Stephen King - Song of Susannah

Mia stood up. Susannah promptly came forward and made her sit down again.

What did you do that for ? Mia asked, surprised.

I don’t know, I don’t have a clue. But let’s us palaver a little. Why don’t you start by telling me where you want to go?

I need a telefung. Someone will call.

Tele phone, Susannah said. And by the way, there’s blood on our shirt, sugar, Margaret Eisenhart’s blood, and sooner or later someone’s gonna recognize it for what it is. Then where will you be?

The response to this was wordless, a swell of smiling contempt. It made Susannah angry. Five minutes ago-or maybe fifteen, it was hard to keep track of time when you were having fun-this hijacking bitch had been screaming for help. And now that she’d gotten it, what her rescuer got was an internal contemptuous smile. What made it worse was that the bitch was right: she could probably stroll around Midtown all day without anyone asking her if that was dried blood on her shirt, or had she maybe just spilled her chocolate egg-cream.

All right, she said, but even if nobody bothers you about the blood, where are you going to store your goods? Then another question occurred to her, one that probably should have come to her right away.

Mia, how do you even know what a telephone is? And don’t tell me they have em where you came from, either.

No response. Only a kind of watchful silence. But she had wiped the smile off the bitch’s face; she’d done that much.

You have friends, don’t you? Or at least you think they’re friends. Folks you’ve been talking to behind my back. Folks that ’II help you. Or so you think.

Are you going to help me or not? Back to that. And angry. But beneath the anger, what? Fright? Probably that was too strong, at least for now. But worry, certainly. How long have I - have we - got before the labor starts up again?

Susannah guessed somewhere between six and ten hours-certainly before midnight saw in June second-but tried to keep this to herself.

I don’t know. Not all that long.

Then we have to get started. I have to find a telefung. Phone. In a private place.

Susannah thought there was a hotel at the First Avenue end of Forty-sixth Street, and tried to keep this to herself. Her eyes went back to the bag, once pink, now red, and suddenly she understood. Not everything, but enough to dismay and anger her.

I’ll leave it here, Mia had said, speaking of the ring Eddie had made her, I’ll leave it here, where he’ll find it. Later, if ka wills, you may wear it again.

Not a promise, exactly, at least not a direct one, but Mia had certainly implied -

Dull anger surged through Susannah’s mind. No, she’d not promised. She had simply led Susannah in a certain direction, and Susannah had done the rest.

She didn’t cozen me; she let me cozen myself.

Mia stood up again, and once again Susannah came forward and made her sit down. Hard, this time.

What? Susannah, you promised! The chap -

I’ll help you with the chap, Susannah replied grimly. She bent forward and picked up the red bag. The bag with the box inside it. And inside the box? The ghostwood box with UNFOUND written upon it in runes? She could feel a baleful pulse even through the layer of magical wood and cloth which hid it. Black Thirteen was in the bag. Mia had taken it through the door. And if it was the ball that opened the door, how could Eddie get to her now?

I did what I had to, Mia said nervously. It’s my baby, my chap, and every hand is against me now. Every hand but yours, and, you only help me because you have to. Remember what I said… if ka wills, I said -

It was Detta Walker’s voice that replied. It was harsh and crude and brooked no argument. “I don’t give a shit bout ka,” she said, “and you bes be rememberin dat. You got problems, girl. Got a rug-monkey comin you don’t know what it is. Got folks say they’ll he’p you and you don’t know what dey are. Shit, you doan even know what a telephone is or where to find one. Now we goan sit here, and you’re goan tell me what happens next. We goan palaver, girl, and if you don’t play straight, we still be sittin here with these bags come nightfall and you can have your precious chap on this bench and wash him off in the fuckin fountain.”

The woman on the bench bared her teeth in a gruesome smile that was all Detta Walker.

“ You care bout dat chap… and Susannah, she care a little bout dat chap… but I been mos’ly turned out of this body, and I… don’t… give a shit.”

A woman pushing a stroller (it looked as divinely lightweight as Susannah’s abandoned wheelchair) gave the woman on the bench a nervous glance and then pushed her own baby onward, so fast she was nearly running.

“So!” Detta said brightly. “It’s be purty out here, don’t you think? Good weather for talkin. You hear me, mamma?”

No reply from Mia, daughter of none and mother of one. Detta wasn’t put out of countenence; her grin widened.

“You hear me, all right; you hear me just fahn. So let’s us have a little chat. Let’s us palaver.”

Mia said: Talking will be easier - quicker and clearer, too - if we do it face-to-face.

How can we? Susannah asked.

We’ll have our palaver in the castle, Mia replied promptly. The Castle on the Abyss. In the banquet room. Do you remember the banquet room?

Susannah nodded, but hesitantly. Her memories of the banquet room were but recently recovered, and consequently vague. She wasn’t sorry, either. Mia’s feeding there had been… well, enthusiastic, to say the very least. She’d eaten from many plates (mostly with her fingers) and drunk from many glasses and spoken to many phantoms in many borrowed voices. Borrowed? Hell, stolen voices. Two of these Susannah had known quite well. One had been Odetta Holmes’s nervous-and rather hoity-toity-"social” voice. Another had been Delta’s raucous who-gives-a-shit bellow. Mia’s thievery had extended to every aspect of Susannah’s personality, it seemed, and if Detta Walker was back, pumped up and ready to cut butt, that was in large part this unwelcome stranger’s doing.

The gunslinger saw me there, Mia said. The boy, too.

There was a pause. Then:

I have met them both before .

Who? Jake and Roland?

Aye, they

Where? When? How could y -

We can’t speak here. Please. Let us go somewhere more private.

Someplace with a phone, isn’t that what you mean? So your friends can call you.

I only know a little, Susannah of New York, but what little I know, I think you would hear.

Susannah thought so, too. And although she didn’t necessarily want Mia to realize it, she was also anxious to get off Second Avenue. The stuff on her shirt might look like spilled egg-cream or dried coffee to the casual passerby, but Susannah herself was acutely aware of what it was: not just blood, but the blood of a brave woman who had stood true on behalf of her town’s children.