Needful Things (36 page)

“No—I'm getting used to it. But I have to talk to you. You have to do something, remember? You promised.”

“Crazy Nettie,” he agreed. “I have to play a trick on Crazy Nettie.”

“That's right,” said the fox-tail, “and you have to do it as soon as you wake up. So listen.”

Hugh had listened.

The fox-tail had told him no one would be home at Nettie's but the dog, but now that Hugh was actually here, he decided it would be wise to knock. He did so. From inside he heard claws come clicking rapidly across a wooden floor, but nothing else. He knocked again, just to be safe. There was a single stern bark from the other side of the door.

“Raider?” Hugh asked. The fox-tail had told him that was the dog's name. Hugh thought it was a pretty good name, even if the lady who thought it up was nuttier than a fruitcake.

The single bark came again, not quite so stern this time.

Hugh took a key-ring from the breast pocket of the plaid hunting jacket he wore and examined it. He'd had this ring for a long time, and could no longer even remember what some of the keys had gone to. But four of them were skeleton keys, easily identified by their long barrels, and these were the ones he wanted.

Hugh glanced around once, saw the street was as deserted as it had been when he first arrived, and began to try the keys one by one.

When Nettie saw Polly's white, puffy face and haggard eyes, her own fears, which had gnawed at her like sharp weasel's teeth as she walked over, were forgotten. She didn't even have to look at Polly's hands, still held out at waist level (it hurt dreadfully to let them hang down when it was like this), to know how things were with her.

The lasagna was thrust unceremoniously on a table by the foot of the stairs. If it had gone tumbling to the floor, Nettie wouldn't have given it a second glance. The nervous woman Castle Rock had grown used to seeing on its streets, the woman who looked as if she were skulking away from some nasty piece of mischief even if she was only on her way to the post office, was not here. This was a different Nettie; Polly Chalmers's Nettie.

“Come on,” she said briskly. “Into the living room. I'll get the thermal gloves.”

“Nettie, I'm all right,” Polly said weakly. “I just took a pill, and I'm sure that in a few minutes—”

But Nettie had an arm around her and was walking her into the living room. “What did you do? Did you sleep on them, do you think?”

“No—that would have woken me. It's just . . .” She laughed. It was a weak, bewildered sound. “It's just pain. I knew today was going to be bad, but I had no idea
how
bad. And the thermal gloves don't help.”

“Sometimes they do. You know that sometimes they do. Now just sit there.”

Nettie's tone brooked no refusal. She stood beside Polly until Polly sat in an overstuffed armchair. Then she went into the downstairs bathroom to get the thermal gloves. Polly had given up on them a year ago, but Nettie, it seemed, held for them a reverence that was almost superstitious. Nettie's version of chicken soup, Alan had once called them, and they had both laughed.

Polly sat with her hands resting on the arms of the chair like lumps of cast-off driftwood and looked longingly across the room at the couch where she and Alan had made love Friday night. Her hands hadn't hurt at all then, and that already seemed like a thousands years ago. It
occurred to her that pleasure, no matter how deep, was a ghostly, ephemeral thing. Love might make the world go round, but she was convinced it was the cries of the badly wounded and deeply afflicted which spun the universe on the great glass pole of its axis.

Oh you stupid couch,
she thought.
Oh you stupid empty couch, what good are you to me now?

Nettie came back with the thermal gloves. They looked like quilted oven mitts connected by an insulated electric wire. A plug-in cord snaked out of the left glove's back. Polly had seen an ad for the gloves in
Good Housekeeping,
of all places. She had placed a call to The National Arthritis Foundation's 800 number and had ascertained that the gloves did indeed provide temporary relief in some cases. When she showed the ad to Dr. Van Allen, he added the coda which had been tiresomely familiar even two years ago: “Well, it can't hurt.”

“Nettie, I'm sure that in a few minutes-—”

“—you'll feel better,” Nettie finished. “Yes, of course you will. And maybe these will help. Hold up your hands, Polly.”

Polly gave in and held up her hands. Nettie held the gloves by their ends, squeezed them open, and slipped them on with the delicacy of a bomb-squad expert covering packets of C-4 with a blast-blanket. Her touch was gentle, expert, and compassionate. Polly didn't believe the thermal gloves would do a thing . . . but Nettie's obvious concern had already had its effect.

Nettie took the plug, got down on her knees, and slipped it into the baseboard socket near the chair. The gloves began to hum faintly, and the first tendrils of dry warmth caressed the skin of Polly's hands.

“You're too good to me,” Polly said softly. “Do you know that?”

“I couldn't be,” Nettie replied. “Not ever.” Her voice was a trifle husky, and there was a bright, liquid shine in her eyes. “Polly, it's not my place to tell you your business, but I just can't keep quiet any longer. You have to do something about your poor hands. You
have
to. Things just can't go on this way.”

“I know, dear. I know.” Polly made a huge effort to climb over the wall of depression which had built itself up
in her mind. “Why did you come over, Nettie? Surely it wasn't just to toast my hands.”

Nettie brightened. “I made you a lasagna!”

“Did you? Oh, Nettie, you shouldn't have!”

“No? That's not what
I
think
I
think you won't be up to cooking today, or tomorrow, either. I'll just put it in the refrigerator.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I'm glad I did it. Doubly glad, now that I see you.” She reached the hall doorway and looked hack. A bar of sun fell across her face, and in that moment Polly might have seen how drawn and tired Nettie looked, if her own pain had not been so large. “Don't you move, now!”

Polly burst out laughing, surprising them both. “I can't! I'm trapped!”

