Стивен Кинг - The Plant 3

At Roger’s building I assisted him into the lobby and saw him into the elevator with his apartment key in his hand. Then I wove my way back to the cab.

“You git annoder cab, mon,” the driver said. “You just pay me and git annoder. I don’t want to no mo convey you hence.”

“It’s just down to Soho,” I said, “and I’ll give you a hell of a tip. Also, I don’t feel like puking.” This was a bit of a lie, I’m afraid.

He took me, and from the look of my wallet the next day I did indeed give him a hell of a tip. And I actually managed to make it upstairs before throwing up. Although once I started I didn’t stop for quite awhile.

I didn’t go in the next day — it was all I could do to get out of bed. My head felt monstrous, bloated. I called in around three and got Bill Gelb, who told me Roger hadn’t shown, either.

Since then I have done a lot of crying and have had mostly sleepless nights, but perhaps Roger wasn’t so wrong — the only hours that I feel even halfway myself are the ones spent on the 9 thfloor at 490 Park. Riddley has just about had to sweep me out the door along with his red sawdust the last two nights. Maybe there is something to that old “he threw himself into his work” crap after all. Even this diary idea feels right…although it may only be the relief of finally being done with my dreadful pastoral novel.

Maybe I’ll stay on after all. Onward and upward…if there is any upward left for me. Man, I still can’t believe she’s gone. And I still haven’t lost hope that she may change her mind.

March 21, 1981

Mr. John “Poop-Shit” Kenton

Zenith House Publishers, Home of the Pus-Bags

490 Kaka Avenue South

New York, New York 10017

Dear Poop-Shit,

Did you think I had forgotten you? My plans for revenge will go forward no matter WHAT! happens to me! You and all your fellow “Pus-Bags” will soon feel the WRATH! of CARLOS!!

I have covened the powers of Hell,

Carlos Detweiller

In Transit, U.S.A.

PS — Smell anything “green” yet, Mr. Poop-Shit Kenton?

From John Kenton’s diary.

March 22, 1981

Had a letter from Carlos today. I laughed until I shrieked. Herb Porter came on the run, wanted to know if I was dying or what. I showed it to him. He read it and only frowned. He wanted to know what I was laughing about — didn’t I take this Detweiller fellow seriously?

“Oh, I take him seriously…sort of,” I said.

“Then why in hell are you laughing?”

“I guess I just must be a warped plank in the great floor of the universe,” I said, and then went off into even madder gales of laughter.

Frowning so deeply now that the lines in his face had become crevasses, Herb laid the letter on the corner of my desk and then backed into the doorway, as if whatever I had might be catching. “I don’t know why you’re so weird lately,” he said, “but I’ll give you some good advice anyway. Get yourself some personal protection. And if you need psychiatric help, John—“ I just kept laughing — by then I’d worked myself into a semi-hysterical frenzy. Herb stared at me a moment longer, then slammed the door and walked away. Just as well, really, as I finished by crying.

I expect to speak to Ruth tonight. By exercising all of my willpower I have managed to hold off on calling her, expecting each day that she must call me. Maddening images of her and the odious Toby Anderson cavorting together — the locale which keeps recurring is a hot-tub. So I’ll call her. So much for willpower.

If I had a return address for Carlos Detweiller I think I’d drop him a postcard: “Dear Carlos — I know all about covening the powers of Hell. Your Ob’d Servant, Poop-Shit Kenton.”

Why I bother to write all this crud down, or why I keep plowing through the stacks of old unreturned manuscripts in the mailroom next to Riddley’s janitorial closet, are both mysteries to me.

March 23, 1981

My call to Ruth was an utter disaster. Why I should be sitting here and writing about it when I don’t even want to think about it defies reason. Perversity upon perversity. Actually, I do know — I have some dim idea that if I write it down it will lose some of its power over me…so let me by all means confess, but the less said, the better.

Have I written here that I cry very easily? I think so, but I haven’t the heart to actually look back and see. Well, I cried. Maybe that says it all. Or maybe it doesn’t. I guess it doesn’t. I had spent the day — the last two or three days, actually — telling myself that I would not a.) cry, or b.) beg her to come back. I ended up doing c.) both. I’ve had a lot of gruff locker room chats with myself over the last couple of days (and mostly sleepless nights) on the subject of Pride. As in, “Even after everything else is gone, a man’s got his Pride.” I would draw some lonely comfort from this thought and fantasize myself as Paul Newman — that scene in Cool Hand Luke where he sits in his cell after his mother’s death, playing his banjo and crying soundlessly. Heart-rending, but cool, definitely cool.

Well, my cool lasted just about four minutes after hearing her voice and having a sudden total remembrance of Ruth — something like an imagistic tattoo. What I’m saying is that I didn’t know how gone she was until I heard her say “Hello? John?”—just those two words — and had this searing 360 degree memory of Ruth — God, how here she was when she was here!

Even after everything else is gone, a man’s got his Pride?

Samson might have had similar sentiments about his hair.

Anyway, I cried and I begged and after a little while she cried and in the end she had to hang up to get rid of me. Or maybe the odious Toby — I never heard him but am somehow sure he was in the room with her; I could almost smell his Brut cologne — picked the phone out of her hand and did her hanging up for her. So they could discuss his love-ring, or their June wedding, or perhaps so he could mingle his tears with hers. Bitter — bitter — I know. But I’ve discovered that even after Pride has gone, a man’s got his Bitterness.

Did I discover anything else this evening? Yes, I think so. That it is over — genuinely and completely over. Will this stop me from calling her again and debasing myself even further (if that is possible)? I don’t know. I hope so — God, I do. And there’s always the possibility that she’ll change her phone number. In fact, I think that’s even a probability, given tonight’s festivities.

So what is there for me now? Work, I guess — work, work, and more work. I’m tunneling my way steadily into the logjam of manuscripts in the mailroom — unsolicited scripts which were never returned, for one reason or another (after all, it says right in the boiler-plate that we accept no responsibility for such orphan children). I don’t really expect to find the next Flowers in the Attic in there, or a budding John Saul or Rosemary Rogers, but if Roger was wrong about that, he was sublimely right about something much more important — the work is keeping me sane.

Pride…then Bitterness…then Work.

Oh, fuck it. I’m going to go out, buy myself a bottle of bourbon, and get shitty-ass drunk. This is John Kenton, signing off and going for the long bomb.