Different Seasons - Stephen King [237]
Stevens passed unobtrusively among us, taking punch glasses and replacing them with snifters of brandy. There were murmurs of 'Merry Christmas' and 'Top of the season, Stevens,' and for the first time I saw money change hands-a ten dollar bill was unobtrusively tendered here, a bill that looked like a fifty there, one which I clearly saw was a hundred from another chair.
"Thank you, Mr McCarron Mr Johansson Mr Beagleman ' A quiet, well-bred murmur.
I have lived in New York long enough to know that the Christmas season is a carnival of tips; something for the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker-not to mention the doorman, the super, and the cleaning lady who comes in Tuesdays and Fridays. I've never met anyone of my own class who regarded this as anything but a necessary nuisance but I felt none of that grudging spirit on that night. The money was given willingly, even eagerly and suddenly, for no reason (it was the way thoughts often seemed to come when one was at 249), I thought of the boy calling up to Scrooge on the still, cold air of a London Christmas morning: 'Wot? The goose that's as big as me?' And Scrooge, nearly crazed with joy, giggling 'A good boy! An excellent boy!'
I found my own wallet. In the back of this, behind the pictures of Ellen I keep, there has always been a fifty dollar bill which I keep for emergencies. When Stevens gave me my brandy, I slipped it into his hand with never a qualm although I was not a rich man. 'Happy Christmas, Stevens,' I said.
'Thank you, sir. And the same to you.'
He finished passing out the brandies and collecting his honorariums and retired. I glanced around once, at the midpoint of Peter Andrews's story, and saw him standing by the double doors, a dim manlike shadow, still and silent.
'I'm a lawyer now, as most of you know,' Andrews said after sipping at his glass, clearing his throat, and then sipping again. 'I've had offices on Park Avenue for the last twenty-two years. But before that, I was a legal assistant in a firm of lawyers which did business in Washington, DC. One night in July I was required to stay late in order to finish indexing case citations in a brief which hasn't anything at all to do with this story. But then a man came in- a man who was at that time one of the most widely known Senators on the Hill, a man who later almost became President. His shirt was matted with blood and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.
'"I've got to talk to Joe," he said. Joe, you understand, was Joseph Woods, the head of my firm, one of the most influential private-sector lawyers in Washington, and this Senator's close personal friend.
'"He went home hours ago," I said. I was terribly frightened, I can tell you-he looked like a man who had just walked away from a dreadful car accident, or perhaps from a knife-fight And somehow seeing his face which I had seen in newspaper photos and on Meet the Press-seeing it streaked with gore, one cheek twitching spasmodically below one wild eye all of that made my fright worse. "I can call him if you -" I was already fumbling with the phone, mad with eagerness to turn this unexpected responsibility over to someone else. Looking behind him, I could see the caked and bloody footprints he had left on the carpet ' "I've got to talk to Joe right now," he reiterated as if he hadn't heard me.' "There's something in the trunk of my car something I found out at the Virginia place. I've shot it and stabbed it and I can't kill it. It's not human, and I can't kill it" 'He began to giggle and then to laugh and finally to scream. And he was still screaming when I finally got Mr Woods on the phone and told him