Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [137]
'Yeah, I know that.'
'Well, I had one. I was making myself a sandwich for lunch, and I had a feeling that you ... that you might not be all right. I held off for awhile - I thought it would go away, but it didn't. So I finally called. You are all right, aren't you?'
'Yes,' he said.
'And nothing's happened?'
'Well, something did happen,' he said, after only a moment of interior debate. He thought it was possible, maybe even likely, that John Shooter (if that's really his name, his mind insisted on adding) had tried to make contact with him in Derry before coming down here. Derry, after all, was where he usually was at this time of year. Amy might even have sent him down here.
'I knew it,' she said. 'Did you hurt yourself with that goddam chainsaw? Or - '
'Nothing requiring hospitalization,' he said, smiling a little. 'Just an annoyance. Does the name John Shooter ring a bell with you, Amy?'
'No, why?'
He let an irritated little sigh escape through his closed teeth like steam. Amy was a bright woman, but she had always had a bit of a dead-short between her brain and her mouth. He remembered once musing that she should have a tee-shirt reading SPEAK NOW, THINK LATER. 'Don't say no right off the bat. Take a few seconds and really think about it. The guy is fairly tall, about six feet, and I'd guess he's in his midforties. His face looked older, but he moved like a man in his forties. He has a country kind of face. Lots of color, lots of sun-wrinkles. When I saw him, I thought he looked like a character out of Faulk - '
'What's this all about, Mort?'
Now he felt all the way back; now he could understand again why, as hurt and confused as he had been, he had rejected the urges he felt - mostly at night - to ask her if they couldn't at least try to reconcile their differences. He supposed he knew that, if he asked long enough and hard enough, she would agree. But facts were facts; there had been a lot more wrong with their marriage than Amy's real-estate salesman. The drilling quality her voice had taken on now - that was another symptom of what had killed them. What have you done now? the tone under the words asked ... no, demanded. What kind of a mess have you gotten yourself into now? Explain yourself.
He closed his eyes and hissed breath through his closed teeth again before answering. Then he told her about John Shooter, and Shooter's manuscript, and his own short story. Amy clearly remembered 'Sowing Season,' but said she had never heard of a man named John Shooter - it wasn't the kind of name you forget, she said, and Mort was inclined to agree - in her life. And she certainly hadn't seen him.
'You're sure?' Mort pressed.
'Yes, I am,' Amy said. She sounded faintly resentful of Mort's continued questioning. 'I haven't seen anyone like that since you left. And before you tell me again not to say no right off the bat, let me assure you that I have a very clear memory of almost everything that's happened since then.'
She paused, and he realized she was speaking with an effort now, quite possibly with real pain. That small, mean part of him rejoiced. Most of him did not; most of him was disgusted to find even a small part of him happy about any of this. That had no effect on the interior celebrant, however. That guy might be outvoted, but he also seemed impervious to Mort's - the larger Mort's - attempts to root him out.
'Maybe Ted saw him,' he said. Ted Milner was the real-estate agent. He still found it hard to believe she had tossed him over for a real-estate agent, and he supposed that was part of the problem, part of the conceit which had allowed things to progress to this point in the first place. He certainly wasn't going to claim, especially to himself, that he had been as innocent as Mary's little lamb, was he?
'Is that supposed to be funny?' Amy sounded angry, ashamed, sorrowful, and defiant all at the same time.
'No,' he said. He was beginning to feel tired again.
'Ted isn't here,' she said.