Rose Madder

by Stephen King

  "Holy God," he said. He spoke softly, and without a trace of facetiousness. "Now I'm getting a little scared."

  The host-Rosie wasn't sure if you called him a maitre d' or if that was someone else--came up and asked if they wanted smoking or nonsmoking.

  "Do you smoke?" Bill asked her, and Rosie quickly shook her head. "Somewhere out of the mainstream would be great," Bill said to the man in the tuxedo, and Rosie caught a gray-green flicker-she thought it was a five-dollar bill-passing from Bill's hand to the host's. "A corner, maybe?"

  "Certainly, sir." He led them through the brightly lighted room and beneath the lazily turning paddle-fans.

  When they were seated, Rosie asked Bill how he had found her, although she supposed she already knew. What she was really curious about was why he had found her.

  "It was Robbie Lefferts," he said. "Robbie comes in every few days to see if I've gotten any new paperbacks--well, old paperbacks, actually; you know what I mean--"

  She remembered David Goodis--It was a tough break, Parry was innocent--and smiled.

  "I knew he hired you to read the Christina Bell novels, because he came in special to tell me. He was very excited."

  "Was he really?"

  "He said you were the best voice he'd heard since Kathy Bates's recording of Silence of the Lambs, and that means a lot--Robbie worships that recording, along with Robert Frost reading 'The Death of the Hired Man.' He's got that on an old thirty-three-and-a-third Caedmon LP. It's scratchy, but it's amazing."

  Rosie was silent. She felt overwhelmed.

  "So I asked him for your address. Well, that's maybe a little too glossy. The ugly truth is I pestered him into it. Robbie's one of those people who happen to be very vulnerable to pestering. And to do him full credit, Rosie ..."

  But the rest drifted away from her. Rosie, she was thinking. He called me Rosie. I didn't ask him to; he just did it.

  "Would either of you folks care for a drink?" A waiter had appeared at Bill's elbow. Elderly, dignified, handsome, he looked like a college literature professor. One with a penchant for Empire-waist dresses, Rosie thought, and felt like giggling.

  "I'd like iced tea," Bill said. "How 'bout you, Rosie?"

  And again. He did it again. How does he knew I was never really a Rose, that I've always been really Rosie?

  "That sounds fine."

  "Two iced teas, excellent," the waiter said, and then recited a short list of specials. To Rosie's relief, all were in English, and at the words London broil, she actually felt a thin thread of hunger.

  "We'll think it over, tell you in a minute," Bill said.

  The waiter left, and Bill turned back to Rosie.

  "Two other things in Robbie's favor," he said. "He suggested I stop by the studio ... you're in the Corn Building, aren't you?"

  "Yes, Tape Engine is the name of the studio."

  "Uh-huh. Anyway, he suggested I stop by the studio, that all three of us could maybe go out for a drink after wrap one afternoon. Very protective, almost fatherly. When I told him I couldn't do that, he made me absolutely promise that I'd call you first. And I tried, Rosie, but I couldn't get your number from directory assistance. Are you unlisted?"

  "I don't actually have a phone yet," she said, sidestepping a little. She was unlisted, of course; it had cost an extra thirty dollars, money she could ill afford, but she could afford even less to have her number pop up on a police computer back home. She knew from Norman's bitching that the police couldn't conduct random sweeps of unlisted phone numbers the way they could sweep the ones in the phone books. It was illegal, an invasion of the privacy people voluntarily gave up when they allowed the phone company to list their numbers. So the courts had ruled, and like most of the cops she had met during the course of her marriage, Norman had a virulent hatred for all courts and all their works.

  "Why couldn't you come by the studio? Were you out of town?"

  He picked up his napkin, unfolded it, and put it carefully down on his lap. When he looked up again she saw his face had changed somehow, but it took several moments more for her to grasp the obvious--he was blushing.

  "Well, I guess I didn't want to go out with you in a gang," he said. "You don't really get to talk to a person that way. I just sort of wanted to ... well ... get to know you."

  "And here we are," she said softly.

  "Yes, that's right. Here we are."

