by Stephen King
I almost said harmonics, and she might have understood that. But might wasn’t good enough. This was an important call, and I didn’t want to screw it up. Desperately didn’t want to screw it up. Through most of what followed there were two of me on the phone, George who was speaking out loud and Jake on the inside, saying all the things George couldn’t. Maybe there are always two on each end of the conversation when good love hangs in the balance.
“Because I’ve been thinking about you all day,” I said. (I’ve been thinking of you all summer.)
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.” (I’m lonely.) “How about you? How was your summer? Did you get it done?” (Have you cut your legal ties to your weird husband?)
“Yes,” she said. “Done deal. Isn’t that one of the things you say, George? Done deal?”
“I guess so. How’s school? How’s the library?”
“George? Are we going to talk like this, or are we going to talk?”
“All right.” I sat down on my lumpy secondhand couch. “Let’s talk. Are you okay?”
“Yes, but I’m unhappy. And I’m very confused.” She hesitated, then said: “I was working at Harrah’s, you probably know that. As a cocktail waitress. And I met somebody.”
“Oh?” (Oh, shit.)
“Yes. A very nice man. Charming. A gentleman. Just shy of forty. His name is Roger Beaton. He’s an aide to the Republican senator from California, Tom Kuchel. He’s the minority whip in the Senate, you know. Kuchel, I mean, not Roger.” She laughed, but not the way you do when something’s funny.
“Should I be glad you met someone nice?”
“I don’t know, George … are you glad?”
“No.” (I want to kill him.)
“Roger is handsome,” she said in a flat just-the-facts voice. “He’s pleasant. He went to Yale. He knows how to show a girl a good time. And he’s tall.”
The second me would no longer keep silent. “I want to kill him.”
That made her laugh, and the sound of it was a relief. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you, or make you feel bad.”
“Really? Then why are you telling me?”
“We went out three or four times. He kissed me … we made out a little … just necking, like kids… .”
(I not only want to kill him, I want to do it slowly.)
“But it wasn’t the same. Maybe it could be, in time; maybe not. He gave me his number in Washington, and told me to call him if I … how did he put it? ‘If you get tired of shelving books and carrying a torch for the one that got away.’ I think that was the gist of it. He says he’s going places, and that he needs a good woman to go with him. He thought I might be that woman. Of course, men say stuff like that. I’m not as naïve as I once was. But sometimes they mean it.”
“Sadie …”
“Still, it wasn’t quite the same.” She sounded thoughtful, absent, and for the first time I wondered if something other than doubt about her personal life might be wrong with her. If she might be sick. “On the plus side, there was no broom in evidence. Of course, sometimes men hide the broom, don’t they? Johnny did. You did, too, George.”
“Sadie?”
“Yes?”
“Are you hiding a broom?”
There was a long moment of silence. Much longer than the one when I had answered the phone with her name, and much longer than I expected. At last she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t sound like yourself, that’s all.”
“I told you, I’m very confused. And I’m sad. Because you’re still not ready to tell me the truth, are you?”
“If I could, I would.”
“You know something interesting? You have good friends in Jodie—not just me—and none of them know where you live.”
“Sadie—”
“You say it’s Dallas, but you’re on the Elmhurst exchange, and Elmhurst is Fort Worth.”
I’d never thought of that. What else hadn’t I thought of?
“Sadie, all I can tell you is that what I’m doing is very impor—”
“Oh, I’m sure it is. And what Senator Kuchel’s doing is very important, too. Roger was at pains to tell me that, and to tell me that if I … I joined him in Washington, I would be more or less sitting at the feet of greatnesss … or in the doorway to history … or something like that. Power excites him. It was one of the few things it was hard to like about him. What I thought—what I still think—is, who am I to sit at the feet of greatness? I’m just a divorced librarian.”
“Who am I to stand in the doorway to history?” I said.
“What? What did you say, George?”
“Nothing, hon.”
