Misery(46)

"Remember, Paul." He was nodding but she didn't see. She was already running out.

An old but well-preserved Chevy Bel Air had pulled up behind Annie's Cherokee. Paul heard a door open somewhere off the parlor and then bang shut. It gave off the oddly interrogative squeak that told him it was the closet where she kept her outdoors stuff.

The man getting out of the car was as old and well preserved as the car itself - a Colorado Type if ever Paul had seen one. He looked sixty-five but might be eighty; he might be the senior partner of a law firm or the semi-retired patriarch of a construction company, but was more likely a rancher or a realtor. He would be a Republican of the sort who would no more put a bumper sticker on his car than he would put a pair of pointy-toed Italian shoes on his feet; he must also be some sort of town official, and here on town business, because it was only on town business that a man like this and a reclusive woman like Annie Wilkes would have occasion to meet.

Paul watched her hasten down the walk to the driveway, intent not on meeting but intercepting him. Here was something much like his earlier fantasy come true. Not a cop but someone IN AUTHORITY. AUTHORITY had arrived at Annie's, and its arrival here could do nothing but shorten his own life.

Why not invite him in, Annie? he thought, trying not to choke on the dusty rag. Why not invite him in and show him your African bird?

Oh, no. She would no more invite Mr Rocky Mountain Businessman in than she would drive Paul to Stapleton International and put a first-class ticket back to New York in his hand.

She was talking even before she reached him, the breath pluming out of her mouth in shapes like cartoon balloons with no words written inside them. He held out a hand dressed in a narrowly elegant black leather glove. She looked at it briefly, contemptuously, then began to shake a finger in his face, more of those empty white balloons puffing from her mouth. She finished struggling into her coat and stopped shaking her finger long enough to rake the zipper up.

He reached into the pocket of his topcoat and brought out a sheet of paper. He held it out to her almost apologetically. Although Paul had no way of knowing exactly what it was, he was sure that Annie had an adjective for it. Cockadoodie, maybe.

She led him along the driveway, still talking. They passed beyond his sightline. He could see their shadows lying like construction-paper cutouts on the snow, but that was all. She had done it on purpose, he realized dully. If he, Paul, couldn't see them, then there was no chance that Mr Rancho Grande might look in through the guest-room window and see him.

The shadows remained on the melting snowpack of Annie's driveway for about five minutes. Once Paul actually heard Annie's voice, raised in an angry, hectoring shout. Those were a long five minutes for Paul. His shoulders ached. He found he couldn't move to ease the ache. After cuffing his hands together, she had somehow bound them to the bedstead.

But the dustcloth in his mouth was the worst. The stink of the furniture polish was making his head ache, and he was growing steadily more nauseated. He concentrated grimly on controlling it; he had no interest in choking to death, his windpipe full of vomit, while Annie argued with an elderly town official who got his hair trimmed once a week at the local tonsorial emporium and probably wore rubbers over his black oxfords all winter long.

Cold sick-sweat had broken on his forehead by the time they reappeared. Now Annie was holding the paper. She followed Mr Rancho Grande, shaking her finger at his back, those empty cartoon balloons issuing from her mouth. Mr Rancho Grande would not look around at her. His face was carefully blank. Only his lips, pressed together so tightly that they almost disappeared, gave away some inward emotion. Anger? Perhaps. Distaste? Yes. That was probably closer.

You think she's crazy. You and all your poker cronies - who probably control this whole minor-league ballpark of a town probably played a hand of Lowball or something to see who got this shit detail. No one likes to bring bad news to crazy people. But oh, Mr Rancho Grande! If you knew just how crazy she really is, I don't think you'd turn your back on her like that!

He got into the Bel Air. He closed the door. Now she stood beside the car, shaking her finger at his closed window, and again Paul could dimly hear her voice: " - think you are so-so-so smaa-aart!" The Bel Air began to back slowly down the driveway. Mr Rancho Grande was ostentatiously not looking at Annie, whose teeth were bared.

Louder still: "You think you are such a great big wheel!" Suddenly she kicked the front bumper of Mr Rancho Grande's car, kicked it hard enough to knock packed chunks of snow out of the wheel-wells. The old guy had been looking over his right shoulder, guiding the car down the driveway. Now he looked back at her, startled out of the careful neutrality he had maintained all through his visit.

"Well I'll tell you something, you dirty bird! LITTLE DOGS GO TO THE BATHROOM ALL OVER BIG WHEELS! What do you think of that? Hah?" Whatever he thought of it, Mr Rancho Grande was not going to give Annie the satisfaction of seeing it - that neutral expression dropped over his face again like the visor on a suit of armor. He backed out of Paul's sight.

She stood there for moment, hands fisted on hips, then stalked back toward the house. He heard the kitchen door open and explode shut.

Well, he's gone, Paul thought. Mr Rancho Grande is gone but I'm here. Oh yes, I'm here.

9

But this time she didn't take her anger out on him.

She came into his room, her coat still on but now unzipped. She began to pace rapidly back and forth, not even looking his way. The piece of paper was still in her hand, and every now and then she would shake it in front of her own nose as if in self-chastisement.