Stephen King - Gerald’s Game

Nevertheless, she made herself wait. The part of her that was Goody Burlingame said she needed to take some time in spite of the taunting images and her throbbing throat. She needed to wait for her heart to slow down, for her muscles to stop trembling, for her emotions to settle a bit.

Outside, the last color was fading from the air; the world was going a solemn and melancholy gray. On the lake, the loon lifted its piercing cry into the evening gloom.

“Shut your yap, Mr Loon,” Jessie said, and chuckled. It sounded like a rusty hinge.

All right, dear, the Goodwife said. I think it’s time to try. Before it gets dark. Better dry your hands again first, though.

She cupped both hands around the bedposts this time, rubbing them up and down until they produced squeaks. She held up her right hand and wiggled it in front of her eyes. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, she thought. Then, carefully, she reached just beyond the place where the glass stood on the edge of the shelf. She began to patter her fingers along the wood again. The handcuff clinked against the side of the glass once and she froze, waiting for it to overturn. When it didn’t, she resumed her cautious exploration.

She had almost decided that what she was looking for had slid down the shelf-or entirely off it-when she finally touched the corner of the blow-in card. She tweezed it between the first and second fingers of her right hand and brought it carefully up and away from the shelf and the glass. Jessie steadied her grip on the card with her thumb and looked at it curiously.

It was bright purple, with noisemakers dancing tipsily along the upper edge. Confetti and streamers drifted down between the words. Newsweek was celebrating BIG BIG SAVINGS, the card announced, and it wanted her to join the party. Newsweek’s writers would keep her up to date on world events, take her behind the scenes with world leaders, and offer her in-depth coverage of arts, politics, and the sporting life. Although it did not come right out and say so, the card pretty much implied that Newsweek could help Jessie make sense of the entire cosmos. Best of all, those lovable lunatics in Newsweek’s subscription department were offering a deal so amazing it could make your urine steam and your head explode: if she used THIS VERY CARD to subscribe to Newsweek for three years, she would get each issue AT LESS THAN HALF THE NEWSSTAND PRICE! And was money a problem? Absolutely not! She would be billed later.

I wonder if they have Direct Bed Service for handcuffed ladies, Jessie thought. Maybe with George Will or Jane Bryant Quinn or one of those other pompous old poops to turn the pages for me-handcuffs make doing that so dreadfully difficult, you know.

Yet below the sarcasm, she felt a species of odd nervous wonder, and she couldn’t seem to stop studying the purple card with its let’s-have-a-party motif, its blanks for her name and address, and its little squares marked DiCl, MC, Visa, and AMEX. I’ve been cursing these cards all my life-especially when I have to bend over and pick one of the damned things up or see myself as just another litterbug without ever guessing that my sanity, maybe even my life, might depend on one someday.

Her life? Was that really possible? Did she actually have to admit such a horrid idea into her calculations after all? Jessie was reluctantly coming to believe that she did. She might be here for quite awhile before someone discovered her, and yes, she supposed it was just barely possible that the difference between life and death could come down to a single drink of water. The idea was surreal but it no longer seemed patently ridiculous.

Same thing as before, dear-slow and easy wins the race.

Yes… but who would ever have believed the finish-line would turn out to be situated in such weird countryside?

She did move slowly and carefully, however, and was relieved to discover that manipulating the blow-in card one-handed was not as difficult-as she had feared it might be. This was partly because it was about six inches by four-almost the size of two playing cards laid side by side-but mostly because she wasn’t trying to do anything very tricky with it.

She held the card lengthwise between her first and second fingers, then used her thumb to bend the last half-inch of the long side all the way down. The fold wasn’t even, but she thought it would serve. Besides, nobody was going to come along and judge her work; Brownie Crafts Hour on Thursday nights at the First Methodist Church of Falmouth was long behind her now.

She pinched the purple card firmly between her first two fingers again and folded over another half-inch. It took her almost three minutes and seven fold-overs to get to the end of the card. When she finally did, she had something that looked like a bomber joint clumsily rolled in jaunty purple paper.

Or, if you stretched your imagination a little, a straw.

Jessie stuck it in her mouth, trying to hold the crooked folds together with her teeth. When she had it as firmly as she thought she was going to get it, she began feeling around for the glass again.

Stay careful, Jessie, Don’t spoil it all with impatience now!

Thanks for the advice. Also for the idea. It was great-I really mean that, Now, however, Id like you to shut up long enough for me to take my shot. Okay?

When her fingertips touched the smooth surface of the glass, she slid them around it with the gentleness and caution of a young lover slipping her hand into her boyfriend’s fly for the first time.

Gripping the glass in its new position was a relatively simple matter. She brought it around and lifted it as far as the chain would allow. The last slivers of ice had melted, she saw; tempus had gone fugiting merrily along despite her feeling that it had stopped dead in its tracks around the time the dog had put in its first appearance. But she wouldn’t think about the dog. In fact, she was going to work hard at believing that no dog had ever been here.

You’re good at unhappening things, aren’t you, tootsie-wootsie?

Hey, Ruth-I’m trying to keep a grip on myself as well as on the damned glass, in case you didn’t notice. If playing a few mind-games helps me do that, I don’t see what the big deal is. just shut up for awhile, okay? Give it a rest and let me get on with my business.

Ruth apparently had no intention of giving it a rest, however. Shut up.” she marvelled. Boy, how that takes me back-it’s better than a Beach Boys oldie on the radio. You always did give good shut up, Jessie-remember that night in the dorm after we came back from your first and last consciousness-raising session at Neuworth?

I don’t want to remember, Ruth.

I’m sure you don’t, so I’ll remember for both of us, how’s that for a deal? You kept saying it was the girl with the scars on her breasts that had upset you, only her and nothing more, and when I tried to tell you what you’d said in the kitchen-about how you and your father had been alone at your place on Dark Score Lake when the sun went out in 1963, and how he’d done something to you-you told me to shut up. When I wouldn’t, you tried to slap me. When I still wouldn’t, you grabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere else-probably in Susie Timmel’s little fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we used to call Susie’s Lez Hotel. By the end of the week, you’d found some girls who bad an apartment downtown and needed another roomie. Boom, as fast as that… but then, you always moved fast when you’d made up your mind, Jess, I’ll give you that. And like I said, you always gave good shut up.