In the kitchen, the refrigerator door opened and closed as Nettie put the lasagna away. Then she called, “Shall I put on the coffee? Would you like a cup? I could help you with it.”

“Yes,” Polly said, “that would be nice.” The gloves were humming louder now; they were very warm. And either they were actually helping, or the pill was taking hold in a way the one at five o'clock hadn't. More probably it was a combination of the two, she thought. “But if you have to get back, Nettie—”

Nettie appeared in the doorway. She had taken her apron out of the pantry and put it on, and she held the old tin coffee pot in one hand. She wouldn't use the new digital Toshiba coffee-maker . . . and Polly had to admit that what came out of Nettie's tin pot was better.

“I've no place to go that's better than this,” she said. “Besides, the house is all locked up and Raider's on guard.”

“I'm sure,” Polly said, smiling. She knew Raider very well. He weighed all of twenty pounds and rolled over to have his belly scratched when anyone—mailman, meter-reader, door-to-door salesman—came to the house.

“I think she'll leave me alone anyway,” Nettie said. “I warned her. I haven't seen her around or heard from her, so I guess it finally sank in on her that I meant business.”

“Warned who? About what?” Polly asked, but Nettie
had already left the doorway, and Polly was indeed penned in her seat by the electric gloves. By the time Nettie reappeared with the coffee tray, the Percodan had begun to fog her in and she had forgotten all about Nettie's odd remark . . . which was not surprising in any case, since Nettie made odd remarks quite often.

Nettie put cream and sugar in Polly's coffee and held it up so she could sip from the cup. They chatted about one thing and another, and of course the conversation turned to the new shop before very long. Nettie told her about the purchase of the carnival glass lampshade again, but hardly in the breathless detail Polly would have expected, given the extraordinary nature of such an event in Nettie's life. But it kicked off something else in her mind: the note Mr. Gaunt had put in the cake container.

“I almost forgot—Mr. Gaunt asked me to stop by this afternoon. He said he might have an item I'd be interested in.”

“You're not going, are you? With your hands like they are?”

“I might. They feel better—I think the gloves really did work this time, at least a little. And I have to do
something.”
She looked at Nettie a trifle pleadingly.

“Well . . . I suppose.” A sudden idea struck Nettie. “You know, I could walk by there on the way home, and ask him if he could come to
your
house!”

“Oh no, Nettie—that's out of your way!”

“Only a block or two.” Nettie cast an endearingly sly side-glance Polly's way. “Besides, he might have another piece of carnival glass. I don't have enough money for another one, but
he
doesn't know that, and it doesn't cost anything to look, does it?”

“But to ask him to come here—”

“I'll explain how it is with you,” Nettie said decisively, and began putting things back onto the tray. “Why, businessmen often have home demonstrations—if they have something worth selling, that is.”

Polly looked at her with amusement and love. “You know, you're different when you're here, Nettie.”

Nettie looked at her, surprised. “I am?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“In a good way. Never mind. Unless I have a relapse, I think I
will
want to go out this afternoon. But if you do happen to go by Needful Things—”

“I will.” A look of ill-concealed eagerness shone in Nettie's eyes. Now that the idea had occurred to her, it took hold with all the force of a compulsion. Doing for Polly had been a tonic for her nerves, and no mistake.

“—and if he
does
happen to be in, give him my home number and ask him to give me a call if the item he wanted me to see came in. Could you do that?”

“You betcha!” Nettie said. She rose with the coffee-tray and took it into the kitchen. She replaced her apron on its hook in the pantry and came back into the living room to remove the thermal gloves. Her coat was already on. Polly thanked her again—and not just for the lasagna. Her hands still hurt badly, but the pain was manageable now. And she could move her fingers again.

“You're more than welcome,” Nettie said. “And you know what? You
do
look better. Your color's coming back. It scared me to look at you when I first came in. Can I do anything else for you before I go?”

“No, I don't think so.” She reached out and clumsily grasped one of Nettie's hands in her own, which were still flushed and very warm from the gloves. “I'm awfully glad you came over, dear.”

On the rare occasions when Nettie smiled, she did it with her whole face; it was like watching the sun break through the clouds on an overcast morning. “I love you, Polly.”

Touched, Polly replied: “Why, I love you, too, Nettie.”

Nettie left. It was the last time Polly ever saw her alive.

The lock on Nettie Cobb's front door was about as complex as the lid of a candy-box; the first skeleton key Hugh tried worked after a little jiggling and joggling. He opened the door.

A small dog, yellow with a white bib, sat on the hall floor. He uttered his single stern bark as morning sunlight fell around him and Hugh's large shadow fell on him.

“You must be Raider,” Hugh said softly, reaching into his pocket.

The dog barked again and promptly rolled over on his back, all four paws splayed out limply.

“Say, that's cute!” Hugh said. Raider's stub of a tail thumped against the wooden floor, presumably in agreement. Hugh shut the door and squatted beside the dog. With one hand he scratched the right side of the dog's chest in that magic place that is somehow connected to the right rear paw, making it flail rapidly at the air. With his other he drew a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket.

“Aw, ain't you a good fella?” Hugh crooned. “Ain't you a one?”

He left off scratching and took a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. Written on it in his labored schoolboy script was the message the fox-tail had given him—Hugh had sat down at his kitchen table and written it even before he got dressed, so he wouldn't forget a single word.

He pulled out the corkscrew hidden in one of the fat knife's slots and stuck the note on it. Then he turned the body of the knife sideways and closed his fist over it so the corkscrew protruded between the second and third fingers of his powerful right hand. He went back to scratching Raider, who had been lying on his back through all of this, eyeing Hugh cheerfully. He was cute as a bug, Hugh thought.