Misery (3 page)

  She gave him a strange maternal grin.

  For the first time, clearly, the thought surfaced in Paul Sheldon's mind:
I am in trouble here.
This woman is not right.

She sat beside him where he lay in what might have been a spare bedroom for the next twenty minutes or so and talked. As his body used the soup, the pain in his legs reawakened. He willed himself to concentrate on what she was saying, but was not entirely able to succeed. His mind had bifurcated. On one side he was listening to her tell how she had dragged him from the wreckage of his '74 Camaro — that was the side where the pain throbbed and ached like a couple of old splintered pilings beginning to wink and flash between the heaves of the withdrawing tide. On the other he could see himself at the Boulderado Hotel, finishing his new novel, which did not — thank God for small favors — feature Miser Chastain.

   There were all sorts of reasons for him not to write about Misery, but one loomed above the rest, ironclad and unshakable. Misery — thank God for
large
favors — was finally dead. She had died five pages from the end of
Misery's Child.
Not a dry eye in the house when
that
had happened, including Paul's own — only the dew falling from his ocularies had been the result of hysterical laughter.

    Finishing the new book, a contemporary novel about a car-thief, he had remembered typing the final sentence of
Misery's Child:
'So Ian and Geoffrey left the Little Dunthorpe churchyard together, supporting themselves in their sorrow, determined to find their lives again.' While writing this line he had been giggling so madly it had been hard to strike the correct keys — he had to go back several times. Thank God for good old IBM CorrectTape. He had written THE END below and then had gone capering about the room — this same room in the Boulderado Hotel — and screaming
Free at last! Free at last! Great God Almighty, I'm free at last! The silly
bitch finally bought the farm!

  The new novel was called
Fast Cars,
and he hadn't laughed when it was done. He just sat there in front of the typewriter for a moment, thinking
You may have just won next year's American
Book Award, my friend
. And then he had picked up —

  ' — a little bruise on your right temple, but that didn't look like anything. It was your legs. . . . I could see right away, even with the light starting to fade, that your legs weren't — '

  — the telephone and called room service for a bottle of Dom Pérignon. He remembered waiting for it to come, walking back and forth in the room where he had finished all of his books since 1974; he remembered tipping the waiter with a fifty-dollar bill and asking him if he had heard a weather forecast; he remembered the pleased, flustered, grinning waiter telling him that the storm currently heading their way was supposed to slide off to the south, toward New Mexico; he remembered the chill feel of the bottle, the discreet sound of the cork as he eased it free; he remembered the dry, acerbic-acidic taste of the first glass and opening his travel bag and looking at his plane ticket back to New York; he remembered suddenly, on the spur of the moment, deciding —

  ' — that I better get you home right away! It was a struggle getting you to the truck, but I'm a big woman — as you may have noticed — and I had a pile of blankets in the back. I got you in and wrapped you up, and even then, with the light fading and all, I thought you looked
familiar!
I thought maybe — '

  — he would get the old Camaro out of the parking garage and just drive west instead of getting on the plane. What the hell was there in New York, anyway? The townhouse, empty, bleak, unwelcoming, possibly burgled.
Screw it!
he thought, drinking more champagne.
Go west, young
man, go west!
The idea had been crazy enough to make sense. Take nothing but a change of clothes and his —

  ' — bag I found. I put that in, too, but there wasn't anything else I could see and I was scared you might die on me or something so I fired up Old Bessie and I got your — '

  — manuscript of
Fast Cars
and hit the road to Vegas or Reno or maybe even the City of the Angels. He remembered the idea had also seemed a bit silly at first — a trip the kid of twenty-four he had been when he had sold his first novel might have taken, but not one for a man two years past his fortieth birthday. A few more glasses of champagne and the idea no longer seemed silly at all. It seemed, in fact, almost noble. A kind of Grand Odyssey to Somewhere, a way to reacquaint himself with reality after the fictional terrain of the novel. So he had gone —

