by Stephen King
She stood up as Harold came up the walk, and put her hand out. She was one of the most striking women Harold had ever seen—he had seen her before, of course, but rarely this close up.
“I’m Nadine Cross,” she said. Her voice was low, close to being husky. Her grip was firm and cool. Harold’s eyes dropped involuntarily to her body for a moment, a habit he knew girls hated, but one he seemed powerless to stop. This one did not seem to mind. She was wearing a pair of light cotton twill slacks that clung to her long legs and a sleeveless blouse of some light blue silky material. No bra, he guessed. How old was she? Thirty? Thirty-five? Younger, maybe. She was going prematurely gray.
All over? the endlessly homy (and endlessly virginal, seemingly) part of his mind inquired, and his heart beat a little faster.
“Harold Lauder,” he said, smiling. “You came in with Larry Underwood’s party, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Larry came to see me last week, brought me a bottle of wine and some candybars.” His words had a tinkling, false sound to them, and he was suddenly sure that she knew he had been cataloguing her, undressing her in his mind. He fought an urge to lick his lips and won ... at least temporarily. “He’s a helluva nice guy.”
“Larry?” She laughed a little, a strange and somehow cryptic sound. “Yes, he’s very nice. Larry’s a prince.”
They gazed at each other for a moment, and Harold had never been looked at by a woman whose eyes were so frank and speculative. He was again aware of his excitement, and a warm nervousness in his belly.
“Well,” he said. “What can I do for you this afternoon, Miss Cross?”
“You could call me Nadine, for a start. And you could invite me to stay for supper. That would get us a little further along.”
That sense of nervous excitement began to spread. “Nadine, would you like to stay for supper?”
“Very much,” she said, and smiled. When she laid her hand on his forearm, he felt a tingle like a low-grade electric shock. Her eyes never left his. “Thank you.”
He fumbled his latchkey into its slot, thinking: Now she’ll ask me why I lock my door and I’ll mumble and stumble around, looking for an answer, and seem like a fool.
But Nadine never asked.
He didn’t cook dinner; she did.
Harold had gotten to the point where he considered it impossible to get even a half-decent meal out of cans, but Nadine managed nicely. Suddenly aware of and appalled by what he had spent his day doing, he asked if she could entertain herself for twenty minutes (and she was probably here on some very mundane piece of business, he cautioned himself desperately) while he cleaned up.
When he came back—having splurged and taken a two-bucket shower—she was bustling around in the kitchen. Water was boiling merrily away on the bottled gas stove. As he came into the kitchen, she dumped half a cup of elbow macaroni into the pot. Something mellow was being simmered in a skillet on the other burner; he got a combined aroma of French onion soup, red wine, and mushrooms. His stomach rumbled. The day’s work just past all of a sudden had lost its power over his appetite.
“It smells fantastic,” he said. “You shouldn’t have, but I’m not complaining.”
“It’s a stroganoff casserole,” she said, turning to smile at him. “Tinned beef, I’m afraid, not one of the recommended ingredients, but—” She shrugged to indicate the limitations they all labored under.
“It’s nice of you to do it.”
“Not at all.” She gave him that speculative glance again, and turned halfway toward him, the silky material of her blouse pulled taut against her left breast, molding it sweetly. He felt a hot flush creeping up his neck and willed himself not to have an erection. “We’re going to be very good friends,” she said.
“We . . . are?”
“Yes.” She turned back to the stove, seeming to close the subject, leaving Harold in a thicket of possibilities.
Once, halfway through the meal, he tried again to ask her what had brought her here, but she only smiled and shook her head. “I like to see a man eat.”
For a moment Harold thought she must be talking about someone else and then realized she meant him. And he did eat; he had three helpings of the stroganoff, and the tinned meat did not detract from the recipe at all, in Harold’s opinion. The conversation seemed to make itself, leaving him free to quiet the lion in his belly, and to look at her.
