Стивен Кинг - Desperation

“What’s your impression of Johnny.” he asked Steve. “He’s fifty-six years old, you know, and he’s put a lot of hard mileage on the original equipment. Especially in the eighties. He wound up in the emergency room three dif-ferent times, twice in Connecticut and once down here. The first two were drug ODs. I’m not telling tales out of school, because all that’s been reported—exhaustively—in the press. The last OflC may have been a suicide attempt, and that is a tale out of school. I’d ask you to keep it to yourself.”

Steve had nodded.

“So what do you think.” Appleton asked. “Can he really drive almost half a ton of motorcycle cross-country from Connecticut to California, and do twenty or so read-ings and receptions along the way. I want to know what you think, Mr. Ames, because I’m frankly doubtful.”

He had expected Harris to come busting in then, touting the legendary strength and iron balls of his client—Steve knew suits, he knew agents, and Harris was both—but Harris was silent, just looking at him. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid after all, Steve thought. Maybe he even cared a little for this particular client.

“You guys know him a lot better than I do,” he said. “Hell, I only met him for the first time two weeks ago and I’ve never read one of his books.”

Harris’s face said that last didn’t surprise him at all.

“Precisely why I’m asking you,” Appleton replied. “We have known him for a long time.

Me since 1985, when he used to party with the Beautiful People at 54, Bill since 1965.

He’s the literary world’s Jerry Garcia.”

“That’s unfair,” Harris said stiffly.

Appleton shrugged. “New eyes see clear, my grand—mother used to say. So tell me, Mr.

Ames. do you think he can do it.”

Steve had seen the question was serious, maybe even vital, and thought it over for almost a full minute. The two other men sat and let him.

“Well,” he had said at last, “I don’t know if he can just eat the cheese and stay away from the wine at the recep-tions, but make it across to California on the bike. Yeah, probably.

He looks fairly strong. A lot better than Jerry Garcia did near the end, I’ll tell you that.

I’ve worked with a lot of rockers half his age who don’t look as good.”

Appleton had looked dubious.

“Mostly, though, it’s a look he gets on his face. He wants to do this. He wants to get out on the road, kick some ass, take down some names. And…” Steve had found himself thinking of his favorite movie, one he watched on tape every year or so: Hombre, with Paul Newman and Richard Boone. He had smiled a little. “And he looks like a man who’s still got a lot of hard bark left on him.”

“Ah.” Appleton had looked downright mystified at that. Steve hadn’t been much surprised. If Appleton had ever come equipped with hard bark, Steve thought it had probably all rubbed off by the time he was a sophomore at Exeter or Choate or wherever he’d gone to wear his blazers and rep ties.

Harris had cleared his throat. “If we’ve got that out of the way, the final commandment—”

Appleton groaned. Harris went on looking at Steve, pretending not to hear.

“The fifth and final commandment,” he had repeated. “Thou shalt not pick up hitchhikers in thy truck. Neither male nor female shalt thou pick them up, but especially not female.”

Which was probably why Steve Ames never hesitated when he saw the girl standing beside the road just outside Ely—the skinny girl with her nose bent and her hair dyed two different colors. He just pulled over and stopped.

She opened the door but didn’t get into the cab at first, just looked up at him from across the map-littered seat with wide blue eyes. “Are you a nice person.” she asked.

Steve thought this over, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “I like a cigar two or three times a day, but I never kicked a dog that wasn’t bigger’n me, and I send money home to my momma once every six weeks.”

“You’re not going to try to slap the make on me, or anything.”

“Nope,” Steve said, amused. He liked the way her wide blue eyes remained fixed on his face. She looked like a little kid studying the funnypages. “I’m fairly well under control in that regard.”

“And you’re not like a crazy serial killer, or anything.”

“No, but Jesus Christ, do you think I’d tell you if I was.”

“I’d prob’ly see it in your eyes,” the skinny girl with the tu-tone hair told him, and although she sounded grave enough, she was smiling a little. “I got a psychic streak. It ain’t wide, but it’s there, buddy. It’s really really there.”

Arefrigerator truck roared past, the guy laying on his horn all the way by, even though Steve had squeezed over until the stubby Ryder was mostly on the shoulder, and the road itself was empty in both directions. No big sur-prise about that, though. In Steve’s experience, some guys simply couldn’t keep their hands off their horns or their dicks.

They were always honking one or the other.

“Enough with the questionnaire, lady. Do you want a ride or not. I’ve got to roll my wheels.” In truth, he was a lot closer to the boss than the boss would maybe approve of. Marinville liked the idea of being on his own in America, Mr. Free Bird, have pen will travel, and Steve thought that was just how he’d write his book. That was fine, too—great, totally cool. But he, Steven Andrew Ames of Lubbock, also had a job to do; his was to make sure Marinville didn’t have to write the book on a Ouija board instead of his word processor. His view on how to accomplish that end was simplicity itself: stay close and let no situation get out of hand unless it absolutely couldn’t be helped. He was seventy miles back instead of a hundred and fifty, but what the boss didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“You’ll do, I guess,” she said, hopped up into the cab, and slammed the door shut.

“Well, thank you, cookie,” he said. “I’m touched by your trust.” He checked the rearview mirror, saw nothing but the ass end of Ely, and got back out on the road again.

“Don’t call me that,” she said. “It’s sexist.”

“Cookie is sexist. Oh please.”

In a prim little no-nonsense voice she said: “Don’t call me cookie and I won’t call you cake.”

He burst out laughing. She probably wouldn’t like it, but he couldn’t help it. That was the way laughing was, sort of like farting, sometimes you could hold it in but a lot of times you couldn’t.

He glanced at her and saw that she was laughing a little too—and slipping her backpack off—so maybe that was all right. He put her at about five-six and skinny as a rail—a hundred pounds max, and probably more like ninety-five. She was wearing a tank-top with torn-off sleeves. It gave an awfully generous view of her breasts for a girl worried about meeting Ted Bundy in a Ryder van. Not that she had a lot to worry about up there; Steve guessed she could still shop in the training-bra section at Wal-Mart, if she wanted to. On the front of the shirt, a black guy with dreadlocks grinned from the middle of a blue-green psychedelic sunburst.

Bent around his head like a halo were the words NOT GONNA GIVE IT LIP!

“You must like Peter Tosh,” she said. “It can’t be my tits.”

“I worked with Peter Tosh once,” he replied.

“No way!”

“Way,” he said. He glanced in the rearview and saw that Ely was already gone. It was spooky, how fast that happened out here. He supposed that if he were a young female hitchhiker, he might ask a question or two himself before hopping willy-nilly into someone’s car or truck. It might not help, but it sure couldn’t hurt. Because once you were out in the desert, anything could happen to you.