by Stephen King
“We’ll flip a coin.” He takes a quarter out of his pocket.
Alice holds out her hand. “I’ll flip it. I don’t trust you, you’re a criminal.”
That makes him laugh. She doesn’t, but at least she smiles a little. Billy thinks it would be a good one if she really let it go.
He hands her the quarter. She tells him to call it in the air, then flips it like someone with experience. He calls tails (he always calls tails, learned it from Taco) and tails it is.
“You take the bed,” Billy says, and she doesn’t argue. In fact, she looks relieved. She’s still walking very carefully.
She closes the bedroom door. The light beneath goes out. Billy takes off his shoes, pants, and shirt, and lies down on the couch. He reaches behind him and turns out the lamp.
Very quietly, from the other room, she calls, “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he calls back. “Alice.”
CHAPTER 15
1
Billy’s back in Fallujah and the baby shoe is gone.
He and Pill and Taco and Albie Stark are behind an overturned taxi, the rest of the Nine behind a burned-out bakery truck. Albie is lying with his head in Taco’s lap while Pill tries to patch him up, which is a fucking joke, all the doctors in the Mayo Clinic couldn’t patch him up. Tac’s lap is a pond of blood.
It’s nothing, just clipped me, Albie said when the hajis ambushed them and the four of them ducked behind the overturned Corolla. His hand was pressed against the side of his neck, but he was smiling. Then the blood began spurting through his fingers and he started gasping.
Heavy fire is pouring at them from a house two down from the corner, there are muj in the upstairs windows and more on the roof, bullets going ponk ponk ponk into the taxi’s undercarriage. Tac has called in air support and he shouts to the others behind the bakery truck that a gunship is inbound, a couple of Hellfire missiles will shut those fucks up, two minutes, maybe four, and Pill’s on his knees with his dusty ass up and his hands pressed to the side of Albie’s neck, but the claret keeps flowing, a fresh squirt with every beat of Albie’s heart, and Billy sees the truth in Taco’s wide eyes.
George, Donk, Johnny, Bigfoot, and Klew are returning fire from behind the truck because they can see that those guys on the roof have almost got the angle on Billy and the others behind the taxi, it’s scant cover and lethal geometry. Maybe they can hold out until the Cobra arrives with the Hellfires, maybe not.
Billy looks around for the baby shoe, thinking he might have lost it just a minute ago, thinking it might be close, thinking if he can grab it everything will be magically okay, it’ll be like singing “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” but it’s not close and he knew it wouldn’t be close but looking means he doesn’t have to look at Albie, who is now breathing his final rasping gasping breaths, trying to take in all the world he can before he leaves it, and Billy wonders what he’s seeing and what he will see when he makes it to the other side, pearly gates and golden shores or just black nothing, and Johnny Capps is yelling from behind the truck, yelling Leave him, leave him, leave him and get back here, but they won’t leave him because you don’t do that, you leave none behind, that was Drill Sergeant Uppington’s biggest fucking rule, and the shoe isn’t there, the shoe is nowhere, he lost it and their luck went with it, and Albie’s going, almost gone, those terrible gasps for breath, and there’s a hole in his boot and Billy realizes it’s bleeding, he got shot in the fucking fo—
2
Billy bolts up so fast he almost falls off the couch. It’s Pearson Street, not Fallujah, and that’s not Albie Stark gasping for breath.
He hurries into the bedroom and finds Alice sitting up in bed with one hand grasping her throat, horribly like Albie when Albie at first thought the bullet just clipped him. Her eyes are wide and full of panic.
“Wash…” Whoop! “… cloth!” Whoop!
He goes into the bathroom and gets one. Wets it down without waiting for the tap to run warm, comes back and drapes it over her face, glad to cover eyes so wide they look ready to fall out of their sockets and dangle on her cheeks.
She keeps gasping.
He sings the first line of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” to her.
Whoop! Whoop! is his answer.
“Give it back to me, Alice! Sing! It’ll open you up! If you go down to the woods today…”
“If you… go down… to the woods today…” A gasp after every two or three words.
“You’re sure of a big surprise.”
Under the washcloth, Alice shakes her head. He grasps her shoulder, the bruised one, knowing he’s hurting her but doing it anyway. Anything to get through to her. “All in one breath, you’re sure of a big surprise.”
“You’re sure… big surprise.” Whoop!
“Not perfect but not bad. Now both lines together, and put some feeling into it. If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. With me. À deux.”
She does it with him, her half of the duet muffled by the wet washcloth where a crescent of mouth-shaped shadow appears each time she inhales.
He sits beside her as her breathing finally begins to ease. He puts an arm around her shoulders. “You’re all right. You’re okay.”
She takes the washcloth off her face. Locks of damp dark hair are stuck to her forehead. “What’s that song?”
“ ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic.’ ”
“Does it always work?”
“Yes.” Unless, that is, half of your throat has been blown out.
“I need to have it on my phone.” Then she remembers. “Shit, my phone is gone.”
“I’ll put it on one of the laptops,” Billy says, and points to the living room.
“Why do you have so many? What are they for?”
