Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [157]
'None taken,' Herb said. 'Do you want me to make a call to EQMM? They must have back issues.'
'Would you?' Mort asked gratefully. 'That'd be great.'
'I'll do it first thing. Only -' Herb paused.
'Only what?'
'Promise me you're not planning to confront this guy on your own once you have a copy of the printed story in hand.'
'I promise,' Mort agreed promptly. He was being disingenuous again, but what the hell - he had asked Greg to come along when he did it, and Greg had agreed, so he wouldn't be alone. And Herb Creekmore was his literary agent, after all, not his father. How he handled his personal problems wasn't really Herb's concern.
'Okay,' Herb said. 'I'll take care of it. Call me from Derry, Mort - maybe it isn't as bad as it seems.'
'I'd like to believe that.'
'But you don't?'
'Afraid not.'
'Okay.' Herb sighed. Then, diffidently, he added: 'Is it okay to ask you to give Amy my best?'
'It is, and I will.'
'Good. You go on and get out of the wind, Mort. I can hear it shrieking in the receiver. You must be freezing.'
'Getting there. Thanks again, Herb.'
He hung up and looked thoughtfully at the telephone for a moment. He'd forgotten that the Buick needed gas, which was minor, but he'd also forgotten that Herb Creekmore hadn't been his agent until 1982, and that wasn't so minor. Too much pressure, he supposed. It made a man wonder what else he might have forgotten.
The voice in his mind, not the midbrain voice but the one from the deep ranges. spoke up suddenly: What about stealing the story in the first place? Maybe you forgot that.
He snorted a laugh as he hurried back to his car. He had never been to Mississippi in his life, and even now, stuck in a writer's block as he was. he was a long way from stooping to plagiarism. He slid behind the wheel and started the engine, reflecting that a person's mind certainly got up to some weird shit every now and again.
18
Mort didn't believe that people - even those who tried to be fairly honest with themselves - knew when some things were over. He believed they often went on believing, or trying to believe, even when the handwriting was not only on the wall but writ in letters large enough to read a hundred yards away without a spyglass. If it was something you really cared about and felt that you needed, it was easy to cheat, easy to confuse your life with TV and convince yourself that what felt so wrong would eventually come right . . . probably after the next commercial break. He supposed that, without its great capacity for self-deception, the human race would be even crazier than it already was.
But sometimes the truth crashed through, and if you had consciously tried to think or dream your way around that truth, the results could be devastating. it was like being there when a tidal wave roared not over but straight through a dike which had been set in its way, smashing it and you flat.
Mort Rainey experienced one of these cataclysmic epiphanies after the representatives of the police and fire departments had gone and he and Amy and Ted Milner were left alone to walk slowly around the smoking ruin of the green Victorian house which had stood at 92 Kansas Street for one hundred and thirty-six years. It was while they were making that mournful inspection tour that he understood that his marriage to the former Amy Dowd of Portland, Maine, was over. It was no 'period of marital stress.' It was no 'trial separation.' It was not going to be one of those cases you heard of from time to time where both parties repented their decision and remarried. It was over. Their lives together were history. Even the house where they had shared so many good times was nothing but evilly smouldering beams tumbled into the cellar-hole like the teeth of a giant.
Their meeting at Marchman's, the little coffee shop on Witcham Street, had gone well enough. Amy had hugged him and he had hugged