She gives her head a shake, trying to silence the voice, but it isn’t finished yet.
“The buttons are hard to push,” Farris tells her. “You have to use your thumb and put some real muscle into it. Which is a good thing, believe me. Wouldn’t want to make any mistakes with those, oh no. Especially not with the black one.”
The black one … back then she called it the Cancer Button. She shudders at the memory.
The phone rings.
And for the second time today, Gwendy almost faints.
14
“RYAN! I’M SO GLAD you called.”
“I’ve been trying to get a … for days, sweetheart,” he says, his voice momentarily gone amidst a blast of static. “Stupid phones here are worthless.”
“Here” is the small island of Timor, located off the southern end of Southeast Asia. Ryan’s been there since the first week of December with a Time magazine crew covering government unrest.
“Are you okay?” Gwendy asks. “Are you safe?”
“I stink like I’ve been living … barn the last couple weeks but I’m fine.”
Gwendy laughs. Happy tears stream down her cheeks. She gets up from the sofa and starts pacing back and forth. “Are you going to make it home in time for Christmas?”
“I don’t know, honey. I hope so but … are heating up here.”
“I understand.” Gwendy nods her head. “I hope you’re wrong, but I understand.”
“How’s … doing?” he says, cutting out again.
“What? I didn’t hear you, baby.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
Gwendy smiles—and then stops in her tracks.
She stares at the curtained window that occupies the upper half of the kitchen door, unsure if it’s her imagination. A few seconds pass and she’s just about convinced she’s seeing things, when a shadow moves again. Someone’s outside on the deck.
“ … hear me?” Ryan says, startling her.
“Oh, she’s doing fine,” Gwendy says, inching into the kitchen and pulling open a drawer. “Gaining weight and going to her appointments.” She takes out a steak knife and holds it against her leg.
“I’ll have to make her … secret recipe pancakes when I … home.”
“Just get your butt home in one piece, will you?”
He laughs and starts to say something else, and then there’s an ear-piercing jolt of static—and dead air.
“Hello? Hello?” she says, pulling the phone away from her ear so she can look at the screen. “Shit.” He’s gone.
Gwendy places the cellphone on the counter, crouches, and edges closer to the door. When she reaches the end of the row of cabinets, she crab-walks the last couple of feet into position directly behind the door. Before she can lose her nerve, she lets out a banshee cry and springs to her feet, flipping on the outside light with one hand and using the other hand to flick aside the flowered curtains with the tip of the steak knife.
Whoever was standing outside of the door is gone. All that’s left is her wide-eyed reflection staring back at her.
15
THE FIRST THING GWENDY does after retrieving her cellphone from the kitchen counter (even before she walks to the front door and double-checks the deadbolt) is to make sure nothing has happened to the button box. For one terrible, breathless moment, while she’s crossing from the kitchen into the family room, she imagines that the figure at the back door was a diversionary tactic, and while she was busy conducting her counterattack, an accomplice was breaking into the front of the house and stealing away with the box.
Her entire body sags with relief when she sees the button box sitting on the sofa right where she’d left it.
A short time later, as she makes her way upstairs carrying the box, it occurs to her that she never once considered telling Ryan about it. At first, she tries to use the severed connection as an excuse, but she knows better. The button box came back to her and only her. Nobody else.
“It’s mine,” she says as she enters the bedroom.
And shivers at the intensity of her voice.
16
GWENDY SLEEPWALKS HER WAY through December 17, 1999, her final day at the office before Congress begins its three-week holiday break. She spends the first fifteen minutes convincing Bea that she feels well enough to be at work (the day before, the panicked receptionist was ready to call the paramedics when she found Gwendy vomiting into her trash can; luckily, Gwendy was able to convince her that it must’ve been something bad she ate for breakfast, and after agreeing to go home forty minutes early, the older woman finally relented) and the next eight-and-a-half hours resisting the urge to rush home and check on the button box.
She hated to leave the box back at the townhouse, especially after the scare at her kitchen door the night before, but she didn’t have much of a choice. No telling how the X-ray machines at the security checkpoints would react to the box, and perhaps even more worrisome, no telling how the box would react to being X-rayed. Gwendy didn’t have a clue what the inside of the button box looked like, or what its innards were made of, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
Before she left for her two-block walk to the Capitol Building, she hid the box at the back of a narrow crawlspace underneath the staircase. She stacked cardboard boxes full of books on each side and in front of it, and laid a pile of winter coats on top of it all. Once she was satisfied, she closed the crawlspace’s small door, locked up the townhouse, and started for work. She managed only to return home to check on the box twice before finally making it into the office.
Gwendy’s last day passes in a blur of faceless voices and background noise. Several phone conferences in the morning and a pair of brief committee meetings in the afternoon. She doesn’t remember much of what was said in any of them, or even what she ate for lunch.
When five o’clock rolls around, she locks her office and sets off to deliver Christmas gifts to a handful of co-workers—a set of scented candles and bath salts for Patsy, a cashmere sweater and bracelet for Bea, and a stack of signed books for Bea’s children. After well-wishes and hugs goodbye, she heads for the lobby.