Striking, had he thought? She was beautiful. Her hair, which she had pulled back into a casual horsetail in order to cook more easily, was twisted with strands of pure white, not gray as he had first thought. Her eyes were grave and dark, and when they focused unhesitatingly on his, Harold felt giddy. Her voice was low and confidential. The sound of it began to affect him in a way that was both uncomfortable and almost excruciatingly pleasant.
When the meal was done, he started to get up but she beat him to it. “Coffee or tea?”
“Really, I could—”
“You could, but you won’t. Coffee, tea . . . or me?” She smiled then, not the smile of someone who has offered a remark of minor risqueness (“risky talk,” as his dear old mum would have said, her mouth set in a disapproving line), but a slow little smile, rich as the dollop of cream on top of a gooey dessert. And again the speculative look.
His brain spinning, Harold replied with insane casualness: “The latter two,” and was only able to contain a burst of adolescent giggles with a mighty effort.
“Well, we’ll start with tea for two,” Nadine said, and went to the stove.
She looked at him over the rim of her teacup with those disconcertingly frank eyes and smiled again, and his equanimity vanished.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked. It sounded like some lumbering double-entendre, but he had to say something, because she must have come here for something. He felt his own protective smile faltering on his lips in his confusion.
“Yes,” she said, and put her teacup down decisively. “Yes, you can. Maybe we can help each other. Could you come into the living room?”
“Sure.” His hand was shaking; when he set his cup down and rose, some of it spilled. As he followed her into the living room, he noticed how smoothly her slacks (which aren’t very slack at all, his mind gibbered) clung to her buttocks. It was the panty line that broke up the smooth look of most womens’ slacks, he had read that somewhere, maybe in one of the magazines he had kept in the back of his bedroom closet behind the shoeboxes, and the magazine had gone on to say that if a woman really wanted that smooth and seamless look; she should wear a g-string or no panties at all.
He swallowed; tried to, at least. There seemed to be a huge blockage of some kind in his throat.
The living room was dim, lit only by the glow that filtered through the drawn shades. Outside, the evening was drawing toward dusk. Harold went to one of the windows to run the shade up and let more light in, when she put her hand on his arm. He turned toward her, his mouth dry.
“No. I like them down. It gives us privacy.”
“Privacy,” Harold croaked, like a trained raven learning a new word.
“So I can do this,” she said, and stepped lightly into his arms.
Her body was pressed frankly and completely against him, the first time in his life anything of the sort had happened, and his amazement was total. He could feel the soft and individual press of each breast through his white cotton shirt and her silky blue one. Her belly, firm but vulnerable, against his, not shying away from the feel of his erection. There was a sweet smell to her, perfume maybe, or maybe just her own smell, that seemed like a told secret that bursts, revelative, on the listener. His hands found her hair and plunged into it.
At last the kiss broke but she didn’t move away. Her body remained against his like soft fire. She was perhaps three inches shorter, and her face was turned up to his. It occurred to him in a dim sort of way that it was one of the most amusing ironies of his life: When love—or a reasonable facsimile—had finall
y found him, it was as if he had slipped sideways into the pages of a love story in a glossy women’s magazine. The authors of such stories, he had once claimed in an unacknowledged letter to Redbook, were one of the few convincing arguments in favor of enforced eugenics.
But now her face was turned up to his, her lips were moist and half-parted, her eyes were bright and almost . . . almost . . . yes, almost starry. The only detail not strictly compatible with a Redbook’s-Eye view of life was his hardon, which was truly amazing.
“On the couch,” she said.
Somehow they got there, and then they were tangled up there, and her hair had come loose and flowed over her shoulders; her perfume seemed everywhere. His hands were on her breasts and she was not minding; in fact she was twisting and squirming around to allow his hands freer access, and he plundered her.
“You’re a virgin,” Nadine said. No question there . . . and it was easier not to have to lie. He nodded.
