Six Stories (4 page)

He slowly brings them down. I see them … see them … then they’re gone from my field of vision. A long moment later, I feel cold steel nestle against my naked upper belly.

He looks doubtfully at the doctor.

“Are you sure you don’t-”

“Do you want to make this your field or not, Peter?” she asks him with some asperity.

“You know I do, but-”

“Then cut.”

He nods, lips firming. I would close my eyes if I could, but of course I cannot even do that; I can only steel myself against the pain that’s only a second or two away, now steel myself for the steel.

“Cutting,” he says, bending forward.

“Wait a sec!” she cries.

The dimple of pressure just below my solar plexus eases a little.

He looks around at her, surprised, upset, maybe relieved that the crucial moment has been put of-I feel her rubber-gloved hand slide around my penis as if she means to give me some bizarre handjob, safe sex with the dead, and then she says, “You missed this one, Pete.”

He leans over, looking at what she’s found-the scar in my groin, at the very top of my right thigh, a glassy, no-pore bowl in the flesh.

Her hand is still holding my cock, holding it out of the way, that’s all she’s doing, as far as she’s concerned she might as well be holding up a sofa cushion so someone else can see the treasure she’s found beneath it-coins, a lost wallet, maybe the catnip mouse you haven’t been able to find-but something is happening.

Dear wheelchair Jesus on a chariot-driven crutch, something is happening.

“And look,” she says. Her finger strokes a light, tickly line down the side of my right testicle. “Look at these hairline scars. His testes must have swollen up to damned near the size of grapefruits.”

“Lucky he didn’t lose one or both.”

“You bet your … you bet your you-knows,” she says, and laughs that mildly suggestive laugh again. Her gloved hand loosens, moves, then pushes down firmly, trying to clear the viewing area.

She is doing by accident what you might pay twentyfive or thirty bucks to have done on purpose … under other circumstances, of course. “This is a war wound, I think. Hand me that magnifier, Pete.”

“But shouldn’t I-”

“In a few seconds,” she says. “He’s not going anywhere. She’s totally absorbed by what she’s found. Her hand is still on me, still pressing down, and what was happening feels like it’s still happening, but maybe I’m wrong. I must be wrong, or he would see it, she would feel it.

She bends down and now I can see only her green-clad back. with the ties from her cap trailing down it like odd pigtails. Now, oh my, I can feel her breath on me down there.

“Notice the outward radiation,” she says. “It was a blast wound of some sort, probably ten years ago at least, we could check his military rec-”

The door bursts open. Pete cries out in surprise. Dr. Arlen doesn’t, but her hand tightens involuntarily, she’s gripping me again and it’s all at once like a hellish variation of the old Naughty Nurse fantasy.

“Don’t cut ‘im up!” someone screams, and his voice is so high and wavery with fright that I barely recognize Rusty. “Don’t cut ‘im up, there was a snake in his golfbag and it bit Mike!”

They turn to him, eyes wide, jaws dropped; her hand is still gripping me, but she’s no more aware of that, at least for the time being, than Petie-boy is aware that he’s got one hand clutching the left breast of his scrub gown. He looks like he’s the one with the clapped-out fuel pump.

‘What … what are you…” Pete begins.

“Knocked him flat!” Rusty was saying-babbling. “He’s gonna be okay, I guess, but he can hardly talk!’ Little brown snake, I never saw one like it in my life, it went under the loadin’ bay, it’s under there right now, but that’s not the important part! I think it already bit that guy we brought in. I think … holy shit, Doc, whatja tryin’ to do? Stroke ‘im back to life?”

She looks around, dazed, at first not sure of what he’s talking about

… until she realizes that she’s now holding a mostly erect penis.

And as she screams-screams and snatches the shears out of Pete’s limp gloved hand-I find myself thinking again of that old Alfred Hitchcock TV show.

Poor old Joseph Cotton, I think.

He only got to cry.

Afternote

It’s been a year since my experience in Autopsy Room Four, and I have made a complete recovery, although the paralysis was both stubborn and scary; it was a full month before I began to recover the finer motions of my fingers and toes. I still can’t play the piano, but then, of course, I never could. That is a joke, and I make no apologies for it. In the first three months after my misadventure, I think that my ability to joke provided a slim but vital margin between sanity and some sort of nervous breakdown. Unless you’ve actually felt the tip of a pair of postmortem shears poking into your stomach, you don’t know what I mean.