“Maybe you better not call me that.”
“Sorry.” (I’m not.) “What exactly are we talking about?”
“You and me and whether or not that still makes an us. It would help if you could tell me why you’re in Texas. Because I know you didn’t come to write a book or teach school.”
“Telling you could be dangerous.”
“We’re all in danger,” she said. “Johnny’s right about that. Will I tell you something Roger told me?”
“All right.” (Where did he tell you, Sadie? And were the two of you vertical or horizontal when the conversation took place?)
“He’d had a drink or two, and he got gossipy. We were in his hotel room, but don’t worry—I kept my feet on the floor and all my clothes on.”
“I wasn’t worrying.”
“If you weren’t, I’m disappointed in you.”
“All right, I was worried. What did he say?”
“He said there’s a rumor that there’s going to be some sort of major deal in the Caribbean this fall or winter. A flashpoint, he called it. I’m assuming he meant Cuba. He said, ‘That idiot JFK is going to put us all in the soup just to show he’s got balls.’”
I remembered all the end-of-the-world crap her former husband had poured into her ears. Anyone who reads the paper can see it coming, he’d told her. We’ll die with sores all over our bodies, and coughing up our lungs. Stuff like that leaves an impression, especially when spoken in tones of dry scientific certainty. Leaves an impression? A scar, more like it.
“Sadie, that’s crap.”
“Oh?” She sounded nettled. “I suppose you have the inside scoop and Senator Kuchel doesn’t?”
“Let’s say I do.”
“Let’s not. I’ll wait for you to come clean a little longer, but not much. Maybe just because you’re a good dancer.”
“Then let’s go dancing!” I said a little wildly.
“Goodnight, George.”
And before I could say anything else, she hung up.
15
I started to call her back, but when the operator said “Number, please?” sanity reasserted itself. I put the phone back in its cradle. She had said what she needed to say. Trying to get her to say more would only make things worse.
I tried to tell myself that her call had been nothing but a stratagem to get me off the dime, a speak for yourself, John Alden kind of thing. It wouldn’t work because that wasn’t Sadie. It had seemed more like a cry for help.
I picked up the phone again, and this time when the operator asked for a number, I gave her one. The phone rang twice on the other end, and then Ellen Dockerty said, “Yes? Who is it, please?”
“Hi, Miz Ellie. It’s me. George.”
Maybe that moment-of-silence thing was catching. I waited. Then she said, “Hello, George. I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I? It’s just that I’ve been awfully—”
“Busy, sure. I know what the first week or two’s like, Ellie. I called because Sadie just called me.”
“Oh?” She sounded very cautious.
“If you told her my number was on a Fort Worth exchange instead of Dallas, it’s okay.”
“I wasn’t gossiping. I hope you understand that. I thought she had a right to know. I care for Sadie. Of course I care for you, too, George … bu
t you’re gone. She’s not.”
I did understand, although it hurt. The feeling of being in a space capsule bound for the outer depths recurred. “I’m fine with that, Ellie, and it really wasn’t much of a fib. I expect to be moving to Dallas soon.”
No response, and what could she say? Perhaps you are, but we both know you’re a bit of a liar?
“I didn’t like the way she sounded. Does she seem all right to you?”
“I’m not sure I want to answer that question. If I said no, you might come roaring down to see her, and she doesn’t want to see you. Not as things stand.”
Actually she had answered my question. “Was she okay when she came back?”
“She was fine. Glad to see us all.”
“But now she sounds distracted and says she feels sad.”
“Is that so surprising?” Miz Ellie spoke with asperity. “There are lots of memories here for Sadie, many of them connected to a man she still has feelings for. A nice man and a lovely teacher, but one who arrived flying false colors.”
That one really hurt.