  "But why did you want to get to know me? To go out with me?" She paused for a moment, then said the rest. "I mean, I'm sort of old for you, aren't I?"

  He looked incredulous for a moment, then decided it was a joke and laughed. "Yeah," he said. 'How old are you, anyway, granny? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?"

  At first she thought he was making a joke--not a very good one, either--and then realized he was serious enough underneath the light tone. Not even trying to flatter her, only stating the obvious. What was obvious to him, anyway. The realization shocked her, and her thoughts went flying in all directions again. Only one came through with any sort of clarity: the changes in her life had not ended with finding a job and a place of her own to live; they had only begun. It was as if everything that had happened up to this point had just been a series of preshocks, and this was the onset of the actual quake. Not an earthquake but a lifequake, and suddenly she was hungry for it, and excited in a way she did not understand.

  Bill started to speak, and then the waiter came with their iced teas. Bill ordered a steak, and Rosie asked for the London broil. When the waiter asked her how she wanted it, she started to say medium-well--that was how she ate beef because that was how Norman ate beef--and then she took it back.

  "Rare," she said. "Very."

  "Excellent!" the waiter said, speaking as if he really meant it, and as he walked away Rosie thought what a wonderful place a waiter's utopia would be--a place where every choice was excellent, very good, marvellous.

  When she looked back at Bill she saw his eyes still on her--those disquieting eyes with their dim green undertint. Sexy eyes.

  "How bad was it?" he asked her. "Your marriage?"

  "What do you mean?" she asked awkwardly.

  "You know what. I meet this woman in my dad's Swap n Loan, I talk to her for maybe ten minutes, and the goddamnedest thing happens to me-I can't forget her. This is something I've seen in the movies and occasionally read about in the kind of magazines you always find in the doctor's waiting room, but I never really believed it. Now, boom, here it is. I see her face in the dark when I turn out the light. I think about her when I eat my lunch. I--" He paused, giving her a considering, worried look. "I hope I'm not scaring you."

  He was scaring her a lot, but at the same time she thought she had never heard anything so wonderful. She was hot all over (except for her feet, which were cold as ice), and she could still hear the fans churning the air overhead. There seemed to be a thousand of them at least, a battalion of fans.

  "This lady comes in to sell me her engagement ring, which she thinks is a diamond ... except way down deep, where she knows better. Then, when I find out where she lives and go to see her-with a bouquet in my hand and my heart in my mouth, you might say-she comes this far from braining me with a can of fruit cocktail." He held up his right hand with the thumb and the forefinger half an inch apart.

  Rosie held her own hand up--the left--with the thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "Actually, it was more like this," she said. "And I'm like Roger Clemens--I have excellent control."

  He laughed hard at that. It was a good sound, honest and from the belly. After a moment, she joined him.

  "In any case, the lady doesn't exactly fire the missile, just makes this scary little downward twitch with it, then hides it behind her back like a kid with a copy of Playboy he stole out of his dad's bureau drawer. She says, 'Oh my God, I'm sorry,' and I wonder who the enemy is, since it's not me. And then I wonder how ex the husband can be, when the lady came into my dad's pawnshop with her rings still on. You know?"

  "Yes," she said. "I suppo
se I do."

  "It's important to me. If it seems like I'm being nosy, okay, probably I am, but ... on very short notice I'm very taken with this woman, and I don't want her to be very attached. On the other hand, I don't want her to be so scared she has to go to the door with a jumbo-sized can of fruit cocktail in her hand every time someone knocks. Is any of this making any sense to you?"

  "Yes," she said. "The husband is pretty ex." And then, for no reason at all, she added: "His name is Norman."

  Bill nodded solemnly. "I see why you left him."

  Rosie began to giggle and clapped her hands to her mouth. Her face felt hotter than ever. At last she got it under control, but by then she had to wipe her eyes with the comer of her napkin.

  "Okay?" he asked.

  "Yes. I think so."

  "Want to tell me about it?"

