Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

Not that I was kidding myself; there were more tears here, all right.

I’d just have to get through them. The first explosion of the night had just gone off a spangly burst of blue with the bang travelling far behind—when the phone rang. It made me jump as the faint explosion from Castle Rock had not. I decided it was probably Bill Dean, calling long-distance to see if I was settling in all right. In the summer before Jo died, we’d gotten a wireless phone so we could prowl the downstairs while we talked, a thing we both liked to do. I went through the sliding glass door into the living room, punched the pickup button, and said, “Hello, this is Mike,” as I went back to my deck-chair and sat down. Far across the lake, exploding below the low clouds hanging over Castle View, were green and yellow starbursts, followed by soundless flashes that would eventually reach me as noise. For a moment there was nothing from the phone, and then a man’s raspy voice—an elderly voice but not Bill Dean’s—said, “Noonan? Mr. Noonan?”

“Yes?” A huge spangle of gold lit up the west, shivering the low clouds with brief filigree.

It made me think of the award shows you see on television, all those beautiful women in shining dresses. “Devore.”

“Yes?” I said again, cautiously. “Max Devore.” don’t see him in here too often, Audrey had said. I had taken that for Yankee wit, but apparently she’d been serious. Wonders never ceased. Okay, what next? I was at a total loss for conversational gambits. I thought of asking him how he’d gotten my number, which was unlisted, but what would be the point? When you were worth over half a billion dollars—if this really was the Max Devore I was talking to—you could get any old unlisted number you wanted. I settled for saying yes again, this time without the little uptilt at the end. Another silence followed. When I broke it and began asking questions, he would be in charge of the conversation… if we could be said to be having a conversation at that point. A good gambit, but I had the advantage of my long association with Harold Oblowski to fall back on,Harold, master of the pregnant pause. I sat tight, cunning little cordless phone to my ear, and watched the show in the west. Red bursting into blue, green into gold; unseen women walked the clouds in glowing award-show evening dresses. “I understand you met my daughter-in-law today,” he said at last. He sounded annoyed. “I may have done,” I said, trying not to sound surprised. “May I ask why you’re calling, Mr. Devore?”

“I understand there was an incident.