“Verisimilitude. That means—”
“I know what it means. Part of your disguise. Like the wig and the fake belly.” She uses the heel of her hand to brush the damp locks off her forehead. “I dreamed he was choking me. Tripp. I thought he was going to choke me to death. He was saying ‘Get them panties down’ in this funny growling voice that wasn’t like his regular voice. Then I woke up—”
“—and you couldn’t breathe.”
She nods.
“Have you ever seen a movie called Deliverance? Guys on a canoe trip?”
She looks at him as if he’s gone crazy. “No. What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”
“Get them panties down is a line from the movie.” He touches the marks on the side of her neck, very lightly. “Your dream was a recovered memory. That’s possibly the last thing you heard before you went all the way out, not just from whatever he put in your drink but because he choked you. Lucky he didn’t kill you. It probably wouldn’t have been on purpose, but you’d have been just as dead.”
“If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Okay, what’s the rest of it?”
“I don’t remember the whole song, but the first verse goes like this: If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today, you better go in disguise. Your mother never sang that to you?”
“My mother didn’t sing. You have a good voice.”
“If you say so.”
They sit together for a little bit. She’s breathing okay again, and now that the crisis has passed, Billy becomes aware that she’s wearing only her Black Keys T-shirt (which she somehow missed throwing up on) and he’s in his boxers. He gets up. “You’ll be okay now.”
“Don’t go. Not yet.”
He sits down again. She moves over. Billy lies down beside her, tense at first, his arm behind him for a makeshift pillow.
“Tell me why you killed that guy.” A pause. “Please.”
“It’s not exactly a bedtime story.”
“I want to hear. To understand. Because you don’t seem like a bad guy.”
I’ve always told myself I’m not, Billy thinks, but recent events have certainly call
ed that into question. He glances guiltily at the picture of Dave the Flamingo on the nightstand.
“What gets said here stays here.” She gives him a tentative smile.
It’s a fucked-up bedtime story but he tells it to her, starting with Frank Macintosh and Paul Logan coming to pick him up at the hotel. He thinks about changing the names (as he did at first in the story he’s been writing) and then decides there’s little point. She knows Ken Hoff’s from the news, ditto Giorgio’s. He makes one exception: Nick Majarian becomes Benjy Compson. Knowing his name might make life dangerous for her later on.
He thought saying everything out loud might clarify things in his own mind. That didn’t happen, but her breathing is easy again. She’s calm. The story did that much, anyway. After thinking it over she says, “This guy Benjy Compson hired you, but who hired him?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why get the other guy, Hoff, involved? Couldn’t one of these gangsters have found you a gun? And not get caught doing it?”
“Because Hoff owns the building, I suppose. The one I took the shot from. Well, he did own it.”
“The building where you had to wait for however long. Embedded, like.”
Embedded, he thinks. Yes. Like the reporters who came and went in Iraq, putting on armor and helmets and then taking them off when their stories were filed and they could go back home.
“It wasn’t too long.” It was, though.
“Still, it seems awfully complicated.”
It does to Billy, too.
“I think I can go back to sleep now.” Without looking at him she adds, “You can stay if you want.”
Billy, wary that his body might betray him again below the waist, says he thinks he better go back to the couch. Maybe Alice understands, because she gives him a look and a nod, then turns on her side and closes her eyes.
3
In the morning Alice tells him they’re almost out of milk and Cheerios are no good dry. Like I didn’t know that, Billy thinks. He suggests eggs and she says there’s only one left. “I don’t know why you only bought half a dozen.”
Because I wasn’t expecting company, Billy thinks.
“I know you weren’t expecting to feed two,” she says.
“I’ll go down to Zoney’s. They’ll have milk and eggs.”
“If you went to the Harps on Pine Plaza, you could get some pork chops or something. We could grill them on the barbecue out back if it ever stops raining. And some salad, the kind that comes in bags. It isn’t that far away.”
Billy’s first thought is that she’s trying to get rid of him so she can do a runner. Then he looks at the yellowing bruises on her cheek and forehead, her swollen nose just beginning to go down, and thinks no, just the opposite. She’s settling in. Means to stay. At least for the present.
It would seem crazy to someone on the outside, but in here it makes sense. She might have died in the gutter if not for him, and he’s showed no signs of wanting to re-rape her. On the contrary, he went out and got her the emergency pill in case one of those assholes impregnated her. Also, there’s the leased Ford Fusion to think about. It’s waiting for him on the other side of town. It’s time to bring it over here so he can leave for Nevada as soon as he feels it’s safe.
Besides, he likes Alice. He likes the way she’s coming back. She’s had a couple of panic attacks, sure, but who wouldn’t have panic attacks after being drugged and gang raped? She hasn’t talked about going back to school, she hasn’t mentioned friends or acquaintances who might be concerned about her, and she hasn’t fretted about calling her mother (or maybe her sister, the hairdresser). He thinks that Alice is in a space of hiatus. She has put her life on pause while she tries to figure out what should come next. Billy is no psychiatrist, but he has an idea that might actually be healthy.
Those fucks, Billy thinks, and not for the first time. Assholes who’d rape an unconscious girl. Who does that?
