Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [228]
After that, he lost sight of them completely. He hadn't thought of returning them - his unexpectedly brisk business had taken up most of his thinking time -until the Lortz woman's call.
Okay - I probably haven't moved them since then. They must be right where I left them when I got home late Monday afternoon.
For a moment he felt a burst of hope - maybe they were still in the car! Then, just as he was getting up to check, he remembered how he'd shifted his briefcase to the hand holding the books when he'd arrived home on Monday. He'd done that so he could get his housekey out of his right front pocket. He hadn't left them in the car at all.
So what did you do when you got in?
He saw himself unlocking the kitchen door, stepping in, putting his briefcase on a kitchen chair, turning with the books in his hand
'Oh no,' Sam muttered. The bad feeling returned in a rush.
There was a fair-sized cardboard carton sitting on the shelf by his little kitchen woodstove, the kind of carton you could pick up at the liquor store. It had been there for a couple of years now. People sometimes packed their smaller belongings into such cartons when they were moving house, but the cartons also made great hold-alls. Sam used the one by the stove for newspaper storage. He put each day's paper into the box after he had finished reading it; he had tossed today's paper in only a short time before. And, once every month or so
'Dirty Dave!' Sam muttered.
He got up from behind his desk and hurried into the kitchen.
4
The box, with Johnnie Walker's monocled ain't-I-hip image on the side, was almost empty. Sam thumbed through the thin sheaf of newspapers, knowing he would find nothing but looking anyway, the way people do when they are so exasperated they half-believe that just wanting a thing badly enough will make it be there. He found the Saturday Gazette - the one he had so recently disposed of - and the Friday paper. No books between or beneath them, of course. Sam stood there for a moment, thinking black thoughts, then went to the telephone to call Mary Vasser, who cleaned house for him every Thursday morning.
'Hello?' a faintly worried voice answered.
'Hi, Mary. This is Sam Peebles.'
'Sam?' The worry deepened. 'Is something wrong?'
Yes! By Monday afternoon the bitch who runs the local Library is going to be after me! Probably with a cross and a number of very long nails!
But of course he couldn't say anything like that, not to Mary; she was one of those unfortunate human beings who have been born under a bad sign and live in their own dark cloud of doomish premonition. The Mary Vassers of the world believe that there are a great many large black safes dangling three stories above a great many sidewalks, held by fraying cables, waiting for destiny to carry the doom-fated into the drop zone. If not a safe, then a drunk driver; if not a drunk driver, a tidal wave (in Iowa? yes, in Iowa); if not a tidal wave, a meteorite. Mary Vasser was one of those afflicted folks who always want to know if something is wrong when you call them on the phone.
'Nothing,' Sam said. 'Nothing wrong at all. I just wondered if you saw Dave on Thursday.' The question wasn't much more than a formality; the papers, after all, were gone, and Dirty Dave was the only Newspaper Fairy in Junction City.
'Yes,' Mary agreed. Sam's hearty assurance that nothing was wrong seemed to have put her wind up even higher. Now barely concealed terror positively vibrated in her voice. 'He came to get the papers. Was I wrong to let him? He's been coming for years, and I thought - '
'Not at all,' Sam said with insane cheerfulness. 'I just saw they were gone and thought I'd check that - '
'You never checked before.' Her voice caught. 'Is he all right? Has something happened to Dave?'
'No,' Sam said. 'I mean, I don't know. I just - ' An idea flashed into his mind. 'The coupons!' he cried wildly. 'I forgot to clip the coupons on Thursday, so - '
'Oh!' she said. 'You can have mine, if you want.'
'No, I couldn't do th - '
'I'll