Needful Things (39 page)

She talked to her dolls instead. She'd started collecting them during the first few years of her marriage, and had always kept them in boxes in the attic. During the last
year, though, she had brought them down to the sewing room, and sometimes, after her tears were shed, she crept into the sewing room and played with them.
They
never shouted.
They
never ignored.
They
never asked her how she got so stupid, did it come naturally or did she take lessons.

She had found the most wonderful doll of all yesterday, in the new shop.

And today everything had changed.

This morning, to be exact.

Her hand crept under the table and she pinched herself (not for the first time) just to make sure she wasn't dreaming. But after the pinch she was still here in Maurice, sitting in a bar of bright October sunshine, and Danforth was still there, across the table from her, eating with hearty good appetite, his face wreathed in a smile that looked almost alien to her, because she hadn't seen one there in such a long time.

She didn't know what had caused the change and was afraid to ask. She knew he had gone off to Lewiston Raceway last night, just as he almost always did during the evening (presumably because the people he met there were more interesting than the people he met every day in Castle Rock—his wife, for instance), and when she woke up this morning, she expected to find his half of the bed empty (or not slept in at all, which would mean that he had spent the rest of the night dozing in his study chair) and to hear him downstairs, muttering to himself in his bad-tempered way.

Instead, he had been in bed beside her, wearing the striped red pajamas she had given him for Christmas last year. This was the first time she had ever seen him wear them—the first time they'd been out of the box, as far as she knew. He was awake. He rolled over on his side to face her, already smiling. At first the smile frightened her. She thought it might mean he was getting ready to kill her.

Then he touched her breast and winked. “Want to, Myrt? Or is it too early in the day for you?”

So they had made love, for the first time in over five months they had made love, and he had been absolutely
magnificent,
and now here they were, lunching at Maurice on an early Sunday afternoon like a pair of young lovers. She didn't know what had happened to work this wondrous change in her husband, and didn't care. She only wanted to enjoy it, and to hope it would last.

“Everything okay, Myrt?” Keeton asked, looking up from his plate and scrubbing vigorously at his face with his napkin.

She reached shyly across the table and touched his hand. “Everything's fine. Everything is just . . . just wonderful.”

She had to take her hand away so she could dab hastily at her eyes with her napkin.

Keeton went on chowing into his boof borgnine, or whatever it was the Froggies called it, with great appetite. The reason for his happiness was simple. Every horse he had picked yesterday afternoon with the help of Winning Ticket had come in for him last night. Even Malabar, the thirty-to-one shot in the tenth race. He had come back to Castle Rock not so much driving as floating on air, with better than eighteen thousand dollars stuffed into his overcoat pockets. His bookie was probably still wondering where the money went. Keeton knew; it was safely tucked away in the back of his study closet. It was in an envelope. The envelope was in the Winning Ticket box, along with the precious game itself.

He had slept well for the first time in months, and when he woke up, he had a glimmering of an idea about the audit. A glimmering wasn't much, of course, but it was better than the confused darkness that had been roaring through his head since that awful letter came. All he had needed to get his brain out of neutral, it seemed, was one winning night at the track.

He could not make total restitution before the axe fell, that much was clear. Lewiston Raceway was the only track which ran nightly during the fall season, for one thing, and it was pretty small potatoes. He could tour the local county fairs and make a few thousand at the races there, but that wouldn't be enough, either. Nor could he risk
many nights like last night, even at the Raceway. His bookie would grow wary, then refuse to accept his bets at all.

But he believed he could make partial restitution and minimize the
size
of the fiddles at the same time. He could also spin a tale. A sure-fire development prospect that hadn't come off. A terrible mistake . . . but one for which he had taken complete responsibility and for which he was now making good. He could point out that a really unscrupulous man, if placed in such a position as this, might well have used the grace period to scoop even more money out of the town treasury—as much as he possibly could—and then to run for a place (some
sunny
place with lots of palm trees and lots of white beaches and lots of young girls in string bikinis) from which extradition was difficult or downright impossible.

He could wax Christlike and invite those among them without sin to cast the first stone. That should give them pause. If there was a man-jack among them who had not had his fingers in the state pie from time to time, Keeton would eat that man's shorts. Without salt.

They would have to give him time. Now that he was able to set his hysteria aside and think the situation over rationally, he was almost sure they would. After all, they were politicians, too. They would know that the press would have plenty of tar and feathers left over for them, the supposed guardians of the public trust, once they had finished with Dan Keeton. They would know the questions which would surface in the wake of a public investigation or even (God forbid) a trial for embezzlement. Questions like how long—in fiscal years, if you please, gentlemen—had Mr. Keeton's little operation been going on? Questions like how come the State Bureau of Taxation hadn't awakened and smelled the coffee some time ago? Questions ambitious men would find distressing.

He believed he could squeak through. No guarantees, but it looked possible.

All thanks to Mr. Leland Gaunt.

God, he loved Leland Gaunt.

“Danforth?” Myrt asked shyly.

He looked up. “Hmmm?”

“This is the nicest day I've had in years. I just wanted
you to know that. How grateful I am to have such a nice day. With you.”

“Oh!” he said. The oddest thing had just happened to him. For a moment he hadn't been able to remember the name of the woman sitting across from him. “Well, Myrt, it's been nice for me, too.”

“Will you be going to the race-track tonight?”

“No,” he said, "I think tonight I'll stay home.”

“That's nice,” she said. She found it so nice, in fact, that she had to dab at her eyes with her napkin again.

He smiled at her—it wasn't his old sweet smile, the one which had wooed and won her to begin with—but it was close. “Say, Myrt! Want dessert?”

She giggled and flapped her napkin at him. “Oh,
you!”