“Then we do this first. Next time it will be slower. Better.” She unbuttoned his jeans and they snapped open to the zipper-tab of his fly. She traced a light forefinger across his belly just below the navel. Harold’s flesh jumped at her touch.
“Nadine—”
“Shhh!” Her face was hidden by the fall of her hair, making it impossible to read her expression. “My blouse—”
“Can I—?”
“Yes, that’s what I want. And then I’ll take care of you . . .” She drew in breath. “Harold, that’s lovely.”
Take care of you, the words echoed down and down. Her hands slipped inside the waistband of his underpants and his jeans slid down to his ankles in a meaningless jingle of keys.
“Raise up,” she whispered, and he did.
It took less than a minute. He cried aloud with the strength of his climax, unable to help himself. He could understand why so many of the writers made that connection between orgasm and death.
Then he lay back in the dimness, his head against the sofa, his chest heaving, his mouth open. He looked at her shamefacedly, embarrassed at the hair-trigger way he had gone off. But she was only smiling at him with those calm, dark eyes that seemed to know everything, the eyes of a very young girl in a Victorian painting. A girl who knows too much, perhaps, about her father.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“Why? For what?” Her eyes never left his face.
“You didn’t get much out of that.”
“Au contraire, I got a great deal of satisfaction.” She paused. “You’re young. We can go as many times as you want to.”
He looked at her without speaking, unable to speak.
“But you must know one thing.” She put a hand lightly on him. “What you told me about being a virgin? Well, I am, too.”
“You—?” His expression of astonishment must have been comical, because she threw back her head and laughed.
“Is there no room for virginity in your philosophy, Horatio?”
“No . . . yes . . . but—”
“I’m a virgin. And I’m going to stay that way. Because it’s for someone else to ... to make me not a virgin anymore.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
He stared at her, suddenly cold all over. She looked back calmly.
“Him?”
She half-turned away and nodded.
“But I can show you things,” she said, still not looking at him. “We can do things. Things you’ve never even ... no, I take that back. Maybe you have dreamed of them, but you never dreamed
you’d do them. We can play. We can make ourselves drunk with it. We can wallow in it. We can . . She trailed off, and then did look at him, a look so sly and sensual that he felt himself stirring again. “We can do anything—everything—but that one little thing. And that one thing really isn’t so important, is it?”
Images whirled giddily in his mind. Silk scarves . . . boots . . . leather . . . rubber. Oh Jesus. Fantasies of a Schoolboy. But it was all a kind of dream, wasn’t it? A fantasy begotten of fantasy, child of a dark dream. He wanted all those things, wanted her, but he also wanted more.
The question was, how much would he settle for?
“What if I say no?” His lips felt cold, ashy.
She shrugged, and the movement made her breasts sway prettily. “Life will go on, won’t it, Harold? I’ll try to find some way of doing the thing I have to do. You’ll go on. Sooner or later you’ll find a girl who will do that. . . one little thing for you. But that one little thing is very tiresome after a while. Very tiresome.”
“How would you know?” he asked, and grinned crookedly at her.
To that she made no answer; only waited for his.
How long did he think? He didn’t know. Later, he wasn’t even sure he had struggled with the question. But when he spoke, the words tasted like death in his mouth: “In the bedroom. Let’s go in the bedroom.”
She smiled at him, such a smile of triumph and sensual promise that he shuddered from it, and his own eager response to it.
Chapter 45
The Judge’s house overlooked a cemetery.
He and Larry sat on the back porch after dinner, smoking Roi-Tan cigars and watching sunset fade to pale orange around the mountains.
“When I was a boy,” the Judge said, “we lived within walking distance of the finest cemetery in Illinois. Its name was Mount Hope. Every night after supper, my father, who was then in his early sixties, would take a walk. Sometimes I would walk with him. And if the walk took us past this perfectly maintained necropolis, he would say, ‘What do you think, Teddy? Is there any hope?’ And I would answer, ‘There’s Mount Hope,’ and each time he’d roar with laughter as if it had been the first time. I sometimes think we walked past that boneyard just so he could share that joke with me. He was a wealthy man, but it was the funniest joke he seemed to know.”
