Stephen King - Gerald’s Game

Jessie sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette, absently aware that the tip of her tongue was stinging from tobacco overload, that her head ached, and that her kidneys were protesting this marathon session in front of the Mac. Protesting vigorously. The house was deathly silent-the sort of silence that could only mean that tough little Megan Landis had taken herself off to the supermarket and the dry-cleaner’s. Jessie was amazed that Meggie had left without making at least one more effort to separate her from the computer screen. Then she guessed the housekeeper had known it would be a wasted effort. Best to let her get it out of her system, whatever it is, Meggie would have thought. And it was only a job to her, after all. This last thought sent a little pang through Jessie’s heart.

A board creaked upstairs. Jessie’s cigarette stopped an inch shy of her lips. He’s back! Goody shrieked. Oh, Jessie, he’s back!

Except he wasn’t. Her eyes drifted to the narrow face looking up at her from the clusters of newsprint dots and she thought: I know exactly where you are, you whoredog. Don’t I?

She did, but part of her mind went on insisting it was him just the same-no, not him, it, the space cowboy, the specter of love, back again for a return engagement. It had only been waiting for the house to be empty, and if she picked up the phone on the corner of the desk, she would find it stone dead, just as all the phones in the house by the take had been stone dead that night.

Your friend Brandon can smile all he wants, hut we know the truth, don’t we, Jessie?

She suddenly shot out her good hand, snatched the telephone handset from the cradle, and brought it to her ear. Heard the reassuring buzz of the dial-tone. Put it back again. An odd, sunless smile played about the corners of her mouth.

Yes, I know exactly where you are, motherfucker. Whatever Goody and the rest of the ladies inside my head may think, Punkin and I know you’re wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting in a County jail cell the one at the far end of the old wing, Brandon said, so the other inmates can’t get to you and fuck you up before the state hauls you in front of a jury of your peers… if a thing like you has any peers. We may not he entirely free of you yet, hut we will he. I promise you we will be.

Her eyes drifted back to the VDT, and although the vague sleepiness brought on by the combination of the pill and the sandwich had long since dissipated, she felt a bone-deep weariness and a complete lack of belief in her ability to finish what she had started.

This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert, she had written, but was it? Could she? She was so tired. Of course she was; she had been pushing that goddamned cursor across the VDT screen almost all day. Pushing the envelope, they called it, and if you pushed the envelope long enough and hard enough, you tore it wide open. Maybe it would be best to just go upstairs and take a nap. Better late than never, and all that shit. She could file this to memory, retrieve it tomorrow morning, go back to work on it then-

Punkin’s voice stopped her. This voice came only infrequently now, and Jessie listened very carefully to it when it did.

If you decide to stop now, Jessie, don’t bother to file the document. Just delete it. We both know you’ll never have the guts to face Joubert again - not the way a person has to face a-thing she’s writing about. Sometimes it takes heart to write about a thing, doesn’t it? To let that thing out of the room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.

“Yes,” she murmured. “A yard of heart. Maybe more.”

She dragged at her cigarette, then snuffed it out half-smoked. She riffled through the clippings a final time and looked out the window at the slope of Eastern Prom. The snow had long since stopped and the sun was shining brightly, although it wouldn’t be for much longer; February days in Maine are thankless, miserly things.

“What do you say, Punkin?” Jessie asked the empty room. She spoke in the haughty Elizabeth Taylor voice she had favored as a child, the one that had driven her mother completely bonkers. “Shall we carry on, my deah?”

There was no answer, but Jessie didn’t need one. She leaned forward in her chair and set the cursor in motion once more. She didn’t stop again for a long time, not even to light a cigarette.

This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert. It won’t be easy, but I’m going to do my best. So pour yourself another cup of coffee, dear, and if you’ve got a bottle of brandy handy, you may want to doctor it up a bit. Here comes Part Three.

I have all the newspaper clippings beside me on the desk, but the articles and news items don’t tell all I know, let alone all there is to know-I doubt if anyone has the slightest idea of all the things Joubert did (including Joubert himself, I imagine), and that’s probably a blessing. The stuff the papers could only hint at and the stuff that didn’t make them at all is real nightmare-fodder, and I wouldn’t want to know all of it. Most of the stuff that isn’t in the papers came to me during the last week courtesy of a strangely quiet, strangely chastened Brandon Milheron. I’d asked him to come over as soon as the connections between Joubert’s story and my own had become too obvious to ignore.

“You think this was the guy, don’t you?” he asked. “The one who was in the house with you?”

“Brandon,” I said, “I know it’s the guy.”

He sighed, looked down at his hands for a minute, then looked up at me again-we were in this very room, it was nine o'clock in the morning, and there were no shadows to hide his face that time. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I didn’t believe you then-”

“I know,” I said, as kindly as I could.

“-but I do now. Dear God. How much do you want to know, Jess?”

I took a deep breath and said, “Everything you can find out.”

He wanted to know why. “I mean, if you say it’s your business and I should butt out, I guess I’ll have to accept that, but you’re asking me to re-open a matter the firm considers closed. If someone who knows I was watching out for you last fall notices me sniffing around Joubert this winter, it’s not impossible that-”

“That you could get in trouble,” I said. It was something I hadn’t considered.

“Yes,” he said, “but I’m not terribly concerned about that-I’m a big boy, and I can take care of myself… at least I think I can. I’m a lot more concerned about you, Jess. You could wind up on the front page again, after all our work to get you off it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Even that’s not the major thing-it’s miles from the major thing. This is the nastiest criminal case to break in northern New England since World War II. I mean some o this stuff is so gruesome it’s radioactive, and you shouldn’t plink yourself down in the fallout zone without a damned good reason.” He laughed, a little nervously. “Hell, shouldn’t plink myself down there without a damned good reason.”

I got up, walked across to him, and took one of his hands with my left hand. “I couldn’t explain in a million years why,” I said, “but I think I can tell you what -will that do, at least for a start?”

He folded his hand gently over mine and nodded his head.