17
“I’M SURE GONNA MISS your smiling face these next few weeks, Congresswoman.”
“I’m going to miss you, too,” Gwendy says, stopping at the security desk. She reaches into her tote bag and pulls out a small box covered in snowman wrapping paper. She hands it across the barrier to the barrel-chested guard. “Merry Christmas, Harold.”
Harold’s mouth drops open. He slowly reaches out and takes the gift. “You got me … this is really for me?”
Gwendy smiles and nods her head. “Of course. I would never forget my favorite head of security.”
He looks at her in confusion. “Head of—?” And then he grins and those gold teeth of his wink at her in the fluorescent lights. “Oh, you’re joking with me.”
“Open your present, silly man.”
His meaty fingers attack the wrapping paper and uncover a shiny black box with Bulova printed in gold lettering across the top of it. He opens the box and looks up in disbelief. “You bought me a watch?”
“I saw you admiring Congressman Anderson’s last week,” Gwendy says. “I thought you deserved one of your own.”
Harold opens his mouth but no words come out. Gwendy is surprised to see that the guard’s eyes have gone shiny and his chin is trembling. “I … this is the nicest present anyone has ever given me,” he finally says. “Thank you.”
For the first time today, Gwendy feels like maybe everything will be okay. “You’re very welcome, Harold. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas.” She pats his arm affectionately and turns to leave.
“Not so fast,” Harold says, raising a hand. He ducks behind the desk and comes back up with a wrapped gift of his own. He hands it to Gwendy.
She looks at him in surprise, and then reads the gift tag: To Congresswoman Gwendy Peterson; From Harold & Beth. “Thank you,” she says, genuinely touched. “
Both of you.” She opens the present. It’s a thick hardcover book with a bright orange dust jacket. She turns it over so she can see the front cover—and the room shifts, up, down, and up again, like she just sat down on a teeter-totter at the playground.
“You okay, Congresswoman?” Harold asks. “You already have a copy?”
“No, no,” Gwendy says, holding up the book. “I’ve never read it, but I’ve always wanted to.”
“Oh, good,” he says, relieved. “I can barely make heads or tails of the jacket copy, but my wife read it and said it was fascinating.”
Gwendy forces a smile on her face. “Thank you again, Harold. It really is a lovely surprise.”
“Thank you again, Congresswoman Peterson. You shouldn’t have, but I’m sure glad you did.” He bursts out laughing.
Gwendy slips the book inside her leather tote and heads for the elevator. On the ride down, she takes another peek at the cover, just to make sure she’s not losing her mind.
She’s not.
The book Harold gave her is Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s the same novel Richard Farris was reading on the bench in Castle View twenty-five years earlier—on the day he first gave Gwendy the button box.
18
GWENDY IS LEANING TOWARD canceling her long-scheduled dinner plans with friends even before the copy of Gravity’s Rainbow shows up, but Harold’s well-meaning, yet not-so-pleasant surprise, cinches the deal. She goes straight home, unburies the button box from its hiding place, changes into sweatpants and a baggy sweater, and calls out for delivery.
While her friends—two former classmates from Brown—dine on filet mignon and grilled vegetables at historic Old Ebbitt Grill on Fifteenth (where you have to call weeks in advance for a table), Gwendy sits alone in her dining room, picking at the sorriest excuse for a garden salad she’s ever seen and nibbling on a slice of pizza.
She’s not really alone, of course. The button box is there, resting on the opposite end of the table, watching her eat like a silent suitor. A few minutes earlier, she looked up from her dinner and asked quite sincerely, “Okay, you’re back. What do I do with you now?” The box didn’t answer.
Gwendy’s attention is currently focused on an evening news program playing on the den television, and she’s not happy. She still can’t believe Clinton lost to this idiot. “The President of the United States is a flipping moron,” she says, stuffing a piece of lettuce that’s closer to brown than it is green into her mouth. “You tell ’em, Bernie.”
Anchorman Bernard Shaw, with his distinguished salt-and-pepper hair and thick mustache, does just that: “. . . recap the sequence of events that has brought us to this potentially catastrophic standoff. Initially, spy-satellite photographs led U.S. officials to suspect that North Korea was developing a new nuclear facility near the Yongbyon nuclear center that was originally disabled by the 1994 accord. Based on these photographs, Washington demanded an inspection of the facility and Pyongyang countered by demanding the U.S. pay $300 million for the right to inspect the site. Earlier this week, President Hamlin responded angrily—and, many say, disrespectfully—in public comments directed at the North Korean leader, refusing to pay any such inspection fee and calling the proposal ‘ludicrous and laughable.’ Now, within the past hour, Pyongyang has released a written statement referring to President Hamlin as ‘a brainwashed bully’ and threatening to pull out of the 1994 accord. No response from the White House yet, but one unnamed official claims …”
“That’s just great,” Gwendy says, getting up from the table and tossing the remains of her salad into the trash. “A pissing contest between two egomaniacs. I’m going to get a lot of calls over this …”
19
GWENDY PULLS THE BLANKET over her chest and gives the box one last look before turning off the bedside lamp. Earlier in the evening, after brushing her teeth and washing her face, she placed the button box on the dresser next to her jewelry tray and hairbrushes. Now, she’s wondering if she should move it closer. Just to be safe.