“It seemed like something else. She spoke about some sort of coming crisis that she heard about from—” From the Yalie who was sitting in the doorway of history? “From someone she met in Nevada. Her husband filled her head with a lot of nonsense—”
“Her head? Her pretty little head?” Not just asperity now; outright anger. It made me feel small and mean. “George, I have a stack of folders a mile high in front of me, and I need to get to them. You cannot psychoanalyze Sadie Dunhill at long distance, and I cannot help you with your love life. The only thing I can do is to advise you to come clean if you care for her. Sooner rather than later.”
“You haven’t seen her husband around, I suppose?”
“No! Goodnight, George!”
For the second time that night, a woman I cared about hung up on me. That was a new personal record.
I went into the bedroom and began to undress. Fine when she arrived. Glad to be back with all her Jodie friends. Not so fine now. Because she was torn between the handsome, on-the-fast-track-to-success new guy and the tall dark stranger with the invisible past? That would probably be the case in a romance novel, but if it was the case here, why hadn’t she been down at the mouth when she came back?
An unpleasant thought occurred to me: maybe she was drinking. A lot. Secretly. Wasn’t it possible? My wife had been a secret heavy drinker for years—before I married her, in fact—and the past harmonizes with itself. It would be easy to dismiss that, to say that Miz Ellie would have spotted the signs, but drunks can be clever. Sometimes it’s years before people start to get wise. If Sadie was showing up for work on time, Ellie might not notice that she was doing so with bloodshot eyes and mints on her breath.
The idea was probably ridiculous. All my suppositions were suspect, each one colored by how much I still cared for Sadie.
I lay back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. In the living room, the oil stove gurgled—it was another cool night.
Let it go, buddy, Al said. You have to. Remember, you’re not here to get—
The girl, the gold watch, and everything. Yeah, Al, got it.
Besides, she’s probably fine. You’re the one with the problem.
More than just one, actually, and it was a long time before I fell asleep.
16
The following Monday, when I made one of my regular drive-bys of 214 West Neely Street in Dallas, I observed a long gray funeral hack parked in the driveway. The two fat ladies were standing on the porch, watching a couple of men in dark suits lift a stretcher into the rear. On it was a sheeted form. On the tottery-looking balcony above the porch, the young couple from the upstairs apartment was also watching. Their youngest child was sleeping in his mother’s arms.
The wheelchair with the ashtray clamped to the arm stood orphaned under the tree where the old man had spent most of his days last summer.
I pulled over and stood by my car until the hearse left. Then (although I realized the timing was rather, shall we say, crass) I crossed the street and walked up the path to the porch. At the foot of the stairs, I tipped my hat. “Ladies, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
The older of the two—the wife who was now a widow, I assumed—said: “You’ve been here before.”
Indeed I have, I thought of saying. This thing is bigger than pro football.
“He saw you.” Not accusing; just stating a fact.
“I’ve been looking for an apartment in this neighborhood. Will you be keeping this one?”
“No,” the younger one said. “He had some insurance. Bout the only thing he did have. ’Cept for some medals in a box.” She sniffed. I tell you, it broke my heart a little to see how grief-stricken those two ladies were.
“He said you was a ghost,” the widow told me. “He said he could see right through you. Accourse he was as crazy as a shithouse mouse. Last three years, ever since he had his stroke and they put him on that peebag. Me n Ida’s goin back to Oklahoma.”
Try Mozelle, I thought. That’s where you’re supposed to go when you give up your apartment.
“What do you want?” the younger one asked. “We got to take him a suit on down to the funeary home.”
“I’d like the number of your landlord,” I said.
The widow’s eyes gleamed. “What’d it be worth to you, mister?”
“I’ll give it to you for free!” said the young woman on the second-floor balcony.
The bereaved daughter looked up and told her to shut her fucking mouth. That was the thing about Dallas. Derry, too.
Neighborly.
CHAPTER 19
1
George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and rainy Saturday. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song. With him was a man I knew, George Bouhe, and one I didn’t—a skinny whip of a guy with a fuzz of white hair and the ramrod back of a fellow who’s spent a good deal of time in the military and is still happy about it. De Mohrenschildt went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I dashed to get the distance mike.
