Lisey's Story(85)

Dooley said: "Giving me the old silent treatment? Well, more power to you, but it won't do you no good, Missus. You have got some correction comin. I won't try to sell you the old one about how it's gonna hurt me more than it's gonna hurt you, but I will say I've come to like your spunk in the short time I've known you, and that it's gonna - going to - hurt both of us. I also want to say I'll go as easy as I can, because I don't want to break that spirit of yours. Still - we had an agreement, and you didn't keep to it."

An agreement? Lisey felt a chill sweep through her body. For the first time she got a clear picture of the breadth and complexity of Dooley's insanity. The gray wings threatened to descend across her vision and this time she fought them fiercely. Dooley heard the rattle of the handcuff-chain (he must have had the cuffs in his sack, along with the mayonnaise jar) and turned to her.

Easy, babyluv, easy, Scott murmured. Talk to the guy - run your everlasting mouth. This was advice Lisey hardly needed. As long as the talking was going on, the correctin would remain deferred.

"Listen to me, Mr. Dooley. We didn't have an agreement, you're mistaken about that  - " She saw his brow begin to furrow, his look begin to darken, and hurried on.

"Sometimes it's hard to get things together over the phone, but I'm ready to work with you now." She swallowed and heard a distinct click in her throat. She was ready for more water, a good long cool drink of it, but this didn't seem like a good time to ask. She leaned forward, fixed his eyes with her own, blue on blue, and spoke with all the earnestness and sincerity she could muster. "I'm saying that as far as I'm concerned, you've made your point. And you know what? You were just looking at the manuscripts your...um...your colleague especially wants. Did you notice the black file-cabinets in the central space?"

Now he was looking at her with his eyebrows hoisted and a skeptical little smile playing on his mouth...but that might only be his dickering look. Lisey allowed herself to hope. "Looked to me like there was a right smart of boxes downstairs, too," he said.

"More of his books, from the look of them."

"Those are - " What was she going to tell him? Those are bools, not books? She guessed that most of them were, but Dooley wouldn't understand. They're practical jokes, Scott's version of itchy-powder and plastic vomit? That he'd understand but likely not believe.

He was still looking at her with that skeptical smile. Not a dickering look at all. No, this was a look that said While you're at it, why don't you go on and pull the other one, Missus?

"There's nothing in those cartons downstairs but carbon copies and Xeroxes and blank sheets," she said, and it sounded like a lie because it was a lie, and what was she supposed to say? You're too crazy to understand the truth, Mr. Dooley? Instead she rushed on. "The stuff Woodsmucky wants - the good stuff - is all up here. Unpublished stories...copies of letters to other writers...their letters back to him..."

Dooley threw back his head and laughed. "Woodsmucky! Missus, you got your husbun's way with words." Then the laughter faded, and although the smile stayed on his lips, there was no more amusement in his eyes. His eyes looked like ice. "So what do you think I sh'd do? Hie over to Oxford or Mechanic Falls and rent a U-Haul, then come back here to load those filing cabinets up? Say, maybe you could get one of those deputy-boys to he'p me!"

"I - "

"Shut up." Pointing a finger at her. The smile all gone by now. "Why, if I was to go away and then come back, you'd have a dozen State Police graybacks here waitin for me, I reckon. They'd take me in and Missus, I tell you what, I'd deserve another ten years inside just for believin such a thing."

"But - "

"And besides, that wadnt -  wasn't - the deal we made. The deal was that you'd call the Prof, ole Woodsmucky - girl, I like that - and he'd send me a e-mail the special way we have, and then he'd arrange about the papers. Right?"

Some part of him actually believed this. Had to believe it, or why would he keep on with it when it was just the two of them?

"Ma'am?" Dooley asked her. He sounded solicitous. "Missus?"

If there was a part of him that had to go on telling lies when it was just the two of them, maybe it was because there was a part of him that needed lying to. If so, that was the part of Jim Dooley she needed to reach. The part that might still be sane.

"Mr. Dooley, listen to me." She pitched her voice low and kept her delivery slow. It had been the way she talked to Scott when Scott was ready to go off half-cocked over anything from a bad review to a shoddy piece of plumbing. "Professor Woodbody has no way of getting in touch with you, and down inside somewhere, you know that. But I can get in touch with him. I already have. I called him last night."

"You're lyin," he said, but this time she wasn't and he knew she wasn't, and for some reason it upset him. That reaction ran exactly counter to the one she wanted to provoke -

she wanted to soothe him - but she thought she had to go on, hoping the sane part of Jim Dooley was in there somewhere, listening.

"I'm not," she said. "You left me his number and I called him." Holding Dooley's eyes with hers. Mustering every bit of sincerity she could manage as she headed back into the Land of Fabrication. "I promised him the manuscripts and told him to call you off and he said he couldn't call you off because he had no way of getting in touch with you anymore, he said his first two e-mails went through, but after that they just bounced bad  - "