Elevation

by Stephen King

  “She said something about the leaf-peepers . . . and everyone says last summer was especially good . . .”

  “The summer was good,” she said, speaking with a little more animation now. “As for the leaf-peepers, we get some, but most of them go further west, into New Hampshire. North Conway has all those outlet stores to shop in, and more touristy stuff to do. I guess when winter comes we’ll get the skiers passing through on their way to Bethel or Sugarloaf . . .”

  Scott knew most skiers bypassed the Rock, taking Route 2 to the western Maine ski areas, but why bum her out more than she already was?

  “Only when winter comes, we’d need the locals to pull us through. You know how it is, you must. The locals trade with other locals during the cold weather, and it’s just enough to tide them over until the summer people come back. The hardware store, the lumberyard, Patsy’s Diner . . . they make do through the lean months. Only not many locals come to Frijole. Some, but not enough. Deirdre says it’s not just because we’re lesbians, but because we’re married lesbians. I don’t like to think she’s right . . . but I think she is.”

  “I’m sure . . .” He trailed off. That it isn’t true? How in hell did he know, when he’d never even considered it?

  “Sure of what?” she asked. Not in a snotty way, but in an honestly curious one.

  He thought of his bathroom scale again, and the relentless way the numbers rolled back. “Actually, I’m sure of nothing. If it’s true, I’m sorry.”

  “You should come down for dinner some night,” she said. This might have been a snide way of telling him she knew he’d never taken a meal at Holy Frijole, but he didn’t think so. He didn’t think this young woman had much in the way of snideness in her.

  “I will,” he said. “I assume you do have frijoles?”

  She smiled. It lit her up. “Oh yes, many kinds.”

  He smiled back. “Stupid question, I guess.”

  “I have to go, Mr. Carey—”

  “Scott.”

  She nodded. “All right, Scott. It’s good to talk to you. It took all my courage to come down here, but I’m glad I did.”

  She held out her hand. Scott shook it.

  “Just one favor. If you happen to see Deirdre, I’d appreciate you not mentioning that I came to see you.”

  “Done deal,” Scott said.

  * * *

  The day after Missy Donaldson’s visit, while he was sitting at the counter in Patsy’s Diner and finishing his lunch, Scott heard someone behind him at one of the tables say something about “that crack-snackin’ restaurant.” Laughter followed. Scott looked at his half-eaten wedge of apple pie and the scoop of vanilla ice cream now puddling around it. It had looked good when Patsy set it down, but he no longer wanted it.

  Had he heard such remarks before, and just filtered them out, the way he did with most overheard but unimportant (to him, at least) chatter? He didn’t like to think so, but it was possible.

  Probably going to lose the restaurant, she’d said. We’d have to count on the locals to pull us through.

  She’d used the conditional tense, as if Holy Frijole already had a FOR SALE OR LEASE sign in the window.

  He got up, left a tip under his dessert plate, and paid his check.

  “Couldn’t finish the pie?” Patsy asked.

  “My eyes were a little bigger than my stomach,” Scott said, which wasn’t true. His eyes and stomach were the same size they’d always been; they just weighed less. The amazing thing was that he didn’t care more, or even worry much. Unprecedented it might be, but sometimes his steady weight-loss slipped his mind completely. It had when he’d been waiting to snap photos of Dee and Dum squatting on his lawn. And it did now. What was on his mind at this moment was that crack about crack-snackers.

  Four guys were sitting at the table the remark had come from, beefy fellows in work clothes. A row of hardhats sat in a line on the windowsill. The men were wearing orange vests with CRPW stenciled on them: Castle Rock Public Works.

  Scott walked past them to the door, opened it, then changed his mind and went to the table where the road crew sat. He recognized two of the men, had played poker with one of them, Ronnie Briggs. Townies, like him. Neighbors.

  “You know what, that was a shitty thing to say.”

  Ronnie looked up, puzzled, then recognized Scott and grinned. “Hey, Scotty, how you doin?”

  Scott ignored him. “Those women live just up the road from me. They’re okay.” Well, Missy was. About McComb he wasn’t so sure.

