Lisey's Story(140)

But I hope we'll still be friends when the sun comes out tomorrow!

It was signed Yours in friendship (4-Ever! Remember the Good Times!!) Charles

"Charlie" Corriveau.

Lisey tried mightily to keep a solemn face, but couldn't. She burst out laughing. And Amanda joined her. They stood on the porch together, laughing. When it began to wind down a little, Amanda stood up straight and declaimed to her rain-soaked front yard, with the card held out before her like a choir-book.

"My darling Charles, I cannot let another moment pass, without asking you to come over here and kiss my f**kin ass."

Lisey fell against the side of the house hard enough to rattle the nearest window, screaming with laughter, her hands against her chest. Amanda gave her a haughty smile and marched down the porch stairs. She squelched two or three steps into the yard, upended the little lawn-pixie that stood guard over the rose bushes, and fished out the spare latchkey she kept stashed beneath. But while she was bent over, she took the opportunity to rub Charlie Corriveau's card briskly over her green-clad fanny. No longer caring if Jim Dooley might be watching from the woods, no longer thinking of Jim Dooley at all, Lisey collapsed to a sitting position on the porch, now wheezing with laughter because she had almost no breath left. She might have laughed so hard once or twice with Scott, but maybe not. Maybe not even then.

12

There was a single message on Amanda's answering machine, and it was from Darla, not Dooley. "Lisey!" she said exuberantly. "I don't know what you did, but wow! We're on our way to Derry! Lisey, I love you! You're a champ!"

She heard Scott saying Lisey, you're a champ at this! and her laughter began to dry up. Amanda's gun turned out to be a Pathfinder .22 revolver, and when Amanda passed it over, it felt absolutely correct in Lisey's hand, as if it had been manufactured with her in mind. Amanda had been keeping it in a shoebox on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. With only minimal fiddling, Lisey was able to swing out the cylinder.

"Jesus-please-us, Manda, this thing is loaded! "

As if Someone Up There was displeased with Lisey's profanity, the skies opened and more rain poured down. A moment later, the windows and gutters were rattling and pinging with hail.

"What's a woman on her own supposed to do if a raper comes in?" Amanda asked.

"Point an unloaded gun at him and shout bang? Lisey, hook this for me, would you?"

Amanda had put on a pair of jeans. Now she presented her bony back and the hooks of her bra. "Every time I try, my hands just about kill me. You should have taken me down for a little dip in that pool of yours."

"I was having enough trouble getting you away from it without baptizing you in it, please and thank you," Lisey said, doing the hooks. "Wear the red shirt with the yellow flowers, would you? I love that one on you."

"It shows my gut."

"Amanda, you don't have a gut."

"I do s - Why in the name of Jesus, Mary, and JoJo the Carpenter are you taking the bullets out? "

"So I don't shoot my own kneecap off." Lisey put the bullets in the pocket of her jeans.

"I'll re-load it later." Although whether she could point it at Jim Dooley and actually pull the trigger...she just didn't know. Maybe. If she summoned up the memory of her can opener.

But you do mean to get rid of him. Don't you?

She certainly did. He had hurt her. That was strike one. He was dangerous. That was strike two. She could trust no one else to do it, strike three and you're out. Still, she continued to look at the Pathfinder with fascination. Scott had researched gunshot wounds for one of his novels -  Relics, she was quite sure - and she'd made the mistake of looking into a folder filled with very ugly photographs. Until then she hadn't realized how lucky Scott himself had been that day in Nashville. If Cole's bullet had hit a rib and splintered -

"Why not take it in the shoebox?" Amanda asked, pulling on a rude tee-shirt (KISS ME

WHERE IT STINKS - MEET ME IN MOTTON) instead of the button-up one Lisey liked.

"There are some extra shells in it, too. You can tape it shut while I'm getting the meat out of the freezer."

"Where did you get it, Manda?"

"Charles gave it to me," Amanda said. She turned away, seized a brush from her not-sovain vanity, peered into the mirror, and went at her hair furiously. "Last year."

Lisey put the gun, so much like the one Gerd Allen Cole had used on her husband, back in the shoebox and watched Amanda in the mirror.

"I slept with him two and sometimes three times a week for four years," Amanda said.

"Which is intimate. Wouldn't you agree that's intimate?"

"Yes."

"I also washed his undershorts for four years, and scraped the scaly stuff off his scalp once a week so it wouldn't fall on the shoulders of his dark suits and embarrass him, and I think those things are a hell of a lot more intimate than f**king. What do you think?"

"I think you've got a point."

"Yeah," Amanda said. "Four years of that and I get a Hallmark card as severance pay. That woman he found up there in the Sin-Jin is welcome to him."

Lisey felt like cheering. No, she didn't think Manda needed a dip in the pool.

"Let's get the meat out of the freezer and go to your house," Amanda said. "I'm starving. "