Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

“You’re asking for trouble,” hesaid. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I’m in for a certain measure of it in any case,” I said. “I’ve decided I want to dish out a little as well, that’s all.”

“You will not have the peace and quiet that a writer needs to do his best work,” Harold said in an amusingly prim voice. I wondered what the reaction would be if I said that was okay, I hadn’t written anything more riveting than a grocery list since Jo died, and maybe this would stir me up a little. But I didn’t. Never let em see you sweat, the Noonan clan’s motto. Someone should carve DON’T WORRY I’M FINE on the door of the family crypt.

Then I thought: help r.

“That young woman needs a friend,” I said, “and Jo would have wanted me to be one to her. Jo didn’t like it when the little folks got stepped on.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll see who I can find. And Mike… do you want me to come up on Friday for this depo?”

“No.” It came out sounding needlessly abrupt and was followed by a silence that seemed not calculated but hurt. “Listen, Harold, my caretaker said the actual custody hearing is scheduled soon. If it happens and you still want to come up, I’ll give you a call. I can always use your moral support—you know that.”

“In my case it’s immoral support,” he replied, but he sounded cheery again. We said goodbye. I walked back to the fridge and looked at the magnets.

They were still scattered hell to breakfast, and that was sort of a relief. Even the spirits must have to rest sometimes.

I took the cordless phone, went out onto the deck, and plonked down in the chair where I’d been on the night of the Fourth, when Devote called.

Even after my visit from “daddy,” I could still hardly believe that conversation. Devote had called me a liar; I had told him to stick my telephone number up his ass. We were off to a great start as neighbors.

I pulled the chair a little closer to the edge of the deck, which dropped a giddy forty feet or so to the slope between Sara’s backside and the lake. I looked for the green woman I’d seen while swimming, telling myself not to be a dope—things like that you can see only from one angle, stand even ten feet off to one side or the other and there’s nothing to look at. But this was apparently a case of the exception’s proving the rule. I was both amused and a little uneasy to realize that the birch down there by The Street looked like a woman from the land side as well as from the lake.