Stephen King - Needful Things

Desperate, not sure it would work but unable to think of any other way to stave off the approaching catastrophe, Pete jerzyck had removed the bottle from the inside pocket of his briefcase and had dropped a Xanax tablet into Wilma’s coffee. He then went to his office.

In a very real sense, that had been Pete jerzyck’s First Communion.

He had spent the day in an agony of suspense and had come home terrified of what he might find (Henrietta Longman dead and Wilma in jail was his most recurrent fantasy). He was delighted to find Wilma in the kitchen, singing.

Pete took a deep breath, lowered his emotional blast-shield, and asked her what had happened with the Longman woman.

“She doesn’t open until noon, and by then I just didn’t feel so angry,” Wilma said. “I went up there to have it out with her just the same, though-I’d promised myself I was going to, after all.

And do you know, she offered me a glass of sherry and said she wanted to give me my money back!”

“Wow! Great!” Pete had said, relieved and gladdened… and that had been the end of laffaire Henrietta. He had spent days waiting for Wilma’s rage to return, but it hadn’t-at least not aimed in that direction.

He had considered suggesting that Wilma go to Dr. Van Allen and obtain a tranquilizer prescription of her own, but discarded the idea after long and careful consideration. Wilma would blow him out of the water-maybe right into orbit-if he suggested that she TAKE DRUGS.

TAKING DRUGs was for junkies, and tranquilizers were for weak-sister junkies. She would face life on life’s terms, thank you very much.

And besides, Pete concluded reluctantly, the truth was too plain to deny: Wilma liked being mad. Wilma in a red rage was Wilma fulfilled, Wilma imbued with high purpose.

And he loved her-just as the natives of that hypothetical tropic isle undoubtedly love their Great God Thunder Mountain. His awe and dread actually enhanced his love; she wasWILMA, a force unto herself, and he attempted to deflect her from her course only when he was afraid she mi lit inure herself… which, through the mystic 9

transubstantiations of love, would also injure him.

He had slipped her the Xanax on just three occasions since then.

The third-and the scariest by far-was The Night of the Muddy Sheets.

He had been frantic to get her to take a cup of tea, and when she at last consented to drink one (after her short but extremely satisfactory dialogue with Crazy Nettle Cobb), he brewed it strong and dropped in not one Xanax but two. He was greatly relieved at how much her thermostat had dropped the next morning.

These were the things that Wilma jerzyck, confident in her power over her husband’s mind, did not know; they were also the things which kept Wilma from simply driving her Yugo through Nettle’s door and snatching her baldheaded (or trying to) on Friday morning.

Not that Wilma had forgotten Nettle, or forgiven her, or come to entertain the slightest doubt as to who had vandalized her bedlinen; no medicine on earth would have done those things.

Shortly after Pete left for work, Wilma got into her car and cruised slowly down Willow Street (plastered to the back bumper of the little yellow Yugo was a bumper sticker which told the world

IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY DRIVING DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT).

She turned right, onto Ford Street, and slowed to a crawl as she approached Nettle Cobb’s neat little house. She thought she saw one of the curtains twitch, and that was a good start… but only a start.

She went around the block (passing the Rusk home on Pond Street without a glance), past her own home on Willow, and around to Ford Street for the second time. This time she honked the Yugo’s horn twice as she approached Nettle’s house and then parked out front with the engine idling.

The curtain twitched again. No mistake this time. The woman was peering out at her. Wilma thought of her behind the curtain, I

trembling with guilt and terror, and found she enjoyed the image even more than she enjoyed the one she had gone to bed withthe one where she was twisting the crazy bitch’s noodle until it spun like that little girl’s head in The Exorcist.

“Peekaboo, I see you,” she said grimly as the curtain fell back in place. “Don’t think I don’t.”

She circled the block again and stopped in front of Nettle’s a second time, honking the horn to notify her prey of her arrival.

This time she sat out front for almost five minutes. The curtain twitched twice. At last she drove on again, satisfied.

Crazy broadwillspendthe rest oftheday lookingforme, she thought as she parked in her own driveway and got out. She’ll be afraid to set foot out of her door.

Wilma went inside, light of foot and heart, and plunked down on the sofa with a catalogue. Soon she was happily ordering three new sets of sheets-white, yellow, and paisley.

Raider sat in the middle of the living-room carpet, looking at his mistress. At last he whined uneasily, as if to remind Nettle that this was a working day and she was already half an hour late. Today was the day she was supposed to vacuum the upstairs at Polly’s, and the telephone man was coming with the new phones, the ones with the great big touch-tone pads. They were supposed to be easier for people who had the arthritis so terrible, like Polly did, to use.

But how could she go out?

That crazy Polish woman was out there someplace, cruising around in her little car.

Nettle sat in her chair, holding her lampshade in her lap. She had been holding it in her lap ever since the crazy Polish woman had driven past her house the first time. Then she had come again, parking and honking her horn. When she left, Nettle thought it might be over, but no-the woman had come back yet a third time.

Nettle had been sure the crazy Polish woman would try to come in.

She had sat in her chair, hugging the lampshade with one arm and Raider with the other, wondering what she would do when and if the crazy Polish woman did try-how she would defend herse f.

She didn’t know.

At last she had mustered enough courage to take another peek out the window, and the crazy Polish woman had been gone. Her first feeling of relief had been superseded by dread. She was afraid that the crazy Polish woman was patrolling the streets, waiting for her to come out; she was even more afraid that the crazy Polish woman would come here after she was gone.

That she would break in and see her beautiful lampshade and shatter it to a thousand fragments on the floor.

Raider whined again.

“I know,” she said in a voice which was almost a groan. “I know.”

She had to leave. She had a responsibility, and she knew what it was and to whom she owed it. Polly Chalmers had been good to her. It had been Polly who wrote the recommendation that had gotten her out of juniper Hill for good, and it had been Polly who had co-signed for her home loan at the bank. If not for Polly, whose father had been her father’s best friend, she would still be living in a rented room on the other side of the Tin Bridge.

But what if she left and the crazy Polish woman came back?

Raider couldn’t protect her lampshade; he was brave, but he was just a little dog. The crazy Polish woman might hurt him if he tried to stop her. Nettle felt her mind, caught in the vise of this horrible dilemma, beginning to slip. She groaned again.

And suddenly, mercifully, an idea occurred to her.

She got up, still cradling the lampshade in her arms, and crossed the living room, which was very gloomy with the shades drawn.

She walked through the kitchen and opened the door in its far corner. There was a shed tacked onto this end of the house. The shadows of the woodpile and a great many stored objects bulked in the gloom.