  An image suddenly arose in her mind, one with all the clarity of something seen in a vivid nightmare. It was Norman's old tennis racket, the Prince with the black tape wound around the handle. It was still hanging by the foot of the cellar stairs back home, as far as she knew. He had spanked her with it several times during the first years of their marriage. Then, about six months after her miscarriage, he had anally raped her with it. She had shared a lot of things about her marriage (that was what they called it, sharing, a word she found simultaneously hideous and apt) in Therapy Circle at D & S, but that was one little nugget she'd kept to herself--how it felt to have the taped handle of a Prince tennis racket jammed up your ass by a man who sat straddling you, with his knees on the outsides of your thighs; how it felt to have him lean over and tell you that if you fought, he would break the water-glass on the table beside the bed and cut your throat with it. How it felt to lie there, smelling the Dentyne on his breath and wondering how bad he was ripping you up.

  "No," she said, and was grateful that her voice didn't tremble. "I don't want to talk about Norman. He was abusive and I left him. End of story."

  "Fair enough," Bill said. "And he's out of your life for good?"

  "For good."

  "Does he know that? I only ask because of, you know, the way you came to the door. You sure weren't expecting a representative from the Church of Latter-Day Saints."

  "I don't know if he knows it or not," she said, after a moment or two to think it over--certainly it was a fair enough question.

  "Are you afraid of him?"

  "Oh, yes. You bet. But that doesn't necessarily mean a lot. I'm afraid of everything. It's all new to me. My friends at ... my friends say I'll grow out of it, but I don't know."

  "You weren't afraid to come out to dinner with me."

  "Oh yes I was. I was terrified."

  "Why did you, then?"

  She opened her mouth to say what she had been thinking earlier--that he had surprised her into it--and then closed it again. That was the truth, but it wasn't the truth inside the truth, and this was an area where she didn't want to do any sidestepping. She had no idea if the two of them had any sort of future beyond this one meal in Pop's Kitchen, but if they did, fancy footwork would be a bad way to begin the trip.

  "Because I wanted to," she said. Her voice was low but clear.

  "All right. No more about that."

  "And no more about Norman, either."

  "That's his for-real no-fooling name?"

  "Yes."

  "As in Bates."

  "As in Bates."

  "Can I ask you about something else, Rosie?"

  She smiled a little. "As long as I don't have to promise to answer."

  "Fair enough. You thought you were older than me, didn't you?"

  "Yes," she said. "Yes, I did. How old are you, Bill?"

  "Thirty. Which has got to make us something like next-door neighbors in the age sweepstakes ... same street, anyway. But you made an almost automatic assumption that you weren't just older, you were a lot older. So here comes the question. Are you ready?"

  Rosie shrugged uneasily.

  He leaned toward her, those eyes with their fascinating greenish undertint fixed on hers. "Do you know you're beautiful?" he asked. "That's not a come-on or a line, it's plain old curiosity. Do you know you're beautiful? You don't, do you?"

  She opened her mouth. Nothing emerged but one tiny breath-noise from the back of her throat. It was closer to a whistle than a sigh.

  He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. His touch was brief, but it still lit up her nerves like an electric shock, and for a moment he was the only thing she could see--his hair, his mouth, and most of all his eyes. The rest of the world was gone, as if the two of them were on a stage where all the lights except for one bright, burning spot had been turned out.

  "Don't make fun of me," she said. Her voice trembled. "Please don't make fun. I can't stand it if you do."

  "No, I'd never do that." He spoke absently, as if this were a subject beyond discussion, case closed. "But I'll tell you what I see." He smiled and stretched out his hand to touch hers again. "I'll always tell you what I see. That's a promise."

  7

  She said he needn't bother escorting her up the stairs, but he insisted and she was glad. Their conversation had passed on to less personal things when their meals came--he was delighted to find out the Roger Clemens reference hadn't been a fluke, that she had a knowledgeable fan's understanding of baseball, and they had talked a lot about the city's teams as they ate, passing naturally enough from baseball to basketball. She'd hardly thought of Norman at all until the ride back, when she began imagining how she would feel if she opened the door of her room and there he was, Norman, sitting on her bed, drinking a cup of coffee, maybe, and contemplating her picture of the ruined temple and the woman on the hill.

