Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [104]
She leaned forward and kissed each of Dinah's cool, closed lids. 'Hold on,' she whispered. 'Please hold on, Dinah.'
6
Bethany turned to Albert, grasped both of his hands in hers, and asked: 'What happens if the fuel goes bad?'
Albert looked at her seriously and kindly. 'You know the answer to that, Bethany.'
'You can call me Beth, if you want.'
'Okay.'
She fumbled out her cigarettes, looked up at the NO SMOKING light, and put them away again. 'Yeah,' she said. 'I know. We crash. End of story. And do you know what?'
He shook his head, smiling a little.
'If we can't find that hole again, I hope Captain Engle won't even try to land the plane. I hope he just picks out a nice high mountain and crashes us into the top of it. Did you see what happened to that crazy guy? I don't want that to happen to me.'
She shuddered, and Albert put an arm around her. She looked up at him frankly. 'Would you like to kiss me?'
'Yes,' Albert said.
'Well, you better go ahead, then. The later it gets, the later it gets.'
Albert went ahead. It was only the third time in his life that the fastest Hebrew west of the Mississippi had kissed a girl, and it was great. He could spend the whole trip back in a lip-lock with this girl and never worry about a thing.
'Thank you,' she said, and put her head on his shoulder. 'I needed that.' 'Well, if you need it again, just ask,' Albert said. She looked up at him, amused. 'Do you need me to ask, Albert?' 'I reckon not,' drawled The Arizona Jew, and went back to work.
7
Nick had stopped on his way to the cockpit to speak to Bob Jenkins - an extremely nasty idea had occurred to him, and he wanted to ask the writer about it.
'Do you think there could be any of those things up here?'
Bob thought it over for a moment. 'Judging from what we saw back at Bangor, I would think not. But it's hard to tell, isn't it? In a thing like this, all bets are off.'
'Yes. I suppose so. All bets are off.' Nick thought this over for a moment. 'What about this time-rip of yours? Would you like to give odds on us finding it again?'
Bob Jenkins slowly shook his head.
Rudy Warwick spoke up from behind them, startling them both. 'You didn't ask me, but I'll give you my opinion just the same. I put them at one in a thousand.'
Nick thought this over. After a moment a rare, radiant smile burst across his face. 'Not bad odds at all,' he said. 'Not when you consider the alternative.'
8
Less than forty minutes later, the blue sky through which Flight 29 moved began to deepen in color. It cycled slowly to indigo, and then to deep purple. Sitting in the cockpit, monitoring his instruments and wishing for a cup of coffee, Brian thought of an old song: When the deep purple falls ... over sleepy garden walls ...
No garden walls up here, but he could see the first ice-chip stars gleaming in the firmament. There was something reassuring and calming about the old constellations appearing, one by one, in their old places. He did not know how they could be the same when so many other things were so badly out of joint, but he was very glad they were.
'It's going faster, isn't it?' Nick said from behind him.
Brian turned in his seat to face him. 'Yes. It is. After awhile the "days" and "nights" will be passing as fast as a camera shutter can click, I think.'
Nick sighed. 'And now we do the hardest thing of all, don't we? We wait to see what happens. And pray a little bit, I suppose.'
'It couldn't hurt.' Brian took a long, measuring look at Nick Hopewell. 'I was on my way to Boston because my ex-wife died in a stupid fire. Dinah was going because a bunch of doctors promised her a new pair of eyes. Bob was going to a convention, Albert to music school, Laurel on vacation. Why were you going to Boston, Nick? 'Fess up. The hour groweth late.'
Nick looked at him thoughtfully for a long time and then laughed. 'Well why not?' he asked, but Brian was not so foolish as to believe this question