought.
But she couldn't deny herself a moment in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door, standing with her hands at her sides, looking levelly and without prejudice at her slender, unremarkable, middle-aged body - and at her face, which Scott had once described as that of a fox in summer. It was a little puffy, nothing more. She looked like she'd slept exceptionally hard (maybe after a drink or three too many), and her lips still turned out a little, giving them a strangely sensual quality that made her feel both uneasy and a tiny bit gleeful. She hesitated, not sure what to do about that, and then found a tube of Revlon Hothouse Pink at the back of her lipstick drawer. She touched some on and nodded, a little doubtfully. If people were going to look at her lips - and she thought they might - she'd do better giving them something to look at than trying to cover up what couldn't be hidden.
The breast Dooley had operated on with such lunatic absorption was marked with an ugly scarlet ditch that circled up from beneath her armpit before petering out above her ribcage. It looked like a fairly bad cut that might have happened two or three weeks ago and was now healing well. The two shallower wounds looked like no more than the sort of red marks that resulted from wearing too-tight elastic garments. Or perhaps - if you had a lively imagination - rope burns. The difference between this and the horror she had observed upon regaining consciousness was amazing.
"All the Landons are fast healers, you sonofabitch," Lisey said, and stepped into the shower.
2
A quick rinse was all she had time for, and her breast was still sore enough to make her decide against a bra. She put on a pair of carpenter's pants and a loose tee-shirt. She slipped a vest over the latter to keep anyone from staring at her ni**les, assuming guys bothered scoping out the ni**les of fifty-year-old women, that was. According to Scott, they did. She remembered his telling her, once upon a happier time, that straight men stared at pretty much anyone of a female persuasion between the ages of roughly fourteen and eighty-four; he claimed it was a simple hardwired circuit between eye and cock, that the brain had nothing to do with it.
It was noon. She went downstairs, glanced into the living room, and saw the remaining pack of cigarettes sitting on the coffee table. She had no craving for cigarettes now. She got a fresh jar of Skippy out of the pantry instead (steeling herself for Jim Dooley lurking in the corner or behind the pantry door) and the strawberry jam out of the fridge. She made herself a PB&J on white and took two delicious, gummy bites before calling Professor Woodbody. The Castle County Sheriff's Department had taken "Zack McCool"'s threatening letter, but Lisey's memory for numbers had always been good, and this one was a cinch: Pittsburgh area code at one end, eighty-one and eighty-eight at the other. She was as willing to talk to the Queen of the Incunks as the King. An answering machine, however, would be inconvenient. She could leave her message, but would have no way of being sure it would reach the right ear in time to do any good. She need not have worried. Woodbody himself answered, and he did not sound kingly. He sounded chastened and cautious. "Yes? Hello?"
"Hello, Professor Woodbody. This is Lisa Landon."
"I don't want to talk to you. I've spoken to my lawyer and he says I don't have to - "
"Chill," she said, and eyed her sandwich with longing. It wouldn't do to talk with her mouth full. On the upside, she thought this conversation was going to be brief. "I'm not going to make any trouble for you. No trouble with the cops, no trouble with lawyers, nothing like that. If you do me one teensy favor."
"What favor?" Woodbody sounded suspicious. Lisey couldn't blame him for that.
"There's an off-chance your friend Jim Dooley may call you today - "
"That guy's no friend of mine! " Woodbody bleated.
Right, Lisey thought. And you're well on your way to persuading yourself he never was.
"Okay, drinking buddy. Passing acquaintance. Whatever. If he calls, just tell him I've changed my mind, would you do that? Say I've regained my senses. Tell him I'll see him this evening, at eight, in my husband's study."
"You sound like someone preparing to get herself into a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Landon."
"Hey, you'd know, wouldn't you?" The sandwich was looking better and better. Lisey's stomach rumbled. "Professor, he probably won't call you. In which case, you're golden. If he does call, give him my message and you're also golden. But if he calls and you don't give him my message - just 'She's changed her mind, she wants to see you tonight in Scott's study at eight' - and I find out...then, sir, oy, such a mess I'm making for you."
"You can't. My lawyer says - "
"Don't listen to what he says. Be smart and listen to what I'm saying. My husband left me twenty million dollars. With that kind of money, if I decide to ass-f*ck you, you'll spend the next three years shitting blood from a crouch. Got it?"
Lisey hung up before he could say anything else, tore a bite from her sandwich, got the lime Kool-Aid from the fridge, thought about a glass, then drank directly from the pitcher instead.
Yum!
3
If Dooley phoned during the next few hours, she wouldn't be around to take his call. Luckily, Lisey knew which phone he'd ring in on. She went out to her unfinished office in the barn, across from the shrouded corpse of the Bremen bed. She sat in the plain kitchen-style chair (a nice new desk-chair was one of the things she'd never gotten around to ordering), pushed the RECORD MESSAGE button on the answering machine, and spoke without thinking too much. She hadn't come back from Boo'ya Moon with a plan so much as with a clear set of steps to follow and the belief that, if she did her part, Jim Dooley would be forced to do his. I'll whistle and you'll come to me, my lad, she thought.