Two weeks or so after my close call, a woman on Dupont Street called the Derry Police to complain of a “Foul Stink” coming from the house next door. That house belonged to a bachelor bank clerk named Walter Kerr. Police found the house empty … of human life, that is. they found over sixty snakes of different varieties. About half of them were dead-starvation and dehydration, but many were extremely lively … and extremely dangerous. Several were very rare, and one was of a species believed to have been extinct since mid-century, according to consulting zoologists.

Kerr failed to show up for work at Derry Community Bank on August 22, two days after I was bitten, one day after the story (“Paralyzed Man Escapes Deadly Autopsy,” the headline read; at one point I was quoted as saying I had been “Scared stiff”) broke in the press.

There was a snake for every cage in Kerr’s basement menagerie …

except for one. The empty cage was unmarked, and the snake that popped out of my golf bag (the ambulance orderlies had packed it in with my “corpse” and had been practicing chip shots out in the ambulance parking area) was never found.

The toxin in my bloodstream-the same toxin found to a far lesser degree in orderly Mike Hopper’s bloodstream-was documented but never identified. I have looked at a great many pictures of snakes in the last year, and have found at least one that has reportedly caused cases of full-body paralysis in humans. This is the Peruvian Boomslang, a nasty viper that has supposedly been extinct since the I920s. Dupont Street is less than half a mile from the Derry Municipal Golf Course. Most of the intervening land consists of scrub woods and vacant lots.

One final note. Katie Arlen and I dated for four months, November I994 through February of I995. We broke it off by mutual consent, due to sexual incompatibility.

I was impotent unless she was wearing rubber gloves.

BLIND WILLIE

Stephen King

6:15 A.M.

He wakes to music, always to music; the shrill beep-beep-beep of the clock-radio’s alarm is too much for his mind to cope with during those first blurry moments of the day. It sounds like a dump truck backing up. The radio is bad enough at this time of year, though; the easy-listening station he keeps the clock-radio tuned to is wall-to-wall Christmas carols, and this morning he wakes up to one of the two or three on his Most Hated List, something full of breathy voices and phony wonder. The Hare Krishna Chorale or the Andy Williams Singers or some such. Do you hear what I hear, the breathy voices sing as he sits up in bed, blinking groggily, hair sticking out in every direction. Do you see what I see, they sing as he swings his legs out, grimaces his way across the cold floor to the radio, and bangs the button that turns it off. When he turns around, Sharon has assumed her customary defensive posture - pillow folded over her head, nothing showing but he creamy curve of one shoulder, a lacy nightgown strap, and a fluff of blonde hair.

He goes into the bathroom, closes the door, slips off the pajama bottoms he sleeps in, drops them into the hamper, clicks on his electric razor. As he runs it over his face he thinks, Why not run through the rest of the sensory catalogue while you’re at it, boys? Do you smell what I smell, do you taste what I taste, do you feel what I feel. I mean, hey, go for it.

‘Humbug,’ he says as he turns on the shower. ‘All humbug.’

Twenty minutes later, while he’s dressing (the dark grey suit from Paul Stuart this morning, plus his favorite Sulka tie), Sharon wakes up a little. Not enough for him to fully understand what she’s telling him, though.

‘Come again?’ he asks. ‘I got eggnog, but the rest was just ugga-wugga.’

‘I asked if you’d pick up two quarts of eggnog on your way home,’ she says. ‘We’ve got the Allens and the Dubrays coming over tonight, remember?

‘Christmas,’ he says, checking his hair carefully in the mirror. He no longer looks like the glaring, bewildered man who sits up in bed to the sound of music five mornings a week - sometimes six. Now he looks like all the other people who will ride into New York with him on the 7:40, and that is just what he wants.

‘What about Christmas?’ she asks with a sleepy smile. ‘Humbug, right?

‘Right,’ he agrees. ‘All humbug.’

‘If you remember, get some cinnamon too - ‘

‘Okay.’

‘ - but if you forget the eggnog, I’ll slaughter you, Bill.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘I know. You’re very dependable. Look nice too.’

‘Thanks.’

She flops back down, then props herself up on one elbow as he makes a final minute adjustment to the tie, which is a dark blue. He has never worn a red tie in his life, and hopes he can go to his grave untouched by that particular virus. ‘I got the tinsel you wanted,’ she says.

