Gerald's Game - Stephen King [165]
To make a long story at least a little shorter, he got on the telephone, made four or five quick calls, and then came back with the news that Joubert was going to be arraigned the following day in Cumberland County District Court on a number of subsidiary charges — mostly theft. He said that if I was really serious — and if I had a hat with a veil — he'd take me. I agreed at once, and although Brandon's face said he believed he was making one of the biggest mistakes of his life, he stuck by his word.
Jessie paused again, and when she began to type once more she did so slowly, looking through the screen to yesterday, when last night's six inches of snow had still been just a smooth white threat in the sky. She saw blue flashers on the road ahead, felt Brandon's blue Beamer slowing down.
We got to the hearing late because there was an overturned trailer truck on I-295 — that's the city bypass. Brandon didn't say so, but I know he was hoping we'd get there too late, that Joubert would already have been taken back to his cell at the end of the County Jail's maximum-security wing, but the guard at the courthouse door said the hearing was still going on, although finishing up. As Brandon opened the door for me, he leaned close to my ear and murmured: 'Put the veil down, Jessie, and keep it down.' I lowered it and Brandon put a hand on my waist and led me inside. The courtroom . . .
Jessie stopped, looking out the window into the darkening afternoon with eyes that were wide and gray and blank.
Remembering.
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - E I G H T
The courtroom is illuminated by the sort of hanging glass globes Jessie associates with the five-and-dime stores of her youth, and it is as sleepy as a grammar school classroom at the end of a winter day. As she walks forward down the aisle, she is aware of two sensations — Brandon's hand, still on the incurve of her waist, and the veil tickling against her cheeks like cobwebs. These two sensations combine to make her feel strangely bridal.
Two lawyers stand before the judge's bench. The judge is leaning forward, looking down into their upturned faces, the three of them lost in some murmuring, technical conversation. To Jessie they look like a real-life re-creation of a Boz sketch from some Charles Dickens novel. The bailiff stands to the left, next to the American flag. Near him, the court stenographer is waiting for the current legal discussion, from which she has apparently been excluded, to be over. And, sitting at a long table on the far side of the rail which divides the room between the area set aside for the spectators and that which belongs to the combatants, is a skinny, impossibly tall figure clad in a bright-orange jailhouse overall. Next to him is a man in a suit, surely another lawyer. The man in the orange jumpsuit is hunched over a yellow legal pad, apparently writing something.
From a million miles away, Jessie feels Brandon Milheron's hand press more insistently against her waist. 'This is close enough,' he murmurs.
She moves away from him. He's wrong; it's not close enough. Brandon doesn't have the slightest idea of what she's thinking or feeling, but that's okay, she knows. For the time being, all her voices have become one voice; she is basking in unexpected unanimity, and what she knows is this: if she doesn't get closer to him now, if she doesn't get just as close as she can, he will never be far enough away. He will always be in the closet, or just outside the window, or hiding under the bed at midnight, grinning his pallid, wrinkled grin — the one that shows the glimmers of gold far back in his mouth.
She steps quickly up the aisle toward the rail divider with the gauzy stuff of the veil touching her cheeks like tiny, concerned fingers. She can hear Brandon grumbling unhappily, but the sound is coming from at least ten light-years away. Closer (but still on the next continent), one of the lawyers standing before the bench is muttering, ' . . . feel the State has been intransigent in this matter, your honor, and if you'll just look at our citations