  One of the other men crossed his arms over his broad chest and stared at Scott. “Were you in this conversation?”

  “No, but—”

  “Right. So butt out.”

  “—but I had to listen to it.”

  Patsy’s was small, but always crammed at lunchtime and filled with chatter. Now the talk and the busy gnash of forks on plates stopped. Heads turned. Patsy stood beside the cash register, alert for trouble.

  “Once again, buddy, butt out. What we talk about is none of your business.”

  Ronnie got up in a hurry. “Hey, Scotty, why don’t I walk out with you?”

  “No need,” Scott said. “I don’t need an escort, but I have to say something first. If you eat there, the food is your business. You can criticize it all you want. What those women do in the rest of their lives is not your business. Got it?”

  The one who had asked Scott if he had been invited into their conversation uncrossed his arms and stood up. He wasn’t as tall as Scott, but he was younger and muscular. Red had crept up his broad neck and into his cheeks. “You need to take your loud mouth out of here before I punch it for you.”

  “None of that, none of that, now,” Patsy said sharply. “Scotty, you need to leave.”

  He stepped out of the diner without argument, and took a deep breath of the cool October air. There was a knock on the glass from behind him. Scott turned and saw Bull Neck looking out. He raised a finger as if to say hang on a second. There were all sorts of posters in Patsy’s window. Bull Neck pulled one of them free, walked to the door, and opened it.

  Scott balled his fists. He hadn’t been in a fist-fight since grammar school (an epic battle that had lasted fifteen seconds, six punches thrown, four of them clean misses), but he was suddenly looking forward to this one. He felt light on his feet, more than ready. Not angry; happy. Optimistic.

  Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, he thought. Come on, big boy.

  But Bull Neck didn’t want to fight. He crumpled up the poster and threw it on the sidewalk at Scott’s feet. “Here’s your girlfriend,” he said. “Take it home and jerk off over it, why don’t you? Short of rape, it’s the closest you’ll ever get to fucking her.”

  He went back in and sat down with his mates, looking satisfied: case closed. Aware that everyone in the diner was looking at him through the window, Scott bent down, picked up the crumpled poster, and walked away toward noplace in particular, just wanting not to be stared at. He didn’t feel ashamed of himself, or stupid for starting something in the diner where half of the Rock ate lunch, but all those interested eyes were annoying. It made him wonder why anyone would want to get up on a stage to sing or act or tell jokes.

  He smoothed out the ball of paper, and the first thing he thought of was something Missy Donaldson had said: That’s the only reason she let them put her on that poster. “Them,” it seemed, was the Castle Rock Turkey Trot Committee.

  In the center of the sheet was a photo of Deirdre McComb. There were other runners, most of them behind her. A big number 19 was pinned to the waistband of her tiny blue shorts. Above them was a tee-shirt with NEW YORK CITY MARATHON 2011 on the front. On her face was an expression Scott would not have associated with her: blissful happiness.

  The caption read: Deirdre Mc Comb, co-owner of Holy Frijole, Castle Rock’s newest fine dining experience, nears the finish line of the New York City Marathon, where she finished FOURTH in the Women’s Division! She’s announced that she
will run in this year’s Castle Rock 12K, the Turkey Trot. HOW ABOUT YOU?

  The details were below the caption. Castle Rock’s annual Thanksgiving race would take place on the Friday following the holiday, starting at the Rec Department on Castle View and finishing downtown, at the Tin Bridge. All ages were welcome, adult entrance fee five dollars for locals, seven dollars for out-of-towners, and two dollars for those under fifteen, sign up at the Castle Rock Rec Department.

  Looking at the bliss on the face of the woman in the photo—runner’s high at its purest—Scott understood that Missy hadn’t been exaggerating about Holy Frijole’s life-expectancy. Not in the slightest. Deirdre McComb was a proud woman with a high opinion of herself, and quick—much too quick, in Scott’s opinion—to take offense. Her allowing her picture to be used this way, probably just for that mention of “Castle Rock’s newest fine dining experience,” had to be a Hail Mary pass. Anything, anything at all, to bring in a few more customers, if only to admire those long legs standing beside the hostess station.