The Judge smoked, his chin low, his shoulders hunched high.
“Maybe it is a good thing that the old woman is gone,” he said. “Perhaps she knew it. Maybe people should be free to judge for themselves what the lights in the sky are, and if one tree has a face or if the face was only a trick of the light and shadow. Do you understand me, Larry?”
“No sir,” Larry said truthfully. “I’m not sure I do.”
“I wonder if we need to reinvent that whole tiresome business of gods and saviors and ever-afters before we reinvent the flushing toilet. That’s what I’m saying. I wonder if this is the right time for gods.”
“Do you think she’s dead?”
“She’s been gone six days now. The Search Committee hasn’t found a trace of her. Yes, I think she is dead, but even now I am not completely sure. She was an amazing woman, completely outside any rational frame. Perhaps one of the reasons I’m almost glad to have
her gone is because I’m such a rational old curmudgeon. I like to creep through my daily round, to water my garden—did you see the way I’ve brought the begonias back? I’m quite proud of that—to read my books, to write my notes for my own book about the plague.
I like to do all those things and then have a glass of wine at bedtime and fall asleep with an untroubled mind. Yes. None of us want to see portents and omens, no matter how much we like our ghost stories and the spooky films. None of us want to really see a Star in the East or a pillar of fire by night. We want peace and rationality and routine. If we have to see God in the black face of an old woman, it’s bound to remind us that there’s a devil for every god—and our devil may be closer than we like to think.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Larry said awkwardly. He wished mightily that the Judge hadn’t just mentioned his garden, his books, his notes, and his glass of wine before bedtime. He wondered if there was any possible way of going on without sounding like a cruel and opportunistic halfwit.
“I know why you’re here. I accept.”
Larry jerked, making the wicker of his chair strain and whisper. “Who told you? This is supposed to be very quiet, Judge. If someon
e on the committee has been leaking, we’re in a hell of a jam.”
The Judge raised one liverspotted hand, cutting him off. “Softly, my boy—softly. No one on your committee has been leaking, not that I know of, and I keep my ear close to the ground. No, I whispered the secret to myself. Why did you come here tonight? Your face is an education in itself, Larry. I hope you don’t play poker. When I was talking about my few simple pleasures, I could see your face sag and droop ... a rather comic stricken expression appeared on it—”
“Is that so funny? What should I do, look happy about . . . about. . .”
“Sending me west,” the Judge said quietly. “To spy out the land. Isn’t that about it?”
“That’s exactly it.”
“I wondered how long it would be before the idea would surface. It is tremendously important, of course, tremendously necessary if the Free Zone is to be assured its full chance to survive. We have no real idea what he’s up to over there. He might as well be on the dark side of the moon.”
“If he’s really there.”
“Oh, he’s there. Never doubt it.” He took a nail-clipper from his pants pocket and went to work on his fingernails, the little snipping sound punctuating his speech. “Tell me, has the committee discussed what might happen if we decided we liked it better over there? If we decided to stay?”
Larry was flabbergasted by the idea. He told the Judge that, to the best of his knowledge, it hadn’t occured to anybody.
“I imagine he’s got the lights on,” the Judge said with deceptive idleness. “There’s an attraction in that, you know. Obviously this man Impening felt it.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Larry said grimly, and the Judge laughed long and heartily.
When he sobered he said, “I’ll go tomorrow. In a Land-Rover, I think. North to Wyoming, and then west. Thank God I can still drive well enough! I’ll travel straight across Idaho and toward northern California. It may take two weeks going, longer coming back. Coming back there may be snow.”
“Yes. We’ve discussed that possibility.”
“And I’m old. The old are prone to attacks of heart trouble and stupidity. I presume you are sending backups?”