The Keeton home was a split-level ranch in Castle View. It was a long walk uphill for Nettie Cobb, and by the time she got there her legs were tired and she was very cold. She met only three or four other pedestrians, and none of them looked at her; they were bundled deep into the collars of their coats, for the wind had begun to blow strongly and it had a keen edge. An ad supplement from someone's Sunday
Telegram
danced across the street, then took off into the hard blue sky like some strange bird as she turned into the Keetons' driveway. Mr. Gaunt had told her that Buster and Myrtle wouldn't be home, and Mr. Gaunt knew best. The garage door was up, and that showboat of a Cadillac Buster drove was gone.

Nettie went up the walk, stopped at the front door, and took the pad and the Scotch tape from her left-hand coat pocket. She very much wanted to be home with the Sunday Super Movie on TV and Raider at her feet. And that's where she would be as soon as she finished this chore. She might not even bother with her knitting. She might just sit there with her carnival glass lampshade in her lap. She tore off the first pink slip and taped it over the sign by the doorbell, the embossed one which said
THE KEETONS
and
NO SALESMEN, PLEASE
. She put the tape
and the pad back in her left pocket, then took the key from her right and slipped it into the lock. Before turning it, she briefly examined the pink slip she had just taped up.

Cold and tired as she was, she just
had
to smile a little. It really was a pretty good joke, especially considering the way Buster drove. It was a wonder he hadn't killed anyone. She wouldn't like to be the man whose name was signed at the bottom of the warning-slip, though. Buster could be awfully grouchy. Even as a child he hadn't been one to take a joke.

She turned the key. The lock opened easily. Nettie went inside.

“More coffee?” Keeton asked.

“Not for me,” Myrtle said. “I'm as full as a tick.” She smiled.

“Then let's go home. I want to watch the Patriots on TV.” He glanced at his watch. “If we hurry, I think I can make the kick-off.”

Myrtle nodded, happier than ever. The TV was in the living room, and if Dan meant to watch the game, he wasn't going to spend the afternoon cooped up in his study. “Let's hurry, then,” she said.

Keeton held up one commanding finger. “Waiter? Bring me the check, please.”

Nettie had stopped wanting to hurry home; she liked being in Buster and Myrtle's house.

For one thing, it was warm. For another, being here gave Nettie an unexpected sense of power—it was like seeing behind the scenes of two actual human lives. She began by going upstairs and looking through all the rooms. There were a lot of them, too, considering there were no
children, but, as her mother had always been fond of saying, them that has, gets.

She opened Myrtle's bureau drawers, investigating her underwear. Some of it was silk, quality stuff, but to Nettie most of the good things looked old. The same was true of the dresses hung on her side of the closet. Nettie went on to the bathroom, where she inventoried the pills in the medicine cabinet, and from there to the sewing room, where she admired the dolls. A nice house. A lovely house. Too bad the man who lived here was a piece of shit.

Nettie glanced at her watch and supposed she should start putting up the little pink slips. And she would, too.

Just as soon as she finished looking around downstairs.

“Danforth, isn't this a little
too
fast?” Myrtle asked breathlessly as they swung around a slow-moving pulp truck. An oncoming car blared its horn at them as Keeton swung back into his lane.

“I want to make the kick-off,” he said, and turned left onto the Maple Sugar Road, passing a sign which read
CASTLE ROCK 8 MILES.

Nettie snapped on the TV—the Keetons had a big color Mitsubishi—and watched some of the Sunday Super Movie. Ava Gardner was in it, and Gregory Peck. Gregory seemed to be in love with Ava, although it was hard to tell; it might be the other woman he was in love with. There had been a nuclear war. Gregory Peck drove a submarine. None of this interested Nettie very much, so she turned off the TV, taped a pink slip to the screen, and went into the kitchen. She looked at what was in the cupboards (the dishes were Corelle, very nice, but the pots and pans were nothing to write home about), then checked
the refrigerator. She wrinkled her nose. Too many leftovers. Too many leftovers was a sure sign of slipshod housekeeping. Not that Buster would know; she'd bet her boots on
that.
Men like Buster Keeton wouldn't be able to find their way around the kitchen with a map and a guide-dog.

She checked her watch again and started. She had spent an awfully long time wandering around the house.
Too
long. Quickly, she began to tear off slips of pink paper and tape them to things—the refrigerator, the stove, the telephone which hung on the kitchen wall by the garage doorway, the breakfront in the dining room. And the more quickly she worked, the more nervous she became.

Nettie had just gotten down to business when Keeton's red Cadillac crossed the Tin Bridge and started up Watermill Lane toward Castle View.

“Danforth?” Myrtle asked suddenly. “Could you let me out at Amanda Williams's house? I know it's a little out of the way, but she's got my fondue pot. I thought—” The shy smile came and went on her face again. “I thought I might make you—
us
—a little treat. For the football game. You could just drop me off.”

He opened his mouth to tell her the Williamses' was a
lot
out of his way, the game was about to start, and she could get her goddam fondue pot tomorrow. He didn't like cheese when it was hot and runny anyway. The goddamned stuff was probably full of bacteria.

Then he thought better of it. Aside from himself, the Board of Selectmen was made up of two dumb bastards and one dumb bitch. Mandy Williams was the bitch. Keeton had been at some pains to see Bill Fullerton, the town barber, and Harry Samuels, Castle Rock's only mortician, on Friday. He was also at pains to make these seem like casual calls, but they weren't. There was always the possibility that the Board of Taxation had begun sending
them
letters as well. He had satisfied himself that they were not—not
yet, at least—but the Williams bitch had been out of town on Friday.

“All right,” he said, then added: “You might ask her if any town business has come to her attention. Anything I should get in touch with her about.”

“Oh, honey, you know I can never keep that stuff straight—”

“I
do
know that, but you can
ask,
can't you? You're not too dumb to
ask,
are you?”