  Then, as they mounted the narrow stairs, Rosie in the lead and Bill a step or two behind, she found something else to worry about: What if he wanted to kiss her goodnight? And what if, after a kiss, he asked if he could come in?

  Of course he'll want to come in, Norman told her, speaking in the heavily patient voice he employed when he was trying not to be angry with her but was getting angry anyway. In fact, he'll insist on it. Why else would he spring for a fifty-dollar meal? Jesus, you ought to be flattered-there are gals on the street prettier than you who don't get fifty for half-and-half. He'll want to come in and he'll want to fuck you, and maybe that's good-maybe that's what you need to get your head out of the clouds.

  She was able to get her key out of her bag without dropping it, but the tip chattered all the way around the slot in the center of the metal disk without going in. He closed his hand over hers and guided it home. She felt the electric shock again when he touched her, and was helpless not to think of what the key sliding into the lock called to her mind.

  She opened the door. No Norman, unless he was hiding in the shower or the closet. Just her pleasant room with the cream-colored walls and the picture hanging by the window and the light on over the sink. Not home, not yet, but a little closer than the dorm at D & S.

  "This is not bad, you know," he said thoughtfully. "No duplex in the suburbs, but not at all bad."

  "Would you like to come in?" she asked through lips that felt completely numb--it was as if someone had slipped her a shot of Novocain. "I could give you a cup of coffee ..."

  Good! Norman exulted from his stronghold inside her head. Might as well get it over with, right, hon? You give him the coffee, and he'll give you the cream. Such a deal!

  Bill appeared to think it over very carefully before shaking his head. "It might not be such a good idea," he said. "Not tonight, at least. I don't think you have the slightest idea of how you affect me." He laughed a little nervously. "I don't think I have the slightest idea of how you affect me." He looked over her shoulder and saw something that made him smile and offer her a pair of thumbs-up. "You were right about the picture--I never would have believed it at the time, but you were. I guess you must have had this place in mind, though, huh?"

  She shook her head, now smiling herself. "When I boug
ht the picture, I didn't even know this room existed."

  "You must be psychic, then. I bet it looks especially good there where you've hung it in the late afternoon and early evening. The sun must sidelight it."

  "Yes, it's nice then," Rosie said, not adding that she thought the picture looked good-perfectly right and perfectly in place--at all times of the day.

  "You're not bored with it yet, I take it?"

  "No, not at all."

  She thought of adding, And it's got some very funny tricks. Step over and take a closer look, why don't you? Maybe you'll see something even more surprising than a lady getting ready to brain you with a can of fruit cocktail. You tell me, Bill-has that picture somehow gone from ordinary screen size to Cinerama 70, or is that just my imagination?

  She said none of this, of course.

  Bill put his hands on her shoulders and she looked up at him solemnly, like a child being put to bed, as he leaned forward and kissed her forehead on the smooth place between her eyebrows.

  "Thank you for coming out with me," he said.

  "Thank you for asking." She felt a tear go sliding down her left cheek and wiped it away with her knuckle. She was not ashamed or afraid for him to see it; she felt she could trust him with at least one tear, and that was nice.

  "Listen," he said. "I've got a motorcycle--an old butch Harley softail. It's big and loud and sometimes it stalls at long red lights, but it's comfortable ... and I'm a remarkably safe cyclist, if I do say so myself. One of the six Harley owners in America who wears a helmet. If Saturday's nice, I could come over and pick you up in the morning. There's a place I know about thirty miles up the lake. Beautiful. It's still too cold to swim, but we could bring a picnic."

  At first she was incapable of any sort of answer-she was simply flattered by the fact that he was asking her out again. And then there was the idea of riding on his motorcycle ... how would that be? For a moment all Rosie could think of was how it might feel to be behind him on two wheels cutting through space at fifty or sixty miles an hour. To have her arms around him. A totally unexpected heat rushed through her, something like a fever, and she did not recognize it for what it was, although she thought she remembered feeling something like it, a very long time ago.

  "Rosie? What do you say?"