Pet Sematary(96)

"Yes," Louis said.

"How are you, Lou? No bullshit and straight on-how are you?"

"All right," Louis said briefly. "Coping." I had all of them sign the book. All of them except Dory and Irwin, and they wouldn't.

"All right," Steve said. "Look, shall we meet you for lunch?"

Lunch. Meeting for lunch. This seemed such an alien idea that Louis thought of the science fiction novels he had read as a teenager-novels by Robert A.

Heinlein, Murray Leinster, Gordon R. Dickson. The natives here on Planet Quark have an odd custom when one of their children dies, Lieutenant Abelson: they "meet for lunch." I know how grotesque and barbaric that sounds, but remember, this planet has not been terra formed yet.

"Sure," Louis said. "What's a good restaurant for half time between funeral viewings, Steve?"

"Take it easy, Lou," Steve said, but he didn't seem entirely displeased. In this state of crazy calm, Louis felt better able to see into people than ever before in his life. Perhaps it was an illusion, but right now he suspected Steve was thinking that even a sudden spate of sarcasm, squirted out like an abrupt mouthful of bile, was preferable to his earlier state of disconnection.

"Don't worry," he said to Steve now. "What about Benjamin's?"

"Sure," Steve said. "Benjamin's would be fine."

He had made the call from the office of the funeral director. Now, as Louis passed the East Room on his way out, he saw that the room was almost empty, but Irwin and Dory Goldman sat down in the front row, heads bowed. They looked to Louis as if they might sit there forever.

Benjamin's was the right choice. Bangor was an early-lunch town, and around one o'clock it was nearly deserted. Jud had come along with Steve and Rachel, and the four of them ate fried chicken. At one point Rachel went to the ladies' room and remained in there so long that Steve became nervous. He was on the verge of asking a waitress to check on her when she came back to the table, her eyes red.

Louis picked at his chicken and drank a lot of Schlitz beer. Jud matched him bottle for bottle, not talking much.

Their four meals went back almost uneaten, and with his preternatural insight, Louis saw the waitress, a fat girl with a pretty face, debating with herself about whether or not to ask them if their meals had been all right, finally taking another look at Rachel's red-rimmed eyes and deciding it would be the wrong question. Over coffee Rachel said something so suddenly and so baldly that it rather shocked them all-particularly Louis, who at last was becoming sleepy with the beer. "I'm going to give his clothes to the Salvation Army."

"Are you?" Steve said after a moment.

"Yes," Rachel said. "There's a lot of wear in them yet. All his jumpers...

his corduroy pants... his shirts. Someone will be glad to get them. They're all very serviceable. Except for the ones he was wearing, of course. They're...

. ruined."

The last word became a miserable choke. She tried to drink coffee, but that was no good. A moment later she was sobbing into her hands.

There was a queer moment then. There were crossing lines of tension then. They all seemed to focus on Louis. He felt this with the same preternatural insight he'd had all this day, and of them all, this was the clearest and surest. Even the waitress felt those converging lines of awareness. He saw her pause at a table near the back where she was laying placemats and silver. For a moment Louis was puzzled, and then he understood: they were waiting for him to comfort his wife.

He couldn't do it. He wanted to do it. He understood it was his responsibility to do it. All the same, he couldn't. It was the cat that got in his way.

Suddenly and with no rime or reason. The cat. The f**king cat. Church with his ripped mice and the birds he had grounded forever. When he found them, Louis had cleaned up the messes promptly, with no complaint or comment, certainly without protest. He had, after all, bought them. But had he bought this?

He saw his fingers. Louis saw his fingers. He saw his fingers lightly skating over the back of Gage's jacket. Then Gage's jacket had been gone. Then Gage had been gone.

He looked into his coffee cup and let his wife cry beside him, uncomforted.

After a moment-in terms of clock time probably quite short, but both then and in retrospect it seemed long-Steve put an arm around her and hugged her gently. His eyes on Louis's were reproachful and angry. Louis turned from them toward Jud, but Jud was looking down, as if in shame. There was no help there.

37

"I knew something like this would happen," Irwin Goldman said. That was how the trouble started. "I knew it when she married you. 'You'll have all the grief you can stand and more,' I said. And look at this. Look at this... this mess."

Louis looked slowly around at his father-in-law, who had appeared before him like some malign jack-in-the-box in a skullcap; and then, instinctively, he looked around at where Rachel had been, by the book on the stand-the afternoon shift was hers by default-but Rachel was gone.

The afternoon viewing had been less crowded, and after half an hour or so, Louis had gone down to the front row of seats and sat there on the aisle, aware of very little (only peripherally aware of the cloying stink of the flowers) except the fact that he was very tired and sleepy. It was only partly the beer, he supposed. His mind was finally ready to shut down. Probably a good thing.