“Okay, groceries. You’ll stay here, right?”
“Right.” As if it’s a foregone conclusion. “I’m going to have cereal with the last of the milk. You can have the egg.” She gives him an uncertain look. “If that’s all right. We can do it the other way around if it’s not. They’re your supplies, after all.”
“That’s fine. Will you help me with my stomach again after breakfast?”
That makes her laugh. It’s the first one.
4
While they eat, he asks if she knows what Stockholm Syndrome is. She doesn’t, so he explains. “If I get spotted by the police and picked up, they’ll come here. Tell them you were afraid to leave.”
“I am,” Alice says, “but not because I’m afraid of you. I don’t want people to see me like this. I don’t want people to see me at all, at least for awhile. Besides, you won’t get picked up. With that stuff on you look a lot different.” She raises an admonitory finger. “But.”
“But what?”
“You need an umbrella, because a wig always looks like a wig in the rain. Water beads up on it. Real hair just gets wet and kind of tamps down.”
“I don’t have an umbrella.”
“There’s one in the Jensens’ closet. By the door as you go in.”
“When did you look in their closet?”
“While you were making the popcorn. Women like to see what other people have.” She looks at him across the kitchen table, her with her Cheerios, him with his egg. “Did you really not know that?”
5
The umbrella does more than keep the rain off his blond wig; it shields his face and makes him feel a little bit less like a bug on a microscope slide as he leaves the house and starts walking toward the nearest bus stop. He can completely relate to how Alice feels, because he feels the same. Going to the drugstore was nerve-racking, but this is worse because he’s going farther. He could walk to Pine Plaza, it’s fairly close and the rain has slacked off again, but he can’t walk all the way across town. And something else—the closer he gets to leaving this city, the more he dreads being captured before he can do it.
Never mind the cops and Nick’s men, what if he meets someone from his David Lockridge life? He imagines rounding a corner in Harps with his little shopping basket over his arm and coming face to face with Paul Ragland or Pete Fazio. They might not recognize him, but a woman would. Never mind what Alice said about him looking different with his wig and fake belly, Phil would. Corinne Ackerman would. Even tipsy Jane Kellogg would even if she was drunk. He’s sure of it. He understands such a meeting is statistically unlikely, but such things happen all the time. Journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man’s son doth know.
He examined the online bus schedule before leaving, and waits for the Number 3 at Rampart Street, standing under the bus shelter with three others, collapsing the umbrella because leaving it open would look weird. None of the others look at him. They are all looking at their phones.
He has a bad moment in the parking garage when the Fusion won’t start, then remembers he has to have his foot on the brake pedal. Duh, he thinks.
He drives to Pine Plaza, both enjoying the feeling of being behind the wheel again and paranoid about getting in a fender-bender or attracting the attention of the police (two cruisers pass him on the three-mile trip) in some other way. At Harps he buys meat, milk, eggs, bread, crackers, bag salad, dressing, and some canned goods. He doesn’t meet anyone he knows, and really, why would he? Evergreen Street is in Midwood, and people who live in Midwood shop at Save Mart.
He pays for his groceries with his Dalton Smith Mastercard and drives back to Pearson Street. He parks in the crumbling driveway beside the house and goes downstairs with his groceries. The apartment is empty. Alice is gone.
6
He purchased a couple of cloth shopping bags to put his groceries in—HARPS and HOMETOWN FRESH printed on them—and they sag almost to the floor as he looks at the empty living room and kitchen. The bedroom door is open and he can see that’s empty too, but he calls her name a
nyway, thinking she might be in the bathroom. Except that door is also open and if she was in there she’d close it, even with him gone. He knows this.
He isn’t scared, exactly. It’s more like… what? Is he hurt? Disappointed?
I guess I am, he thinks. Stupid, but there it is. She reconsidered her options, that’s all. You knew it could happen. Or you should have.
He goes into the kitchen, puts the bags on the counter, sees their breakfast dishes in the drainer. He sits down to think about what he should do next and sees a paper towel anchored by the sugar bowl. On it she’s written two words: OUT BACK.
Okay, he thinks, and lets out a long breath. Just out back.
Billy puts away the stuff that needs to go in the fridge, then goes out the front door and around the house, once more using the umbrella. Alice has moved the barbecue out of the puddle. She’s scrubbing away at the grill, her back to him. She must have raided the Jensens’ front closet again, because the green raincoat she’s wearing has to belong to Don. It goes all the way down to her calves.
“Alice?”
She yells and jumps and almost knocks the grill over. He reaches out to steady her.
“Scare a person, why don’t you?” she says, then whoops in a big breath.
“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to creep up on you.”
“Well…” Whoop! “… you did.”
“Give me the first line of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic.’ ” Only half-joking.
“I don’t…” Whoop! “… remember it.”
“If you go down to the woods today…” He raises his hands and wiggles his fingers in a come-on gesture.
“If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Did you get some stuff?”
“I did.”
“Pork chops?”
“Yes. At first I thought you were gone.”
“Well I’m not. I don’t suppose you got any Scrubbies, did you? Because this is the last one from upstairs, and it’s pretty well done-in.”