Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [209]
'Sure, I guess so,' Naomi had replied. She looked a little worried, as if she thought Sam - whom she had briefly dated - might be planning to propose marriage. When he explained that Craig Jones had drafted him to stand in for the wounded acrobat, and that he wanted her to listen to his speech, she'd relaxed and listened to the whole thing - all twenty-six minutes of it - with flattering attention.
'Don't be afraid to be honest,' he added before Naomi could do more than open her mouth.
'It's good,' she said. 'Pretty interesting.'
'No, that's okay - you don't have to spare my feelings. Let it all hang out.'
'I am. It's really okay. Besides, by the time you start talking, they'll all be - '
'Yes, they'll all be hammered, I know.' This prospect had comforted Sam at first, but now it disappointed him a little. Listening to himself read, he'd actually thought the speech was pretty good.
'There Is one thing,' Naomi said thoughtfully.
'Oh?'
'It's kind of ... you know . . . dry.'
'Oh,' Sam said. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He had been up until nearly one o'clock this morning, first writing and then revising.
'But that's easy to fix,' she assured him. 'Just go to the library and get a couple of those books.'
Sam felt a sudden sharp pain in his lower belly and grabbed his roll of Tums. Research for a stupid Rotary Club speech? Library research? That was going a little overboard, wasn't it? He had never been to the Junction City Library before, and he didn't see a reason to go there now. Still, Naomi had listened very closely, Naomi was trying to help, and it would be rude not to at least listen to what she had to say. 'What books?'
'You know - books with stuff in them to liven up speeches. They're like . . .' Naomi groped. 'Well, you know the hot sauce they give you at China Light, if you want it?'
'Yes - '
'They're like that. They have jokes. Also, there's this one book, Best Loved Poems of the American People. You could probably find something in there for the end. Something sort of uplifting.'
'There are poems in this book about the importance of small businesses in American life?' Sam asked doubtfully.
'When you quote poetry, people get uplifted,' Naomi said. 'Nobody cares what it's about, Sam, let alone what it's for.'
'And they really have joke-books especially for speeches?' Sam found this almost impossible to believe, although hearing that the library carried books on such esoterica as small-engine repair and wig-styling wouldn't have surprised him in the least.
'Yes.'
'How do you know?'
'When Phil Brakeman was running for the State House, I used to type up speeches for him all the time,' Naomi said. 'He had one of those books. I just can't remember what the name of it was. All I can think of is Jokes for the John, and of course that's not right.'
'No,' Sam agreed, thinking that a few choice tidbits from Jokes for the John would probably make him a howling success. But he began to see what Naomi was getting at and the idea appealed to him despite his reluctance to visit the local library after all his years of cheerful neglect. A little spice for the old speech. Dress up your leftovers, turn your meatloaf into a masterpiece. And a library, after all, was just a library. If you didn't know how to find what you wanted, all you had to do was ask a librarian. Answering questions was one of their jobs, right?
'Anyway, you could leave it just the way it is,' Naomi said. 'I mean, they will be drunk.' She looked at Sam kindly but severely and then checked her watch. 'You have over an hour left - did you want to do some letters?'
'No, I guess not. Why don't you type up my speech instead?' He had already decided to spend his lunch hour at the library.
CHAPTER 2
The Library (I)
1
Sam had gone by the Library hundreds of times during his years in Junction City, but this was the first time