  He folded the poster, tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans, and walked slowly down Main Street, looking in shop windows as he went. There were posters in all of them—posters for bean suppers, posters for this year’s giant yard sale in the parking lot of Oxford Plains Speedway, posters for Beano at the Catholic church and a potluck dinner at the fire station. He saw the Turkey Trot poster in the window of Castle Rock Computer Sales & Service, but nowhere else until he reached the Book Nook, a tiny building at the end of the street.

  He went in, browsed a little, and grabbed a picture book from the discount table: New England Fixtures and Furnishings. Might not be anything in it he could use in his project—where the first stage was nearing completion, anyway—but you never knew. While he was paying Mike Badalamente, the owner and sole employee, he remarked on the poster in the window, and mentioned that the woman on it was his neighbor.

  “Yeah, Deirdre McComb was a star runner for almost ten years,” Mike said, bagging up his book. “She would have been in the Olympics back in ’12, except she broke her ankle. Tough luck. Never even tried out in ’16, I understand. I guess she’s retired from the major competitions now, but I can’t wait to run with her this year.” He grinned. “Not that I’ll be running with her long, once the starting gun goes off. She’ll blow the competition away.”

  “Men as well as women?”

  Mike laughed. “Buddy, they didn’t call her the Malden Flash for nothing. Malden’s where she originally came from.”

  “I saw a poster in Patsy’s, and one in the window of the computer store, and the one in your window. Nowhere else. What’s up with that?”

  Mike’s smile went away. “Nothing to be proud of. She’s a lesbian. That would probably be okay if she kept it to herself—no one cares what goes on behind closed doors—but she has to introduce that one who cooks at Frijole as her wife. Lot of people around here see that as a big old screw you.”

  “So businesses won’t put up the posters, even though the entry fees benefit the Rec? Just because she’s on them?”

  After having Bull Neck throw the poster from the diner at him, these weren’t even real questions, just a way of getting it straight in his mind. In a way he felt as he had at ten, when the brother of his best friend had sat the younger boys down and told them the facts of life. Now as then, Scott had had a vague idea of the whole, but the specifics were still amazing to him. People really did that? Yes, they did. Apparently they did this, as well.

  “They’re going to be replaced with new ones,” Mike said. “I happen to know, because I’m on the committee. It was Mayor Coughlin’s idea. You know Dusty, the king of compromise. The new ones will show a bunch of turkeys running down Main Street. I don’t like it, and I didn’t vote for it, but I understand the rationale. The town just gives the Rec a pittance, two thousand dollars. That’s not enough to maintain the playground, let alone all the other stuff we do. The Turkey Trot brings in almost five thousand, but we have to get the word out.”

  “So . . . just because she’s a lesbian . . .”

  “A married lesbian. That’s a deal-breaker for lots of folks. You know what Castle County’s like, Scott, you’ve lived here for what, twenty-five years?”

  “Over thirty.”

  “Yeah, and solid Republican. Conservative Republican. The county went for Trump three-to-one in ’16 and they think our stonebrain governor walks on water. If those women had kept it on the down-low they would have been fine, but they didn’t. Now there are people who think they’re trying to make some kind of statement. Myself, I think they were either ignorant about the political climate here or plain stupid.” He paused. “Good food, though. Have you been there?”

  “Not yet,” Scott said, “but I plan to go.”

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” Mike said. “Come next year at this time, there’s apt to be an ice cream shop in there.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Holy Frijole

  Instead of going home, as he had intended, Scott walked to the town common to page through his new purchase and look at the photos. He strolled along the other side of Main and saw what he now thought of as the Deirdre Poster one more time, in the knit and yarn shop. Nowhere else.

  Mike had kept saying they and those women, but he really doubted that. It was all about McComb. She was the in-your-face half of the partnership. He thought Missy Donaldson would have been happy to keep it on the DL. That half of the partnership would have serious problems saying boo to a goose.

  But she came to see me, he thought, and she said a lot more than boo. That took guts.

  Yes, and he had liked her for it.

