Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

I walked over to the hall desk where Jo and I had always kept our pending documents (and our desk calendars, now that I thought about it), and tacked the summons to the bulletin board by one corner of its buff-colored jacket. With that much accomplished, I raised my fist in front of my eyes, looked at the wedding ring on it for a moment, then slammed it against the wall beside the bookcase. I did it hard enough to make an entire row of paperbacks jump. I thought about Mattie Devore’s baggy shorts and Kmart smock, then about her father-in-law paying four and a quarter million dollars for Warrington’s. Writing a personal goddamned check. I thought about Bill Dean saying that one way or another, that little girl was going to grow up in California. I walked back and forth through the house, still simmering, and finally ended up in front of the fridge. The circle of magnets was the same, but the letters inside had changed. Instead of hell o they now read help r “Helper?” I said, and as soon as I heard the word out loud, I understood. The letters on the fridge consisted of only a single alphabet (no, not even that, I saw; g and x had been lost someplace), and I’d have to get more. If the front of my Kenmore was going to become a Ouija board, I’d need a good supply of letters. Especially vowels. In the meantime, I moved the hand the e in front of the r. Now the message read Ip her I scattered the circle of fruit and vegetable magnets with my palm, spread the letters, and resumed pacing. I had made a decision not to get between Devore and his daughter-in-law, but I’d wound up between them anyway. A deputy in Cleveland clothing had shown up in my driveway, complicating a life that already had its problems… and scaring me a little in the bargain. But at least it was a fear of something I could see and understand. All at once I decided I wanted to do more with the summer than worry about ghosts, crying kids, and what my wife had been up to four or five years ago. . if, in fact, she had been up to anything. I couldn’t write books, but that didn’t mean I had to pick scabs.

Help her.

I decided I would at least try.

“Harold Oblowski Literary Agency.”

“Come to Belize with me, Nola,” I said. “I need you. We’ll make beautiful love at midnight, when the full moon turns the beach to a bone.”

“Hello, Mr. Noonan,” she said. No sense of humor had Nola. No sense of romance, either. In some ways that made her perfect for the Oblowski Agency. “Would you like to speak to Harold?”

“If he’s in.”

“He is. Please hold.