Misery (27 page)

  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.

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.

  'Ten-percent tax increase, he says! In arrears, he says! Liens! Lawyers! Quarterly payment, he says! Overdue!
Cockadoodie! Kaka! Kaka-poopie-DOOPIE!'

    He grunted into the rag, but she didn't look around. She was in a room by herself. She walked back and forth faster, cutting the air with her solid body. He kept thinking she would tear the paper to shreds, but it seemed she did not quite dare do this.

  
'Five hundred and six dollars!'
she cried, this time brandishing the paper in front of his nose. She absently tore the rag that was choking him out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. He hung his head over to one side, dry-heaving. His arms felt as if they were slowly detaching themselves from their sockets. 'Five hundred and six dollars
and seventeen cents!
They
know
I don't want anyone out here! I told them didn't I? And look!
Look!'

  He dry-heaved again, making a desperate burping sound.

    'If you vomit I guess you'll just have to lie in it. Looks like I've got other fish to fry. He said something about a lie on my house. What's that?'

  'Handcuffs . . . ' he croaked.

  'Yes, yes,' she said impatiently. 'Sometimes you're such a
baby.'
She pulled the key from her skirt pocket and pushed him even farther to the left, so that his nose pressed the sheets. He screamed, but she ignored him. There was a click, a rattle, and then his hands were free. He sat up gasping, then slid slowly down against his pillows, mindful to push his legs straight ahead as he did. There were pale furrows in his thin wrists. As he watched they began to fill in red.

    Annie stuffed the cuffs absently into her skirt pocket, as if police restraints were found in most decent houses, like Kleenex or coathangers.

'What's a lien?' she asked again. 'Does that mean they own my house? Is that what it means?'

    'No,' he said. 'It means that you . . . He cleared his throat and got another after-taste of that fumey dust-rag. His chest hitched as he dry-heaved again. She took no notice of that; simply stood impatiently staring at him until he could talk. After awhile he could. 'Just means you can't sell it.'

  'Just?
Just?
You got a funny idea of
just
, Mr Paul Sheldon. But I suppose the troubles of a poor widow like me don't seem very important to a rich Mister Smart Guy like you.'

  'On the contrary. I think of your troubles as
my
troubles, Annie. I just meant that a lien isn't much compared to what they
could
do if you got seriously in arrears.
Are
you?'

  'Arrears. That means in the bucket, doesn't it?'

  'In the bucket, in the hole, behind. Yes.'

   'I'm no shanty-Irish moocher!' He saw the thin sheen of her teeth as her upper lip lifted. 'I pay my bills. I just . . . this time I just . . . '

  
You forgot, didn't you? You forgot, just the way you keep forgetting to change February on that
damned calendar. Forgetting to make the quarterly property-tax payment is a hell of a lot more
serious than forgetting to change the calendar page, and you're upset because this is the first time
you forgot something that big. Fact is, you're getting worse, Annie, aren't you? A little worse every
day. Psychotics can cope in the world — after a fashion — and sometimes, as I think you well
know, they get away with some very nasty shit. But there's a borderline between the lands of
manageable and unmanageable psychosis. You're getting closer to that line every day
. . .
and part
of you knows it.

   'I just hadn't got around to it yet,' Annie said sullenly. 'Having you here has kept me busier than a one-armed paperhanger.'

  An idea occurred to him — a really fine one. The potential for brownie-points in this idea seemed almost unlimited. 'I know,' he said with quiet sincerity. 'I owe you my life and I haven't been anything but a pain in the tail to you. I've got about four hundred bucks in my wallet. I want you to pay your arrears with it.'

  'Oh, Paul — ' She was looking at him, both confused and pleased. 'I couldn't take
your
money — '

   'It's not mine,' he said. He grinned at her, his number-one
Who loves ya, baby?
grin. And inside he thought:
What I want, Annie, is for you to do one of your forgetting acts when I've got access to
one of your knives and I'm sure I can move well enough to use it. You'll be frying in hell ten
seconds before you know you're dead.
'It's yours. Call it a down-payment, if you want.' He paused, then took a calculated risk: 'If you don't think I know I'd be dead if it wasn't for you, you're crazy.'

  'Paul . . . I don't know . . . '

  'I'm serious.' He allowed his smile to melt into an expression of winning (or so he hoped
—
please, God, let it be winning
) sincerity. 'You did more than save
my
life, you know. You saved two lives — because without you, Misery would still be lying in her grave.'

  Now she was looking at him shiningly, the paper in her hand forgotten.

   'And you showed me the error of my ways, got me back on track again. I owe you a lot more than four hundred bucks just for that. And if you don't take that money, you're going to make me feel bad.'

'Well, I . . . all right. I . . . thank you.'

'I should be thanking
you
. May I see that paper?'

    She gave it to him with no protest at all. It was an overdue tax notice. The lien was little more than a formality. He scanned it quickly, then handed it back.

'Have you got money in the bank?'

   Her eyes shifted away from his. 'I've got a little put aside, but not in the bank. I don't believe in banks.'

  '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 fuck 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.

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