  He put New England Fixtures and Furnishings on the park bench, and began to jog up and down the steps of the bandstand. It wasn’t exercise he craved, just movement. I’ve got ants in my pants, he thought. Not to mention bees in my knees. And it wasn’t like climbing the steps, more like springing up them. He did it half a dozen times, then went back to his bench, interested to find he wasn’t out of breath, and his pulse was only slightly elevated.

  He took out his phone and called Doctor Bob. The first thing Ellis asked about was his weight.

  “204 as of this morning,” Scott said. “Listen, have you—”

  “So it’s continuing. Have you thought any more about getting serious and really digging into this? Because a loss of forty pounds, give or take, is serious. I still have contacts at Mass General, and I don’t think a total soup-to-nuts exam would cost you a dime. In fact, they might pay you.”

  “Bob, I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. The reason I called was to ask if you’ve eaten at Holy Frijole yet.”

  There was a pause while Ellis digested this change of subject. Then he said, “The one your lesbian neighbors run? No, not yet.”

  Scott frowned. “You know what, there might be a little more to them than their sexual orientation. Just sayin.”

  “Mellow out.” Ellis sounded slightly taken aback. “I didn’t mean to step on your corns.”

  “Okay. It’s just . . . there was an incident at lunch. At Patsy’s.”

  “What kind of incident?”

  “A little argument. Over them. Doesn’t matter. Listen, Bob, how about a night out? Holy Frijole. Dinner. I’ll buy.”

  “When were you thinking?”

  “How about tonight?”

  “I can’t tonight, but I could on Friday. Myra’s going to spend the weekend at her sister’s down in Manchester, and I’m a lousy cook.”

  “It’s a date,” Scott said.

  “A man-date,” Ellis agreed. “Next you’ll be asking me to marry you.”

  “That would be bigamy on your part,” Scott said, “and I will lead you not into temptation. Just do one thing for me—you make the reservation.”

  “Still sideways with them?” Ellis sounded amused. “Wouldn’t it be better to just give it a pass? There’s a nice Italian place in Bridgton.”

  “Nope. I’ve got my face fixed fo
r Mexican.”

  Doctor Bob sighed. “I guess I can make the reservation, although if what I’m hearing about that place is true, I hardly think one will be necessary.”

  * * *

  Scott picked Ellis up on Friday, because Doctor Bob no longer liked to drive at night. The ride down to the restaurant was short, but long enough for Bob to tell Scott the real reason he had wanted to put off their man-date until Friday: he didn’t want to get into a squabble with Myra, who was on church and town committees that had no love for the two women who ran the Rock’s newest fine dining experience.

  “You’re kidding,” Scott said.

  “Unfortunately not. Myra’s open-minded on most subjects, but when it comes to sexual politics . . . let’s just say she was raised a certain way. We might have argued, perhaps even bitterly, if I didn’t believe shouting matches between husband and wife in old age are undignified.”

  “Will you tell her you visited the Rock’s Mexican-vegetarian den of iniquity?”

  “If she asks where I ate on Friday night, yes. Otherwise I’ll keep my mouth shut. As will you.”

  “As will I,” Scott said. He pulled into one of the slant parking spaces. “Here we are. Thanks for doing this with me, Bob. I’m hoping it will put things right.”

  * * *

  It did not.

  Deirdre was at the hostess stand, not wearing a dress tonight but a white shirt and tapered black slacks that showcased those admirable legs. Doctor Bob entered ahead of Scott, and she smiled at him—not the slightly superior one, with the lips closed and the eyebrows raised, but a professionally welcoming one. Then she saw Scott, and the smile went away. She gave him a cool appraisal with those green-gray eyes, as if he were a bug on a microscope slide, then dropped them and grabbed a couple of menus.

  “Let me show you to your table.”

  As she led them to it, Scott admired the decor. It wasn’t enough to say McComb and Donaldson had taken pains; this looked like a labor of love. Mexican music—he thought the type they called Tejano or ranchera—played from the overhead speakers. The walls were soft yellow, and the plaster had been roughed up to look like adobe. The sconces were green glass cacti. Large wall hangings featured a sun, a moon, two dancing monkeys, and a frog with golden eyes. The room was twice the size of Patsy’s Diner, but he saw only five couples and a single party of four.