When I came back with my gear, Bouhe had a folded-up playpen under his arm, and the military-looking guy had an armload of toys. De Mohrenschildt was empty-handed, and mounted the steps in front of the other two with his head up and his chest thrown out. He was tall and powerfully built. His graying hair was combed slantwise back from his broad forehead in a way that said—to me, at least—look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. For I am GEORGE.
I plugged in the tape recorder, put on the headphones, and tilted the mike-equipped bowl across the street.
Marina was out of sight. Lee was sitting on the couch, reading a thick paperback by the light of the lamp on the bureau. When he heard footsteps on the porch, he looked up with a frown and tossed his book on the coffee table. More goddam expats, he might have been thinking.
But he went to answer the knock. He held out his hand to the silver-haired stranger on his porch, but de Mohrenschildt surprised him—and me—by pulling Lee into his arms and bussing him on both cheeks. Then he held him back by the shoulders. His voice was deep and accented—German rather than Russian, I thought. “Let me look at a young man who has journeyed so far and come back with his ideals intact!” Then he pulled Lee into another hug. Oswald’s head just showed above the bigger man’s shoulder, and I saw something even more surprising: Lee Harvey Oswald was smiling.
2
Marina came out of the baby’s room with June in her arms. She exclaimed with pleasure when she saw Bouhe, and thanked him for the playpen and what she called, in her stilted English, the “child’s playings.” Bouhe introduced the skinny man as Lawrence Orlov—Colonel Lawrence Orlov, if you please—and de Mohrenschildt as “a friend of the Russian community.”
Bouhe and Orlov went to work setting the playpen up in the middle of the floor. Marina stood with them, chatting in Russian. Like Bouhe, Or
lov couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the young Russian mother. Marina was wearing a smock top and shorts showcasing legs that went up forever. Lee’s smile was gone. He was retreating into his usual gloom.
Only de Mohrenschildt wouldn’t let him. He spotted Lee’s paperback, sprang to the coffee table, and picked it up. “Atlas Shrugged?” Speaking just to Lee. Completely ignoring the others, who were admiring the new playpen. “Ayn Rand? What is a young revolutionary doing with this?”
“Know your enemy,” Lee said, and when de Mohrenschildt burst into a hearty roar of laughter, Lee’s smile resurfaced.
“And what do you make of Miss Rand’s cri de coeur?” That struck a cord when I played the tape back. I listened to the comment twice before it clicked: it was almost exactly the same phrase Mimi Corcoran had used when asking me about The Catcher in the Rye.
“I think she’s swallowed the poison bait,” Oswald said. “Now she’s making money by selling it to other people.”
“Exactly, my friend. I’ve never heard it put better. There will come a day when the Rands of the world will answer for their crimes. Do you believe that?”
“I know it,” Lee said. He spoke matter-of-factly.
De Mohrenschildt patted the couch. “Sit by me. I want to hear of your adventures in the homeland.”
But first Bouhe and Orlov approached Lee and de Mohrenschildt. There was a lot of back and forth in Russian. Lee looked dubious, but when de Mohrenschildt said something to him, also in Russian, Lee nodded and spoke briefly to Marina. The way he flicked his hand at the door made it pretty clear: Go on, then, go.
De Mohrenschildt tossed his car keys to Bouhe, who fumbled them. De Mohrenschildt and Lee exchanged a look of shared amusement as Bouhe grubbed them off the dirty green carpet. Then they left, Marina carrying the baby in her arms, and drove off in de Mohrenschildt’s boat of a Cadillac.
“Now we have peace, my friend,” de Mohrenschildt said. “And the men will open their wallets, which is good, yes?”
“I get tired of them always opening their wallets,” Lee said. “Rina’s starting to forget that we didn’t come back to America just to buy a damn freezer and a bunch of dresses.”