Misery(48)

"This says they can't execute the lien on you unless the bill remains unpaid by March 25th. What's today?" She frowned at the calendar. "Goodness! That's wrong." She untacked it, and the boy on his sled disappeared Paul watched this happen with an absurd pang of regret. March showed a white-water stream rushing pell-mell between snowy banks.

She peered myopically at the calendar for a moment and then said: "Today is March 25th." Christ, so late, so late, he thought.

"Sure - that's why he came out." He wasn't telling you they had slapped a lien on your house, Annie - he was telling you they would have to if you didn't cough up by the time the town offices closed tonight. Guy was actually trying to do you a favor. "But if you pay this five hundred and six dollars before - "

"And seventeen cents," she put in fiercely. "Don't forget the cockadoodie seventeen cents."

"All right, and seventeen cents. If you pay it before they close the town offices this afternoon, no lien. If people in town really feel about you the way you say they do, Annie - "

"They hate me! They are all against me, Paul!"

" - then your taxes are one of the ways they'll try to pry you out. Hollering "lien" at someone who has missed on quarterly property-tax payment is pretty weird. It smells. Well - it stinks. If you missed a couple of quarterly payments, they might try to take your home - sell it at auction. It's a crazy idea, but I guess they'd technically be within their rights." She laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "Let them try! I'd guthole a few of them! I'll tell you that much. Yes, sir! Yessiree Bob!"

"In the end they'd guthole you," he said quietly. "But the isn't the point."

"Then what is?"

"Annie, there are probably people in Sidewinder who at two and three years behind on their taxes. No one is taking their homes or auctioning their furnishings down at the town hall. The worst that happens to people like that most of the time is that they lose their town water. The Roydmans, now." He looked at her shrewdly. "You think they pay their taxes on time?"

"That white trash?" she nearly shrieked. "Hah!"

"I think they are on the prod for you, Annie." He did in fact believe this.

"I'll never go! I'll stay up here just to spite them! I'll stay up here and spit in their eye!"

"Can you come up with a hundred and six bucks to go with the four hundred in my wallet?"

"Yes." She was beginning to look cautiously relieved.

"Good enough," he said. "Then I suggest you pay their crappy tax-bill today." And while you're gone, I'll see what can do about those damned marks on the door. And when that's done, I believe I'll see if I can do anything about getting the f**k out of here, Annie. I'm a little tired of your hospitality.

He managed a smile.

"I think there must be at least seventeen cents there in the night-table," he said.

10

Annie Wilkes had her own interior set of rules; in her way she was strangely prim. She had made him drink water from a floor-bucket; had withheld his medication until he was in agony; had made him burn the only copy of his new novel; had handcuffed him and stuck a rag reeking of furniture polish in his mouth; but she would not take the money from his wallet. She brought it to him, the old scuffed Lord Buston he'd had since college, and put it in his hands.

All the ID had vanished. At that she had not scrupled. He did not ask her about it. It seemed wiser not to.

The ID was gone but the money was still there, the bills - mostly fifties - crisp and fresh. With a clarity that was both surprising and somehow ominous he saw himself pulling the Camaro up to the drive-in window of the Boulder Bank the day before he had finished Fast Cars and dropping his check for four hundred and fifty dollars, made out to cash and endorsed on the back, into the tray (perhaps even then the guys in the sweatshops had been talking vacation? - he thought it likely). The man who had done that had been free and healthy and feeling good, and had been without the wit to appreciate any of those fine things. The man who had done that had eyed the drive-up teller with a lively, interested eye - tall, blonde, wearing a purple dress that had cupped her curves with a lover's touch. And she had eyed him back... What would she think, he wondered, of that man as he looked now, forty pounds lighter and ten years older, his legs a pair of crooked useless horrors?

"Paul?"

He looked up at her, holding the money in one hand. There was four hundred and twenty, in all.

"Yes?" She was looking at him with that disconcerting expression of matemal love and tenderness - disconcerting because of the total solid blackness underlying it.

"Are you crying, Paul?" He brushed his cheek with his free hand and, yes, there was moisture there. He smiled and handed her the money. "A little. I was thinking how good you've been to me. Oh, I suppose a lot of people wouldn't understand... but I think I know." Her own eyes glistened as she leaned forward and gently touched his lips. He smelled something on her breath, something from the dark and sour chambers inside her, something that smelled like dead fish. It was a thousand times worse than the taste/smell of the dust-rag. It brought back the memory of her sour breath (!breathe goddammit BREATHE!) blowing down his throat like a dirty wind from hell. His stomach clenched, but he smiled at her.