She reaches out to turn on the light again—but freezes when she hears the creak of a door opening on hinges that need oiling. She immediately recognizes the sound. It’s her closet door.
Unable to move, she watches in terror as a dark figure emerges from inside the walk-in closet. She tries to bark out a warning—Stop, I have a gun! I’m calling 911!; anything that might buy her a little more time—but realizes that she’s holding her breath. Suddenly remembering the button box on the dresser, she yanks off the thick blanket and scrambles across the bed.
But the intruder is too fast.
He lunges at her, strong arms grabbing her around the waist and wrestling her back onto the bed. She screams and flails at her attacker, clawing at his eyes, ripping off the ski mask he’s wearing.
Gwendy sees his face in the glow of the television and gasps.
The intruder is Frankie Stone—somehow alive again and looking exactly as he did almost twenty years earlier on the night he killed her boyfriend—baggy camo pants, dark glasses, and a tight tee-shirt, wearing that stupid grin of his, greasy brown hair staining his shoulders, shotgun pattern of acne scattered across his cheeks.
He flips her over and pins Gwendy against the mattress, and she can smell the stale, alcohol-tainted foulness of his breath as he hisses, “Give me the box, you dumb bitch. Give it to me right now or I’ll eat you alive”—and then his jaws yawn open impossibly wide and the world goes dark as Frankie Stone closes his mouth and engulfs her.
20
GWENDY JERKS UPRIGHT IN bed, clutching a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets to her chest and gasping for breath. Her eyes dart to the closet door across the room—it’s closed tight—and then to her dresser. The button box is exactly as she left it, sitting there in the dark with its watchful gaze.
21
“ARE YOU SURE YOU don’t want me to stow your bag, Congresswoman Peterson?”
Gwendy looks at the co-pilot who had introduced himself just minutes earlier when she first boarded the eight-seat private plane, but she’s already forgotten his name. “No, it’s fine. I packed my laptop and I’ll probably fiddle around with some work once we’re in the air.”
“Very well,” he says. “We should be taking off in about twenty minutes.” He gives her a reassuring smile—the kind that says, Your life is in my hands, lady, but I slept great last night and only did a little bump of cocaine this morning, so hey it’s all good—and ducks back into the cockpit.
Gwendy yawns and looks out the window at the busy runway. The last thing she wants to do during the short flight is fiddle with her laptop. She’s exhausted from not sleeping the night before and in a foul mood. Not even forty-eight hours have passed since the button box’s return to her life, and she’s already moved on from shock and curiosity to anger and resentment. She glances at her carry-on suitcase, tucked underneath the seat in front of her, and fights the urge to check on the box again.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she tries to silence the obsessive voice chattering away in the back of her head, and abruptly snaps them open again when she realizes she’s dozing off. Sleeping with the box unsecured might not be such a smart idea, she decides.
“Is it safe?” she suddenly asks out loud, without intending to. She looks down at the suitcase again. The flight is less than ninety minutes long. What’s the worst that can happen if she takes a little catnap? She doesn’t know and she’s not willing to find out. She can sleep when she gets home.
Is it safe? She’s thinking of the old Dustin Hoffman movie now with the evil Nazi dentist. Is it safe?
When it comes to the button box, Gwendy knows the answer to that question. The box is never safe. Not really.
“We’re number two for take-off, Congresswoman,” the co-pilot says, peeking out from the cockpit. “We should have you on the ground in Castle Rock a few minutes before noon.”
22
IF GWENDY’S BEING HONEST with herself—and as the King Air 200 climbs high in the clouds above a muddy tw
ist of Potomac River she’s determined to be exactly that—she has to admit that her crummy mood this morning is coming from one overwhelming source: a long-forgotten memory from her youth.
It was a mild and breezy August day shortly before the start of her tenth-grade year in high school, and Gwendy just finished running the Suicide Stairs for the first time in months. When she reached the top, she sat and rested on the same Castle View bench where years earlier she’d first met a man named Richard Farris. She stretched her legs for a moment, and then she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of the sun and the wind on her face.
The question that had bloomed in her mind while sitting on the bench that long ago summer day resurfaced—and rather rudely—earlier this morning as Gwendy was busy cushioning the button box in her carry-on bag with rolled up wads of socks and sweaters: How much of her life is her own doing, and how much the doing of the box with its treats and buttons?
The memory—and the central thought contained within that memory—was almost enough to make Gwendy scream in rage and fling the box across the bedroom like a toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum.
No matter how she looks at it, Gwendy knows she’s led what most people would call a charmed life. There was the scholarship to Brown, the writers’ workshop in Iowa, the fast-track job at the ad agency, and of course, the books and movies and Academy Award. And then there was the election, what many pundits called the biggest political upset in Maine history.
Sure, there were failures along the way—a lost advertising account here, a film option that didn’t pan out there, and her love life before Ryan could probably best be described as a barren desert of disappointment—but there weren’t too many, and she always bounced back with an ease of which others were envious.
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