Misery(19)

But in the spring.

The W's straggled across the ceiling. Washed. Wiped. Wasted.

The throbbing in his legs was more insistent; the next time the clock bonged she would come, but he was almost afraid she would read his thoughts on his face, like the bare premise of a story too gruesome to write. His eyes drifted left. There was a calendar on the wall. It showed a boy riding a sled down a hill. It was February according to the calendar, but if his calculations were right it was already early March. Annie Wilkes had just forgotten to turn the page.

How long before the melting snows revealed his Camaro with its New York plates and its registration in the glove compartment proclaiming the owner to be Paul Sheldon? How long before that trooper called on her, or until she read it in the paper? How long until the spring melt?

Six weeks? Five?

That could be the length of my life, Paul thought, and began shuddering. By then his legs were fully awake, and it was not until she had come in and given him another dose of medicine that he was able to fall asleep.

Chapter 5

23

The next evening she brought him the Royal. It was an e model from an era when such things as electric typewriters, color TVs, and touch-tone telephones were only science fiction. It was as black and as proper as a pair of high-button shoes. Glass panels were set into the sides, revealing the machine's levers, springs, ratchets, and rods. A steel return lever, dull with disuse, jutted to one side like a hitchhiker's thumb. The roller was dusty, its hard rubber scarred and pitted. The letters ROYAL ran across the front of the machine in a semicircle. Grunting, she set it down on the foot of the bed between his legs after holding it up for his inspection for a moment.

He stared at it.

Was it grinning?

Christ, it looked like it was.

Anyway, it already looked like trouble. The ribbon was a faded two-tone, red over black. He had forgotten there were such ribbons. The sight of this one called up no pleasant nostalgia.

"Well?" She was smiling eagerly. "What do you think?"

"It's nice!" he said at once. "A real antique." Her smile clouded. "I didn't buy it for an antique. I bought it for second-hand. Good second-hand." He responded with immediate glibness. "Hey! There ain't no such thing as an antique typewriter - not when you come right down to it. A good typewriter lasts damn near forever. These old office babies are tanks!" If he could have reached it he would have patted it. If he could have reached it he would have kissed it.

Her smile returned. His heartbeat slowed a little.

"I got it at Used News. Isn't that a silly name for a store? But Nancy Dartmonger, the lady who runs it, is a silly woman." Annie darkened a little, but he saw at once that she was not darkening at him - the survival instinct, he was discovering, might be only instinct in itself, but it created some really amazing shortcuts to empathy. He found himself becoming more attuned to her moods, her cycles; he listened to her tick as if she were a wounded clock.

"As well as silly, she's bad. Dartmonger! Her name ought to be Whoremonger. Divorced twice and now she's living with a bartender. That's why when you said it was an antique - "

"It looks fine," he said.

She paused a long moment and then said, as if confessing: "It has a missing n."

"Does it?"

"Yes - see?" She tilted the typewriter up so he could peer at the banked semicircle of keys and see the missing striker like a missing molar in a mouthful of teeth worn but otherwise complete.

"I see." She set it back down. The bed rocked a little. Paul guessed the typewriter might weigh as much as fifty pounds. It had come from a time when there were no alloys, no plastics... also no six-figure book advances, no movie tie-in editions, no USA Today, no Entertainment Tonight, no celebrities doing ads for credit cards or vodka.

The Royal grinned at him, promising trouble.

"She wanted forty-five dollars but gave me five Because of the missing n." She offered him a crafty smile. No fool she, it said.

He smiled back. The tide was in. That made both smiling and lying easy. "Gave it to you? You mean you didn't dicker?" Annie preened a little. "I told her n was an important letter," she allowed.

"Well good for you! Damn!" Here was a new discovery. Sycophancy was easy once you got the hang of it.

Her smile grew sly, inviting him to share a delicious secret.

"I told her n was one of the letters in my favorite writer's name."

"It's two of the letters in my favorite nurse's name." Her smile became a glow. Incredibly, a blush rose in her solid cheeks. That's what it would look like, he thought, if you built a furnace inside the mouth of one of those idols in the H. Rider Haggard stories. That is what it would look like at night.

"You fooler!" she simpered.

"I'm not!" he said. "Not at all."

"Well!" She looked off for a moment, not blank but just pleased, a little flustered, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. Paul could have taken some pleasure in the way this was going if not for the weight of the typewriter, as solid as the woman and also damaged; it sat there grinning with its missing tooth, promising trouble.

"The wheelchair was much more expensive," she said. "Ostomy supplies have gone right out of sight since I -" She broke off, frowned, cleared her throat. Then she looked back at him, smiling. "But it's time you began sitting up, and I don't begrudge the cost one tiny bit. And of course you can't type lying down, can you?"