Fournier told Joe Camber he had called just about fifteen minutes too late to stop the Monday delivery of mail, if that had been his intention.
'Don't matter,' joe had said. 'I guess I'll be around to get today's.'
When George put Gary Pervier's mail into his box, he noticed that Gary's Monday delivery - a Popular Mechanix and a charity begging letter from the Rural Scholarship Fund ~ had not been removed. Now, turning around, he noticed that Gary's big old Chrysler was in the dooryard and Joe Camber's rusting-around-the-edges station wagon was parked right behind it.
'Gone off together,' he muttered aloud. 'Two fools off booting somewhere.'
He lifted his leg and farted again.
George's conclusion was that the two of them were probably off drinking and whoring, wheeling around in Joe Camber's pickup truck. It didn't occur to him to wonder why they would have taken Joe's truck when there were two much more comfortable vehicles near at hand, and he didn't notice the blood on the porch steps or the fact that there was a large hole in the lower panel of Gary's screen door.
'Two fools off hooting,' he repeated. 'At least joe Camber remembered to cancel his mail.'
He drove off the way he had come, back towards Castle Rock, lifting his leg every now and then to blow his trombone.
Steve Kemp drove out to the Dairy Queen by the Westbrook Shopping Mall for a couple of cheeseburgers and a Dilly Bar. He sat in his van, eating and looking out at Brighton Avenue, not really seeing the road or tasting the food.
He had called Handsome Hubby's office. He gave his name as Adam Swallow when the secretary asked. Said he was the
marketing director for House of Lights, Inc., and would like to talk to Mr. Trenton. He had been drymouthed with excitement. And when Trenton got on the old hooter, they could find more interesting things than marketing to talk about. Like the little woman's birthmark, and what it might look like. Like how she had bitten him once when she came, hard enough to draw blood. Like how things were going for the Bitch Goddess since Handsome Hubby discovered she had a little taste for what she was on the other side of the sheets.
But things hadn't turned out that way. The secretary had said, 'I'm sorry, but both Mr. Trenton and Mr. Breakstone are out of the office this week. They'll probably be out most of the next week, as well. If I could help you -?' Her voice had a rising, hopeful inflection. She really did want to help. It was her big chance to land an account while the bosses were taking care of business in Boston or maybe New York - surely no place as exotic as LA, not a little dipshit agency like Ad Worx. So get out there and tapdance until your shoes smoke, kid.
He thanked her and told her he would ring back toward the end of the month. He hung up before she could ask for his number, since the office of the House of Lights, Inc., was in a Congress Street phone booth across from Joe's Smoke Shop.
Now here he was, eating cheeseburgers and wondering what to do next. As if you didn't know, an interior voice whispered.
He started the van up and headed for Castle Rock. By the time he finished his lunch (the Dilly Bar was practically running down the stick in the heat), he was in North Windham. He threw his trash on the floor of the van, where it joined a drift of like stuff - plastic drink containers, Big Mac boxes, returnable beer and soda bottles, empty cigarette packs. Littering was an antisocial, anti-environmentalist act, and he didn't do it.
Steve got to the Trenton house at just half past three on that hot, glaring afternoon. Acting with almost subliminal caution, he drove past the house without slowing and parked around the comer on a side street about a quarter of a mile away. He walked back.
The driveway was empty, and he felt a pang of frustrated disappointment. He would not admit to himself - especially now that it looked like she was out - that he had intended to give her a taste of what she had been so eager to have during the spring.
Nevertheless, he had driven all the way from Westbrook to Castle Rock with a semi-erection that only now collapsed completely.
She was gone.
No; the car was -gone. One thing didn't necessarily prove the other, did it?
Steve looked around himself.
What we have here, ladies and gents, is a peaceful suburban streeton a summer's day, most of the kiddies in for naps, most of the littlewifies either doing likewise or glued to their TVs, checking out Love of Life or Search for Tomorrow. All the Handsome Hubbies are busy earning their way into higher tax brackets and very possibly a bed in the Intensive Care ward at the Eastern Maine Medical Center. Two little kids were playing hopscotch on a blurred chalk grid; they were wearing bathing suits and sweating heavily. An old balding lady was trundling a wire shopping caddy back from town as if both she and it were made of the finest bone china. She gave the kids playing hopscotch a wide berth.
In short, not much happening. The street was dozing in the heat.
Steve walked up the sloping driveway as if he had every right to be there. First he looked in the tiny one-car garage. He had never known Donna to use it, because the doorway was so narrow. If she put a dent in the car, Handsome Hubby would give her hell - no, excuse me; he would give her beck.
The garage was empty. No Pinto, no elderly jag Donna's Handsome Hubby was into what was known as sports car menopause. She hadn't liked him saying that, but Steve had never seen a more obvious case.
Steve left the garage and went up the three steps to the back stoop.
Tried the door. Found it unlocked. He went inside without knocking after another casual glance around to make sure no one was m sight.
He closed the door on the silence of the house. Once more his heart was knocking heavily in his chest, seeming to shake his whole ribcage. And once again he was not admitting things. He didn't have to admit them. They were there just the same.
'Hi! Anybody home?' His voice was loud, honest, pleasant, inquiring.
'Hi?' He was halfway down the hall now.
Obviously no one home. The house had a silent, hot, waiting feel.
An empty house full of furniture was somehow creepy when it wasn't your house. You felt watched.
'Hello? Anybody home?' One last time.
Give her something to remember you by, then. And split.
He went into the living room and stood looking around. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, his forearms lightly slicked with sweat.
Now things could be admitted. How he had wanted to kill her when she called him a son of a bitch, her spittle spraying on his face. How he had wanted to kill her for making him feel old and scared and not able to keep on top of the situation any more. The letter had been something, but the letter hadn't been enough.
To his right, knickknacks stood on a series of glass shelves. He turned and gave the bottom shelf a sudden hard kick. It
disintegrated. The frame tottered and then fell over, spraying glass, spraying little china figurines of cats and shepherds and all that happy bourgeois horseshit. A pulse throbbed in the center of his forehead. He was grimacing, unaware of the fact. He walked carefully over the unbroken figurines, crushing them into powder.
He pulled a family portrait from the wall, looked curiously at the smiling face of Vic Trenton for a moment (Tad was sitting on his lap, and his arm was around Donna's waist), and then he dropped the picture to the floor and stamped down hard on the glass.
He looked around, breathing hard, as if he had just run a race. And suddenly he went after the room as if it were something alive, something that had hurt him badly and needed to be punished, as if it were the room that had caused his pain. He pushed over Vic's La-Z-Boy recliner. He upended the couch. It stood on end for a moment, rocking uneasily, and then went down with a crash, breaking the back of the coffee table which had stood in front of it*. He pulled all the books out of the bookcases, cursing the shitty taste of the people who had bought them under his breath as he did it. He picked up the magazine stand and threw it overhand at the mirror over the mantelpiece, shattering it. Big pieces of black-backed mirror fell onto the floor like chunks of a jigsaw puzzle. He was snorting now, like a bull in heat. His thin cheeks were almost purple with color.