‘Mmmmm?’

‘the tinsel,’ she says. ‘It’s on the kitchen table.’

‘Oh.’ Now he remembers. ‘Thanks.’

‘Sure.’ She’s back down and already starting to drift off again. He doesn’t envy the fact that she can stay in bed until nine - hell, until eleven, if she wants - but he envies that ability of hers to wake up, talk, then drift off again. She says something else, but now she’s back to ugga-wugga. He knows what it is just the same, though: have a good day hon.

‘Thanks,’ he says, kissing her cheek. ‘I will.’

‘Look very nice,’ she mumbles again, although her eyes are closed. ‘Love you, Bill.’

‘Love you too,’ he says and goes out.

His briefcase - Mark Cross, not quite top of the line but almost - is standing in the front hall, by the coat tree where his topcoat (from Barney’s on Madison) hangs. He grabs the case on his way by and takes it into the kitchen. The coffee is all made - God bless solid state electronics and microchips - and he pours himself a cup. He opens the briefcase, which is entirely empty, and picks up the ball of tinsel on the kitchen table. He holds it up for a moment, watching the way it sparkles under the light of the kitchen fluorescents, then puts it in his briefcase.

‘Do you hear what I hear,’ he says to no one at all and snaps the briefcase shut.

8:15 A.M.

Outside the dirty window to his left, he can see the city drawing closer. The grime on the glass makes it look like some filthy, gargantuan ruin - Atlantis, maybe, just heaved back to the surface. It’s a grey day with a load of snow caught in its throat, but that doesn’t worry him much; it is just eight days until Christmas, and business will be good.

The car reeks of morning coffee, morning deodorant, morning aftershave, morning perfume, and morning stomachs. There is a tie in almost every seat - even the women wear them these days it seems. The faces have that puffy eight o’clock look, the eyes both introspective and defenseless, the conversations halfhearted. This is the hour at which even people who don’t drink look hung over. Most people just stick to their newspapers. He himself has the Times crossword open in front of him, and although he’s filled in a few squares, it’s mostly a defensive measure. He doesn’t like to talk to people on the train, doesn’t like loose conversation of any sort, and the last thing in the world he wants is a commuter buddy. When he starts seeing the same faces in any given car, when people start to nod to him or say ‘How you doin today?’ as they go to their seats, he changes cars. It’s not that hard to remain unknown, just another commuter, one who is conspicuous only in his adamant refusal to wear a red tie. Not that hard at all.

‘All ready for Christmas?’ the man in the aisle seat asks him.

He looks up, almost frowning, then decides it’s not a substantive remark, but only the sort of empty time-passer some people seem to feel compelled to make. The man beside him is fat and will undoubtedly stink by noon no matter how much Speed Stik he used this morning … but he’s hardly even looking at his seatmate, so that’s all right.

‘Yes, well, you know,’ he says, looking down at the briefcase between his shoes - the briefcase that contains a ball of tinsel and nothing else. ‘I’m getting in the spirit, little by little.’

8:40 A.M.

He comes out of Penn Station with a thousand other topcoated commuters and commuterettes, mid-level executives for the most part, sleek gerbils who will be running full tilt on their exercise wheels by noon. He stands still for a moment, breathing deep of the cold grey air. Madison Square Garden has been tricked out with greenery and Christmas lights, and a little distance away a Santa Claus who looks Puerto Rican is ringing a bell. He’s got a pot for contributions with an easel set up beside it. HELP THE HOMELESS THIS CHRISTMAS, the sign on the easel says, and the man in the blue tie thinks, How about a little truth in advertising, Santa? How about a sign that says, HELP ME SUPPORT MY CRACK HABIT THIS CHRISTMAS? Nevertheless, he drops a couple of dollar bills into the pot as he walks past. He has a good feeling about today. He’s glad Sharon remembered the tinsel - he would have forgotten, himself; he always forgets stuff like that, the grace notes.

He walks five short blocks and then comes to his building. Standing outside the door is a young black man - a youth, actually, surely no more than seventeen - wearing black jeans and a dirty red sweater with a hood. He jives from foot to foot, blowing puffs of steam out of his mouth, smiling frequently, showing a gold tooth. In one hand he holds a partly crushed Styrofoam coffee cup. There’s some change in it, which he rattles constantly.