Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  She shook her head and kept mopping. Long wet streaks on the linoleum that dried quickly.

  “Get over here if you want to see your boy next time he’s here.”

  I ought to say no, she thought. I ought to say you leave me alone or I’ll report you. Only he’s been getting away with it a long time, hasn’t he? Everyone knew about Peters. Coates had to know, too, but in spite of all her big talk about having zero tolerance for sexual harassment, it kept going on.

  Jeanette trudged to the little alcove between the machines and stood before him, head down, mop in one hand.

  “In there. Back against the wall. Never mind the mop, you can leave that.”

  “I don’t want to, Officer.” Her headache was really bad now, throbbing and throbbing. B-7 was just down the corridor, with her aspirin on her little shelf.

  “You get in here or you go on Bad Report and lose your visitation. Then I’ll make sure you get another Bad Report, and poof, there goes your Good Time.”

  And my chance of parole next year, Jeanette thought. No Good Time, no parole, back to square one, case closed.

  She squeezed past Peters and he rocked his hips into her so she could feel his boner. She stood against the wall. Peters moved in. She could smell his sweat and aftershave and hair tonic. She was taller than he was and over his shoulder she could see her cellie. Ree had stopped polishing. Her eyes were filled with fear, dismay, and what might have been anger. She was gripping the can of Pledge and slowly raising it. Jeanette gave her head a minute shake. Peters didn’t see; he was busy unzipping his fly.

  Ree lowered the can and resumed polishing the table that needed no more polishing, hadn’t needed any in the first place.

  “Now cop my joint,” Peters said. “I need some relief. You know what I wish? I wish you was Coatsie. I wish I had her old flat ass backed up against this wall. If it was her, it wouldn’t be just a pull-off, either.”

  He gasped as she grasped him. It was sort of ridiculous, really. He had no more than three inches, nothing he’d want other men to see unless it was absolutely unavoidable, but it was hard enough. And she knew what to do. Most women did. Guys had a gun; you unloaded it; they went about their business.

  “Easy, Jesus!” he hissed. His breath was rotten with some spicy meat, maybe a Slim Jim or a pepperoni stick. “Wait, give me your hand.” She gave it to him and he spat in her palm. “Now do it. And tickle my balls a little.”

  She did as she was told, and while she did it, she kept her eyes on the window beyond his shoulder. This was a technique she had begun learning at eleven, when her stepfather touched her, and had perfected with her late husband. If you found something to lock onto, a point of focus, you could almost leave your body behind, and pretend it was doing its own thing while you were visiting whatever it was you suddenly found so fascinating.

  A county sheriff’s car stopped outside, and Jeanette watched it first wait in the dead space and then roll into the yard once the inner gate rumbled open. Warden Coates, Dr. Norcross, and Officer Lampley walked out to meet it. Officer Peters’s breath panting in her ear was far away. Two cops got out of the car, a woman from behind the wheel and a man from the passenger side. They both drew their sidearms, which suggested that their prisoner was a bad sugarpop, probably bound for C Wing. The woman officer opened the back door, and another woman got out. She didn’t look dangerous to Jeanette. She looked beautiful in spite of the bruises on her face. Her hair was a dark flood down her back, and she had enough curves to even make the baggy County Browns she was wearing look cool. Something was fluttering around her head. A big mosquito? A moth? Jeanette tried to see, but she couldn’t be sure. Peters’s gasps had taken on a squeaky edge.

  The male officer took the dark-haired woman by the shoulder and got her walking toward intake, where Norcross and Coates met her. Once inside, the process would begin. The woman brushed at the flyer circling her hair and as she did so, her wide mouth opened and she tilted her head to the sky, and Jeanette saw her laugh, saw her bright, straight teeth.

  Peters began to buck against her, and his ejaculate pumped into her hand.

  He stepped back. His cheeks were flushed. There was a smile on his fat little face as he zipped up his fly. “Wipe that on the back of the Coke machine, Sorley, and then finish mopping the fucking floor.”

