Stephen King - Joyland

“Mike wouldn’t want—”

“No, of course not, I know that, but it’s not all about him. If I could believe—like my holy-hat father—that I was going to find Mike waiting outside the golden gates to show me in after I die, that would be one thing. But I don’t. I tried my ass off to believe that when I was a little girl, and I couldn’t. God and heaven lasted about four years longer than the Tooth Fairy, but in the end, I couldn’t. I think there’s just darkness. No thought, no memory, no love. Just darkness. Oblivion. That’s why I find what’s happening to him so hard to accept.”

“Mike knows it’s more than oblivion,” I said.

“What? Why? Why do you think that?”

Because she was there. He saw her, and he saw her go. Because she said thank you. And I know because I saw the Alice band, and Tom saw her.

“Ask him,” I said. “But not today.”

She put her Coke aside and studied me. She was wearing the little smile that put dimples at the corners of her mouth. “You’ve had seconds. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in thirds?”

I put my own Coke down beside the bed. “As a matter of fact…”

She held out her arms.

The first time was embarrassing. The second time was good. The third… man, the third time was the charm.

I waited in the parlor while Annie dressed. When she came downstairs, she was back in her jeans and sweater. I thought of the blue bra just beneath the sweater, and damned if I didn’t feel that stirring again.

“Are we good?” she said.

“Yes, but I wish we could be even better.”

“I wish that, too, but this is as good as it’s ever going to get. If you like me as much as I like you, you’ll accept that. Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“How much longer will you and Mike be here?”

“If the place doesn’t blow away tonight, you mean?”

“It won’t.”

“A week. Mike’s got a round of specialists back in Chicago starting on the seventeenth, and I want to get settled before then.” She drew in a deep breath. “And talk to his grandpa about a visit. There’ll have to be some ground rules. No Jesus, for one.”

“Will I see you again before you leave?”

“Yes.” She put her arms around me and kissed me. Then she stepped away. “But not like this. It would confuse things too much. I know you get that.”

I nodded. I got it.

“You better go now, Dev. And thank you. It was lovely. We saved the best ride for last, didn’t we?”

That was true. Not a dark ride but a bright one. “I wish I could do more. For you. For Mike.”

“So do I,” she said, “but that’s not the world we live in. Come by tomorrow for supper, if the storm’s not too bad. Mike would love to see you.”

She looked beautiful, standing there barefooted in her faded jeans. I wanted to take her in my arms, and lift her, and carry her into some untroubled future.

Instead, I left her where she was. That’s not the world we live in, she’d said, and how right she was.

How right she was.

About a hundred yards down Beach Row, on the inland side of the two-lane, there was a little cluster of shops too tony to be called a strip mall: a gourmet grocery, a salon called Hair’s Looking at You, a drugstore, a branch of the Southern Trust, and a restaurant called Mi Casa, where the Beach Row elite no doubt met to eat. I didn’t give those shops so much as a glance when I drove back to Heaven’s Bay and Mrs. Shoplaw’s. If ever I needed proof that I didn’t have the gift that Mike Ross and Rozzie Gold shared, that was it.

Go to bed early, Fred Dean had told me, and I did. I lay on my back with my hands behind my head, listening to the waves as I had all summer long, remembering the touch of her hands, the firmness of her breasts, the taste of her mouth. Mostly it was her eyes I thought about, and the fan of her hair on the pillow. I didn’t love her the way I loved Wendy—that sort of love, so strong and stupid, only comes once—but I loved her. I did then and still do now. For her kindness, mostly, and her patience. Some young man somewhere may have had a better initiation into the mysteries of sex, but no young man ever had a sweeter one.

Eventually, I slept.

It was a banging shutter somewhere below that woke me. I picked my watch up from the night table and saw it was quarter of one. I didn’t think there was going to be any more sleep for me until that banging stopped, so I got dressed, started out the door, then returned to the closet for my slicker. When I got downstairs, I paused. From the big bedroom down the hall from the parlor, I could hear Mrs. S. sawing wood in long, noisy strokes. No banging shutter was going to break her rest.

It turned out I didn’t need the slicker, at least not yet, because the rain hadn’t started. The wind was strong, though; it had to be blowing twenty-five already. The low, steady thud of the surf had become a muted roar. I wondered if the weather boffins had underestimated Gilda, thought of Annie and Mike in the house down the beach, and felt a tickle of unease.

I found the loose shutter and re-fastened it with the hook-and-eye. I let myself back in, went upstairs, undressed, and lay down again. This time sleep wouldn’t come. The shutter was quiet, but there was nothing I could do about the wind moaning around the eaves (and rising to a low scream each time it gusted). Nor could I turn off my brain, now that it was running again.

It’s not white, I thought. That meant nothing to me, but it wanted to mean something. It wanted to connect with something I’d seen at the park during our visit.

There’s a shadow over you, young man. That had been Rozzie Gold, on the day that I’d met her. I wondered how long she had worked at Joyland, and where she had worked before. Was she carny-from-carny? And what did it matter?

One of these children has the sight. I don’t know which.

I knew. Mike had seen Linda Gray. And set her free. He had, as they say, shown her the door. The one she hadn’t been able to find herself. Why else would she have thanked him?

I closed my eyes and saw Fred at the Shootin’ Gallery, resplendent in his suit and magic top hat. I saw Lane holding out one of the.22s chained to the chump board.

Annie: How many shots?

Fred: Ten a clip. As many as you want. Today’s your day.

My eyes flew open as several things came crashing together in my mind. I sat up, listening to the wind and the agitated surf. Then I turned on the overhead light and got Erin’s folder out of my desk drawer. I laid the photographs on the floor again, my heart pounding. The pix were good but the light wasn’t. I dressed for the second time, shoved everything back into the folder, and made another trip downstairs.

A lamp hung above the Scrabble table in the middle of the parlor, and I knew from the many evenings I’d gotten my ass kicked that the light it cast was plenty bright. There were sliding doors between the parlor and the hall leading to Mrs. S.’s quarters. I pulled them shut so the light wouldn’t disturb her. Then I turned on the lamp, moved the Scrabble box to the top of the TV, and laid my photos out. I was too agitated to sit down. I bent over the table instead, arranging and re-arranging the photographs. I was about to do that for the third time when my hand froze. I saw it. I saw him. Not proof that would stand up in court, no, but enough for me. My knees came unhinged, and I sat down after all.

The phone I’d used so many times to call my father—always noting down the time and duration on the guest-call honor sheet when I was done—suddenly rang. Only in that windy early morning silence, it sounded more like a scream. I lunged at it and picked up the receiver before it could ring again.