  ' — out like a light! I was sure you were going to die. . . . I mean, I was
sure!
So I slipped your wallet out of your back pocket, and I looked at your driver's license and I saw the name,
Paul
Sheldon,
and I thought, "Oh, that must be a coincidence," but the picture on the license also looked like you, and then I got so scared I had to sit down at the kitchen table. I thought at first that I was going to faint. After awhile I started thinking maybe the
picture
was just a coincidence, too — those driver's-license photos really don't look like anybody — but then I found your Writers' Guild card, and one from PEN, and I knew you were — '

  — in trouble when the snow started coming down, but long before that he had stopped in the Boulderado bar and tipped George twenty bucks to provide him with a second bottle of Dom, and he had drunk it rolling up I-70 into the Rockies under a sky the color of gunmetal, and somewhere east of the Eisenhower Tunnel he had diverted from the turnpike because the roads were bare and dry, the storm was sliding off to the south, what the hay, and also the goddam tunnel made him nervous. He had been playing an old Bo Diddley tape on the cassette machine under the dash and never turned on the radio until the Camaro started to seriously slip and slide and he began to realize that this wasn't just a passing upcountry flurry but the real thing. The storm was maybe not sliding off to the south after all; the storm was maybe coming right at him and he was maybe in a bucket of trouble

  
(the way you are in trouble now)

  but he had been just drunk enough to think he could drive his way out of it. So instead of stopping in Cana and inquiring about shelter, he had driven on. He could remember the afternoon turning into a dull-gray chromium lens. He could remember the champagne beginning to wear off. He could remember leaning forward to get his cigarettes off the dashboard and that was when the last skid began and he tried to ride it out but it kept getting worse; he could remember a heavy dull thump and then the world's up and down had swapped places. He had —

  ' —
screamed!
And when I heard you screaming, I knew that you would live. Dying men rarely scream. They haven't the energy. I know. I decided I would
make
you live. So I got some of my pain medication and made you take it. Then you went to sleep. When you woke up and started to scream again, I gave you some more. You ran a fever for awhile, but I knocked that out, too. I gave you Keflex. You had one or two close calls, but that's all over now. I promise.' She got up. And now it's time you rested, Paul. You've got to get your strength back.'

  'My legs hurt.'

  'Yes, I'm sure they do. In an hour you can have some medication.'

    'Now. Please.' It shamed him to beg, but he could not help it. The tide had gone out and the splintered pilings stood bare, jaggedly real, things which could neither be avoided nor dealt with.

  'In an hour.' Firmly. She moved toward the door with the spoon and the soup-bowl in one hand.

  'Wait!'

    She turned back, looking at him with ail expression both stern and loving. He did not like the expression. Didn't like it at
all.

'Two weeks since you pulled me out?'

    She looked vague again, and annoyed. He would come to know that her grasp of time was not good. 'Something like that.'

  'I was unconscious.

  'Almost all the time.'

  'What did I eat?'

  She considered him.

  'IV,' she said briefly.

  'IV?' he said, and she mistook his stunned surprise for ignorance.

    'I fed you intravenously,' she said. 'Through tubes. That's what those marks on your arms are.' She looked at him with eyes that were suddenly flat and considering. 'You owe me your life, Paul. I hope you'll remember that. I hope you'll keep that in mind.'

Then she left.

The hour passed. Somehow and finally, the hour passed.

  He lay in bed, sweating and shivering at the same time. From the other room came first the sounds of Hawkeye and Hot Lips and then the disc jockeys on WKRP, that wild and crazy Cincinnati radio station. An announcer's voice came on, extolled Ginsu knives, gave an 800 number, and informed those Colorado watchers who had simply been panting for a good set of Ginsu knives that Operators Were Standing By.

Paul Sheldon was also Standing By.

   She reappeared promptly when the clock in the other room struck eight, with two capsules and a glass of water.

  He hoisted himself eagerly on his elbows as she sat on the bed.