  Jeanette wiped his semen away, then pushed the mop bucket back down to the sink so she could rinse off her hand. When she came back, Peters was sitting at one of the tables and drinking a Coke.

  “You okay?” Ree whispered.

  “Yes,” Jeanette whispered back. And she would be, as soon as she got some aspirin for her head. The last four minutes hadn’t even happened. She had been watching the woman get out of the police cruiser, that was all. She didn’t need to think about the last four minutes ever again. She just needed to see Bobby on his next visit.

  Hsst-hsst, went the shooter of the polish can.

  Three or four seconds of blessed silence elapsed before Ree checked in again. “Did you see the new one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she beautiful, or was that just me?”

  “She was beautiful.”

  “Those County Mounties drew their guns, you see that?”

  “Yes.” Jeanette glanced at Peters, who had clicked on the television and was now staring at some news report. The picture showed someone slumped behind the wheel of a car. It was hard to tell if it was a man or woman, because he or she seemed to be wrapped in gauze. On the bottom of the screen, BREAKING NEWS was flashing on and off in red, but that meant nothing; they called it breaking news if Kim Kardashian farted. Jeanette blinked back the water that had suddenly welled up in her eyes.

  “What do you think she did?”

  She cleared her throat, sucking back the tears. “No idea.”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  Before Jeanette could reply, Peters spoke without turning his head. “You two ladies stop gossiping or you’re both going on Bad Report.”

  And because Ree couldn’t stop talking—it just wasn’t in her—Jeanette mopped her way down to the far end of the room.

  On TV, Michaela Morgan said, “The president so far has declined to declare a state of emergency, but informed sources close to the crisis say that . . .”

  Jeanette tuned her out. The new fish had raised her cuffed hands to the circling moths, and laughed when they alit.

  You’ll lose that laugh in here, sister, Jeanette thought.

  We all do.

  4

  Anton Dubcek returned home for lunch. This was customary, and though it was only twelve thirty, it was actually a late lunch by Anton’s standards—he had been hard at work since six that morning. What people didn’t understand about pool maintenance was that it was not a business for softies. You had to be driven. If you wanted to succeed in pools, you couldn’t sleep in, dreaming about blintzes and blowjobs. To stay ahead of the competition you had to stay ahead of the sun. At this point in his day, he had swept and adjusted the levels and cleaned out the filters of seven different pools, and replaced the gaskets on two pumps. He could save the remaining four appointments on his schedule for late afternoon and early evening.

  In between: lunch, a short nap, a short workout, and perhaps a brief visit to Jessica Elway, the bored married chick he was currently boning. That her husband was a local Deputy Dog made it all the sweeter. Cops sat in their cars all day and snarfed donuts and got their jollies harassing black guys. Anton controlled the motherfucking waters and made money.

  Anton dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and proceeded straight to the fridge to get his shake. He shifted around the soy milk, the bag of kale, the container of berries—no shake.

  “Mom! Mom!” he cried out. “Where’s my shake?”

  There was no answer, but he heard the television going in the living room. Anton poked his head through the open doorway. The evidence on display—television playing, empty rocks glass—suggested that Magda had retir
ed for a snooze of her own. As much as he loved his mother, Anton knew she drank too much. It made her sloppy, and that pissed him off. Since his dad died it was Anton who paid the mortgage. Upkeep and sustenance was her end of the bargain. If he didn’t have his shakes, Anton couldn’t dominate pools the way he needed to, or excel to the maximum in his workouts, or slam a juicy ass as forcefully as the ladies wanted him to slam it.

  “Mom! This is bullshit! You gotta do your part!” His voice echoed through the house.

  From the cabinet under the silverware drawer he yanked out his blender, creating as much of a racket as possible as he thumped it down on the counter and pieced together jar, blade, and base. Anton dropped in a good bunch of greens, some berries, a handful of nuts, a spoonful of organic peanut butter, and a cup of Mister Ripper Protein Powder™. While he performed this assembly he found himself pondering Sheriff Lila Norcross. She was attractive for an older chick, extremely fit—a true Yummy Mummy, no donuts for her—and he liked the way she rallied when he gave her a line. Did she want him? Or did she want to commit acts of police brutality against him? Or—and this was the truly intriguing possibility—did she both want him and want to commit acts of police brutality against him? The situation bore monitoring. Anton set the blender to the highest speed and watched the mix blur. Once it was a smooth pea color, he flicked off the power, removed the jar, and headed into the living room.

