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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 124 из 425But wouldn’t I recall if she’d said “I’m going down to Sara, hon, UPS is delivering something I want to receive personally, interested in keeping a lady company?” Hell wouldn’t I have gone? I always liked an excuse to go to the TR. Except I’d been working on that screenplay… and maybe pushing it a little… notes pinned to the sleeve of my shirt… If you go out when you’re finished, we need mi& and orange juice…
I inspected what little was left of Jo’s vegetable garden with the July sun beating down on my neck and thought about owls, the plastic god-dam owls. Suppose Jo had told me she was coming down here to Sara Laughs?
Suppose I had declined almost without hearing the offer because I was in the writing zone? Even if you granted those things, there was another question: why had she felt the need to come down here personally when she could have just called someone and asked them to meet the delivery truck? Kenny Auster would have been happy to do it, ditto Mrs. M. And Bill Dean, our caretaker, had actually been here. This led to other questions—one was why she hadn’t just had UPS deliver the damned things to Derry—and finally I decided I couldn’t live without actually seeing a bona fide plastic owl for myself. Maybe, I thought, going back to the house, I’d put one on the roof of my Chew when it was parked in the driveway. Forestall future bombing runs. I paused in the entry, struck by a sudden idea, and called Ward Han-kins, the guy in Waterville who handles my taxes and my few non-writing-related business affairs. “Mike,” he said heartily. “How’s the lake?”
“The lake’s cool and the weather’s hot, just the way we like it,” I said. “Ward, you keep all the records we send you for five years, don’t you? Just in case IRS decides to give us some grief?.”
“Five is accepted practice,” he said, “but I hold your stuff for seven—in the eyes of the tax boys, you’re a mighty fat pigeon.” Better afatpigeon than ap/astic owl, I thought but didn’t say. What I said was “That includes desk calendars, right? Mine and. Jo’s, up until she died?”
“You bet. Since neither of you kept diaries, it was the best way to cross-reference receipts and claimed expenses with—”
“Could you find Jo’s desk calendar for 1993 and see what she had going in the second week of November?”
“Td be happy to.
What in particular are you looking for?” For a moment I saw myself sitting at my kitchen table in Derry on my first night as a widower, holding up a box with the words Norco Home Pregnancy Test printed on the side.
I inspected what little was left of Jo’s vegetable garden with the July sun beating down on my neck and thought about owls, the plastic god-dam owls. Suppose Jo had told me she was coming down here to Sara Laughs?
Suppose I had declined almost without hearing the offer because I was in the writing zone? Even if you granted those things, there was another question: why had she felt the need to come down here personally when she could have just called someone and asked them to meet the delivery truck? Kenny Auster would have been happy to do it, ditto Mrs. M. And Bill Dean, our caretaker, had actually been here. This led to other questions—one was why she hadn’t just had UPS deliver the damned things to Derry—and finally I decided I couldn’t live without actually seeing a bona fide plastic owl for myself. Maybe, I thought, going back to the house, I’d put one on the roof of my Chew when it was parked in the driveway. Forestall future bombing runs. I paused in the entry, struck by a sudden idea, and called Ward Han-kins, the guy in Waterville who handles my taxes and my few non-writing-related business affairs. “Mike,” he said heartily. “How’s the lake?”
“The lake’s cool and the weather’s hot, just the way we like it,” I said. “Ward, you keep all the records we send you for five years, don’t you? Just in case IRS decides to give us some grief?.”
“Five is accepted practice,” he said, “but I hold your stuff for seven—in the eyes of the tax boys, you’re a mighty fat pigeon.” Better afatpigeon than ap/astic owl, I thought but didn’t say. What I said was “That includes desk calendars, right? Mine and. Jo’s, up until she died?”
“You bet. Since neither of you kept diaries, it was the best way to cross-reference receipts and claimed expenses with—”
“Could you find Jo’s desk calendar for 1993 and see what she had going in the second week of November?”
“Td be happy to.
What in particular are you looking for?” For a moment I saw myself sitting at my kitchen table in Derry on my first night as a widower, holding up a box with the words Norco Home Pregnancy Test printed on the side.