  'I
finally
got your new book two days ago,' she told him. Ice tinkled in the glass. It was a maddening sound.
'Misery's Child. I
love it . . . It's as good as all the rest. Better! The best!'

  'Thank you,' he managed. He could feel the sweat standing out on his forehead. 'Please my legs very painful . . . '

  'I
knew
she would marry Ian,' she said, smiling dreamily, and I believe Geoffrey and Ian will become friends again, eventually.
Do
they?' But immediately she said: 'No, don't tell! I want to find out for myself. I'm making it last. It always seems so long before there is another one.'

    The pain throbbed in his legs and made a deep steel circlet around his crotch. He had touched himself down there, and he thought his pelvis was intact, but it felt twisted and weird. Below his knees it felt as if
nothing
was intact. He didn't want to look. He could see the twisted, lumpy shapes outlined in the bedclothes, and that was enough.

  'Please? Miss Wilkes? The pain — '

  'Call me Annie. All my friends do.'

  She gave him the glass. It was cool and beaded with moisture. She kept the capsules. The capsules in her hand were the tide. She was the moon, and she had brought the tide which would cover the pilings. She brought them toward his mouth, which he immediately dropped open . . . and then she withdrew them.

  'I took the liberty of looking in your little bag. You don't mind, do you?'

  'No. No, of course not. The medicine — '

   The beads of sweat on his forehead felt alternately hot and cold. Was he going to scream? He thought perhaps he was.

   'I see there is a manuscript in there,' she said. She held the capsules in her right hand, which she now slowly tilted. They fell into her left hand. His eyes followed them. 'It's called
Fast Cars.
Not a
Misery
novel, I know that.' She looked at him with faint disapproval — but, as before, it was mixed with love. It was a
maternal
look. 'No cars in the nineteenth century, fast or otherwise!' She tittered at this small joke. 'I also took the liberty of glancing through it . . . You don't mind, do you?'

'Please,' he moaned. 'No, but please — '

    Her left hand tilted. The capsules rolled, hesitated, and then fell back into her right hand with a minute clicking sound.

  'And if I read it? You wouldn't mind if I read it?'

  'No — ' His bones were shattered, his legs filled with festering shards of broken glass. 'No . . .'He made something he hoped was a smile. 'No, of course not.'

  'Because I would never presume to do such a thing without your permission,' she said earnestly. 'I respect you too much. In fact, Paul, I love you.' She crimsoned suddenly and alarmingly. One of the capsules dropped from her hand to the coverlet. Paul snatched at it, but she was quicker. He moaned, but she did not notice; after grabbing the capsule she went vague again, looking toward the window. 'Your
mind
,' she said, 'Your
creativity,
That is all I meant'

  In desperation, because it was the only thing he could think of, he said: 'I know. You're my number-one fan.' She did not just warm up this time; she
lit
up. 'That's it!' she cried. 'That's it
exactly!
And you wouldn't mind if I read it in that spirit, would you? That spirit of . . . of fan-love? Even though I don't like your other books as well as the
Misery
stories?'

   'No,' he said, and closed his eyes.
No, tum the pages of the manuscript into paper hats if you
want, just
. . .
please
. . .
I'm dying in here . . .

  'You're
good,
she said gently. 'I
knew
you would be. Just reading your books, I knew you would be. A man who could think of Misery Chastain, first think of her and then
breathe life
into her, could be nothing else.'

  Her fingers were in his mouth suddenly, shockingly intimate, dirtily welcome. He sucked the capsules from between them and swallowed even before he could fumble the spilling glass of water to his mouth.

   'Just like a baby,' she said, but he couldn't see her because his eyes were still closed and now he felt the sting of tears. 'But good. There is so much I want to ask you . . . so much I want to know.'

The springs creaked as she got up.

    'We are going to be very happy here,' she said, and although a bolt of horror ripped into his heart, Paul still did not open his eyes.

He drifted. The tide came in and he drifted. The TV played in the other room for awhile and then didn't. Sometimes the clock chimed and he tried to count the chimes but he kept getting lost between.