  And on the screen, what did you know: his old playmate Mickey Coates!

  He liked Mickey, although the sight of her induced uncharacteristically melancholy feelings in the president, CEO, CFO, and sole employee of Anton the Pool Guy, LLC. Would she even remember him? His mother used to babysit her, so in their early years they had been thrust together quite a lot. Anton remembered Mickey exploring his bedroom, looking through his drawers, flipping through the comics, tossing out one inquiry after another: Who gave you this? Why is this G.I. Joe your favorite? Why don’t you have a calendar? Your dad’s an electrician, right? Do you think he’ll teach you how to do wires and stuff? Do you want him to? They must have been about eight and it was like she was planning to write his biography. That was okay, though. Good, in fact. Her interest had made Anton feel special; before that, before her, he had never even wanted someone else’s interest, had been happy just being a kid. Of course, Mickey’d gone off to private school early on, and from junior high onward they’d hardly spoken.

  Probably as an adult, she was into briefcase-and-cufflink types who read the Wall Street Journal, who understood whatever the hell the appeal of opera was, who watched shows on PBS, that sort of guy. Anton shook his head. Her loss, he assured himself.

  “I want to warn you that the footage you’re about to see is disturbing, and we haven’t confirmed its authenticity.”

  Mickey was reporting from a seat in the rear of a news van with the door open. Beside her was a man in a headset working on a laptop. Mickey’s blue eye shadow was visibly damp. It must have been hot in the van. Her face looked different somehow. Anton took a large foamy gulp of his shake and studied her.

  “However,” she continued, “in light of everything surrounding Aurora, and the rumors of adverse reactions by sleepers who have been aroused, we’ve decided to run it because it would seem to confirm that those reports are accurate. Here’s the section of footage recorded from the streaming site maintained by the self-proclaimed Bright Ones from their compound outside of Hatch, New Mexico. As you know, this militia group has been at odds with federal authorities over water rights . . .”

  Good to see Mickey, but the news bored Anton. He picked up the controller and clicked over to the Cartoon Network, where an animated horse and rider were galloping through dark woods, chased by shadows. When he set the controller back on the side table he noticed the empty bottle of gin on the floor.

  “Goddammit, Mom.” Anton took another gulp of shake and crossed the living room. He needed to make sure she was sleeping on her side in case of a sudden ejection; she was not going to die like a rock star on his watch.

  On the kitchen counter, his cell phone chirruped. It was a text message from Jessica Elway. Now that she finally had the baby down for a nap, she planned to smoke a jay and take off her clothes and avoid the TV and the Internet, both of which were utterly freaky-bizarro today. Was Anton interested in joining her? Her poor husband was stuck at a crime scene.

  5

  Frank Geary thought the guy currently starring in the New Mexico footage looked like an elderly refugee from Woodstock Nation, someone who should be leading the Fish Cheer instead of a freaky-deaky cult.

  Kinsman Brightleaf was what he called himself—how about that for a mouthful? He had a wild spread of curly gray hair, a curly gray beard, and wore a serape patterned in orange triangles that fell to his knees. Frank had followed the story of the Bright Ones as it developed over the spring, and come to the conclusion that beneath the pseudo-religious, quasi-political trappings, they were just another bunch of trumped-up tax dodgers, emphasis on the Trump.

  Bright Ones, they called themselves, and oh, the fucking irony of that. There were about thirty of them, men and women and a few kids, who had declared themselves an independent nation. Besides refusing to pay taxes or send their kids to school or give up their automatic weapons (which they apparently needed to protect their ranch from the tumbleweeds), they had illegally diverted the only stream in the area onto the scrubland they owned. The FBI and the ATF had been parked outside their fences for months, attempting to negotiate a surrender, but nothing much had changed.

