Misery(104)

He was drinking too much and not writing at all. His dreams were bad.

When he got out of the elevator on the ninth floor one afternoon in May, he was for a change thinking not of Annie but of the bulky package tucked clumsily under his arm - it contained two bound galleys of Misery's Return. His publishers had put the book on a very fast track, and considering the world-wide headlines generated by the bizarre circumstances under which the novel had been written, that was hardly surprising. Hastings House had ordered an unprecedented first printing of a million copies. "And that's only the beginning," Charlie Merrill, his editor, had told him at lunch that day - the lunch from which Paul was now returning with his bound galleys. "This book is going to outsell everything in the world, my friend. We all just ought to be down on our knees thanking God that the story in the book is almost as good as the story behind the book." Paul didn't know if that was true, and didn't really care anymore. He only wanted to get it behind him and find the next book... but as dry days became dry weeks became dry months, he had begun to wonder if there ever would be a next book.

Charlie was begging him for a nonfiction account of his ordeal. That book, he said, would outsell even Misery's Return. Would, in fact, outsell Iacocca. When Paul asked", him, out of idle curiosity, what he thought the paperbacks rights for such a book might fetch, Charlie brushed his long hair away from his forehead, lit a Camel, and said: "I believe we could set a floor at ten million dollars and then conduct one hell of an auction." He did not bat an eye when he said it; after a moment or two Paul realized he either was serious or thought he was.

But there was no way he could write such a book, not yet, probably not ever. His job was writing novels. He could write the account Charlie wanted, but to do so would be tantamount to admitting to himself that he would never write another novel.

And the joke is, it would be a novel, he almost said to Charlie Merrill... and then held back at the last moment. The joke was, Charlie wouldn't care.

It would start out as fact, and then I'd begin to tart it up... just a little at first...then a little more... then a little more. Not to make myself look better (although I probably would) and not to make Annie look worse (she couldn't). Simply to create that roundness. I don't want to fictionalize myself. Writing may be masturbatory, but God forbid it should be an act off autocannibalism.

His apartment was 9-E, farthest from the elevator, and today the corridor looked two miles long. He began to stump his way grimly down to it, a t-shaped walking-stick in each hand. Clack... clack... clack... clack. God, he hated that sound.

His legs ached sickeningly and he yearned for Novril. Sometimes he thought it would be worth being back with Annie just to have the dope. The doctors had weaned him from it; The booze was his substitute, and when he got inside he was going to have a double bourbon.

Then he would look at the blank screen of his word processor for awhile. What fun. Paul Sheldon's fifteen-thousand-dollar paperweight.

Clack... clack... clack... clack.

Now to get the key out of his pocket without dropping either the manila envelope containing the bound galleys or the sticks. He propped the sticks against the wall. While he was doing that, the galleys dropped out from under his arm and fell to the rug. The envelope split open.

"Shit!" he growled, and then the sticks fell over with a clatter, adding to the fun.

Paul closed his eyes, swaying unsteadily on his twisted, aching legs, waiting to see if he was going to get mad or cry. He hoped he would get mad. He didn't want to cry out here in the hall, but he might. He had. His legs hurt all the time and he wanted his dope, not the heavy-duty aspirin they gave him at the hospital dispensary. He wanted his good dope, his Annie-dope. And oh he was so tired all the time. What he needed to prop him up were not those shitty sticks but his make-believe games and stories. They were the good dope, the never-fail fix, but they had all fled. It seemed playtime was finally over.

This is what it's like after the end, he thought, opening the door and tottering into the apartment. This is why no one ever writes it. It's too f**king dreary. She should have died after I stuffed her head full of blank paper and busted pages, and I should have died then, too. At that moment if at no other we really were like characters in one of Annie's chapter-plays - no grays, only blacks and whites, good and bad. I was Geoffrey and she was the Bourka Bee-Goddess. This... well, I've heard of denouement, but this is ridiculous. Never mind the mess back there on the floor. Drinky-poo first, pick-uppy-poo second. First be a Don't-Be and then be a - He stopped. He had time to realize the apartment was to dark. And there was a smell. He knew that smell a deadly mixture of dirt and face-powder.

Annie rose up from behind the sofa like a white ghost dressed in a nurse's uniform and cap. The axe was in her hand and she was screaming: Time to rinse, Paul! Time to rinse!

He shrieked, tried to turn on his bad legs. She leaped the sofa with clumsy strength, looking like an albino frog. Her starched uniform rustled briskly. The first sweep of the axe did no more than knock the wind from him - this was really what he thought until he landed on the carpet smelling his own blood. He looked down and saw he was cut nearly in half.

"Rinse!" she shrieked, and there went his right hand.

"Rinse!" she shrieked again, and his left was gone; he crawled toward the open door on the jetting stumps of his wrists, and incredibly the galleys were still there, the bound galleys Charlie had given him at lunch in Mr Lee's, sliding the manila envelope to him across gleaming white napery while Muzak drifted down from overhead speakers.