JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 18 из 425Painters sometimes refuse to paint without wearing a certain hat, and baseball players who are hitting well won’t change their socks.
The ritual started with the second book, which was the only one I remember being nervous about—I suppose I’d absorbed a fair amount of that sophomore-jinx stuff; the idea that one hit might only be a fluke.
I remember an American Lit lecturer’s once saying that of modern American writers, only Harper Lee had found a foolproof way of avoiding the second-book blues.
When I reached the end of The Red-Shirt Man, I stopped just short of finishing. The Edwardian on Benton Street in Derry was still two years in the future at that point, but we had purchased Sara Laughs, the place on Dark Score (not anywhere near as furnished as it later became, and Jo’s studio not yet built, but nice), and that’s where we were.
I pushed back from my typewriter—I was still clinging to my old IBM Selectric in those days—and went into the kitchen. It was mid-September, most of the summer people were gone, and the crying of the loons on the lake sounded inexpressibly lovely. The sun was going down, and the lake itself had become a still and heatless plate of fire.
This is one of the most vivid memories I have, so clear I sometimes feelI could step right into it and live it all again. What things, if any, would I do differently? I sometimes wonder about that.
Early that evening I had put a bottle of Taittinger and two flutes in the fridge. Now I took them out, put them on a tin tray that was usually employed to transport pitchers of iced tea or Kool-Aid from the kitchen to the deck, and carried it before me into the living room.
Johanna was deep in her ratty old easy chair, reading a book (not Maugham that night but William Denbrough, one of her contemporary favorites). “Ooo,” she said, looking up and marking her place. “Cham pagne, what’s the occasion?” As if, you understand, she didn’t know.
“I’m done,” I said. “Mon livre est tout fini.”
“Well,” she said, smiling and taking one of the flutes as I bent down to her with the tray, “then that’s all right, isn’t it?”
I realize now that the essence of the ritual—the part that was alive and powerful, like the one true magic word in a mouthful of gibberish—was that phrase. We almost always had champagne, and she almost always came into the office with me afterward for the other thing, but not always. Once, five years or so before she died, she was in Ireland, vacationing with a girlfriend, when I finished a book.
The ritual started with the second book, which was the only one I remember being nervous about—I suppose I’d absorbed a fair amount of that sophomore-jinx stuff; the idea that one hit might only be a fluke.
I remember an American Lit lecturer’s once saying that of modern American writers, only Harper Lee had found a foolproof way of avoiding the second-book blues.
When I reached the end of The Red-Shirt Man, I stopped just short of finishing. The Edwardian on Benton Street in Derry was still two years in the future at that point, but we had purchased Sara Laughs, the place on Dark Score (not anywhere near as furnished as it later became, and Jo’s studio not yet built, but nice), and that’s where we were.
I pushed back from my typewriter—I was still clinging to my old IBM Selectric in those days—and went into the kitchen. It was mid-September, most of the summer people were gone, and the crying of the loons on the lake sounded inexpressibly lovely. The sun was going down, and the lake itself had become a still and heatless plate of fire.
This is one of the most vivid memories I have, so clear I sometimes feelI could step right into it and live it all again. What things, if any, would I do differently? I sometimes wonder about that.
Early that evening I had put a bottle of Taittinger and two flutes in the fridge. Now I took them out, put them on a tin tray that was usually employed to transport pitchers of iced tea or Kool-Aid from the kitchen to the deck, and carried it before me into the living room.
Johanna was deep in her ratty old easy chair, reading a book (not Maugham that night but William Denbrough, one of her contemporary favorites). “Ooo,” she said, looking up and marking her place. “Cham pagne, what’s the occasion?” As if, you understand, she didn’t know.
“I’m done,” I said. “Mon livre est tout fini.”
“Well,” she said, smiling and taking one of the flutes as I bent down to her with the tray, “then that’s all right, isn’t it?”
I realize now that the essence of the ritual—the part that was alive and powerful, like the one true magic word in a mouthful of gibberish—was that phrase. We almost always had champagne, and she almost always came into the office with me afterward for the other thing, but not always. Once, five years or so before she died, she was in Ireland, vacationing with a girlfriend, when I finished a book.