  The Bright Ones’ ideology disgusted Frank. It was selfishness costumed in spirituality. You could draw a straight line from the Bright Ones to the endless budget cutting that threatened to turn Frank’s own job into part-time employment or outright volunteer work. Civilization required a contribution—or a sacrifice, if that’s what you wanted to call it. Otherwise, you ended up with wild dogs roaming the streets and occupying the seats of power in DC. He wished (without, admittedly, a great deal of conviction) there were no kids in that compound so that the government could just roll on them and clean them out like the scum they were.

  Frank was at his desk in his small office. Crowded in on all sides by animal cages of various sizes and shelves of equipment, it wasn’t much of a space, but he didn’t mind. It was okay.

  He sipped a bottle of mango juice and watched the TV as he held an ice pack against the side of the hand that he’d used to pound on Garth Flickinger’s door. The light on his cell phone was blinking: Elaine. He wasn’t sure how he wanted to play that, so he let her go to voicemail. He’d pushed too hard with Nana, he saw that now. Potentially, there could be blowback.

  A wrecked green Mercedes now sat in the driveway of a rich doctor. Frank’s fingerprints were all over the painted paving stone he’d used to break the Merc’s windows and beat on the Merc’s body, as well as on the planter of the lilac tree that, at the height of his rage, he’d stuffed into the careless motherfucker’s backseat. It was exactly the sort of incontrovertible evidence—felony vandalism—that a family court judge (all of whom favored the mother, anyway) would need to fix it so he could only see his daughter for a supervised hour every other full moon. A felony vandalism rap would also take care of his job. What was obvious in retrospect was that Bad Frank had stepped in. Bad Frank had, in fact, had a party.

  But Bad Frank wasn’t entirely bad, or entirely wrong, because, check it: for the time being his daughter could safely draw in the driveway again. Maybe Good Frank could have handled it better. But maybe not. Good Frank was a bit of a weakling.

  “I will not—we will not—stand idly by while the so-called United States government perpetrates this hoax.”

  On the television screen, Kinsman Brightleaf made his address from behind a long, rectangular table. On the table lay a woman in a pale blue nightgown. Her face was shrouded in white stuff that looked like the fake webby crap they sold at the drugstore around Halloween. Her chest rose and fell.

  �
�What is that shit?” Frank asked the mongrel stray currently visiting with him. The mongrel looked up, then went back to sleep. It was a cliché, but for all-weather company, you couldn’t do better than a dog. Couldn’t do better than a dog, period. Dogs didn’t know any better; they just made the best of it. They made the best of you. Frank had always had one growing up. Elaine was allergic to them—she claimed. Another thing he’d given up for her, far bigger than she could ever understand.

  Frank gave the mongrel a rub between the ears.

  “We have observed their agents tampering with our water supply. We know that they have used their chemicals to act on the most vulnerable and treasured part of our Family, the females of the Bright, in order to sow chaos and fear and doubt. They poisoned our sisters in the night. That includes my wife, my loving Susannah. The poison worked on her and our other beautiful women while they slept.” Kinsman Brightleaf’s voice bottomed out in a tobacco-scarred rattle that was oddly homey. It made you think of old men gathered around a diner table for breakfast, good-humored in their retirement.

  In attendance to the high priest of tax-evasion were two younger men, also bearded, though less impressively, and also draped in serapes. All wore gunbelts, making them look like extras in an old Sergio Leone spaghetti western. On the wall behind them was a Christ on the cross. The video from the compound was clear, marred only by the occasional line scrolling across the image.

  “While they slept!”

  “Do you see the cowardice of the current King of Lies? See him in the White House? See his many fellow liars on the useless green paper they want us to believe is worth something? Oh, my neighbors. Neighbors, neighbors. So wily and so cruel and so many faces.”

  All his teeth abruptly appeared, flashing from amid the wild crop of his beard. “But we will not succumb to the devil!”

  Hey now, thought Frank. Elaine thinks she has a problem with me, she should get a load of Jerry Garcia here. This guy’s nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake.