Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [333]
The lens shattered. Shards of plastic flew from around it. and that reminded Pop of something else. Had it been the left or right side? He frowned. Left. He thought. They wouldn't notice anyway, or remember which side themselves if they did, you could damn near take that to the bank, but Pop hadn't feathered his nest with damn-nears. It was wise to be prepared.
Always wise.
He replaced the hammer. used a small brush to sweep the broken chunks of glass and plastic off the table and onto the floor, then returned the brush and took out a grease-pencil with a fine tip and an X-Act-O knife. He drew what he thought was the approximate shape of the piece of plastic which had broken off Kevin Delevan's Sun when Meg knocked it on the floor, then used the X-Act-O to carve along the lines. When he thought he had dug deep enough into the plastic, he put the X-Act-O back in the drawer, and then knocked the Polaroid camera off the worktable. What had happened once ought to happen again, especially with the fault-lines he had pre-carved.
It worked pretty slick, too. He examined the camera, which now had a chunk of plastic gone from the side as well as a busted lens, nodded, and placed it in the deep shadow under the worktable. Then he found the piece of plastic that had split off from the camera, and buried it in the trash along with the box and the single exposure he had taken.
Now there was nothing to do but wait for the Delevans to arrive. Pop took the video cassette upstairs to the cramped little apartment where he lived. He put it on top of the VCR he had bought to watch the fuckmovies you could buy nowadays, then sat down to read the paper. He saw there had been a plane-crash in Pakistan. A hundred and thirty people killed. Goddam fools were always getting themselves killed, Pop thought, but that was all right. A few less woggies in the world was a good thing all around. Then he turned to the sports to see how the Red Sox had done. They still had a good chance of winning the Eastern Division.
CHAPTER 5
'What was it?' Kevin asked as they prepared to go. They had the house to themselves. Meg was at her ballet class, and it was Mrs Delevan's day to play bridge with her friends. She would come home at five with a large loaded pizza and news of who was getting divorced or at least thinking of it.
'None of your business,' Mr Delevan said in a rough voice which was both angry and embarrassed.
The day was chilly. Mr Delevan had been looking for his fight jacket. Now he stopped and turned around and looked at his son, who was standing behind him, wearing his own jacket and holding the Sun camera in one hand.
'All right,' he said. 'I never pulled that crap on you before and I guess I don't want to start now. You know what I mean.'
'Yes,' Kevin said, and thought: I know exactly what you're talking about, is what I mean to say.
'Your mother doesn't know anything about this.'
'I won't tell her.'
'Don't say that,' his father told him sharply. 'Don't start down that road or you'll never stop.'
'But you said you never-'
'No, I never told her,' his father said, finding the jacket at last and shrugging into it. 'She never asked and I never told her. If she never asks you, you never have to tell her. That sound like a bullshit qualification to you?'
'Yeah,' Kevin said. 'To tell you the truth, it does.'
'Okay,' Mr Delevan said. 'Okay ... but that's the way we do it. If the subject ever comes up, you - we - have to tell. If it doesn't, we don't. That's just