Gerald's Game - Stephen King [44]
Imagination, toots — just the old idea that a sad little Punkin like you can never do anything right.
That wasn't far from the mark — it was certainly too close for comfort — but it wasn't on the mark, not this time. The glass was getting ready to tip over, it really was, and she didn't have the slightest idea of what she could do to prevent that from happening, Why did she have to have such short, stubby, ugly fingers? Why? If only she could get them a little farther around the glass . . .
A nightmare image from some old TV commercial occurred to her: a smiling woman in a fifties hairdo with a pair of blue rubber gloves on her hands. So flexible you can pick up a dime! the woman was screaming through her smile. Too bad you don't have a pair, little Punkin or Goodwife or whoever the hell you are! Maybe you could get that fucking glass before everything on the goddam shelf takes the express elevator!
Jessie suddenly realized the smiling, screaming woman in the Playtex rubber gloves was her mother, and a dry sob escaped her.
Don't give up, Jessie! Ruth yellecl. Not yet! You're close! I swear you are!
She exerted the last tiny scrap of her strength on the left side of the shelf, praying incoherently that it wouldn't slide — not yet, Oh please God or whoever You are, please don't let it slide, not now, not yet.
The board did slide . . . but only a little. Then it held again, perhaps temporarily snagged on a splinter or balked by a warp in the wood. The glass slid a little farther into her hand, and now crazier and crazier — it seemed to be talking, too, the goddam glass. It sounded like one of those grizzled big-city cab-drivers who have a perpetual hard-on against the world: Jesus, lady, what else ya want me to do? Grow myself a goddam handle and turn into a fuckin pitcher forya ? A fresh trickle of water fell on Jessie's straining right hand. Now the glass would fall; now it was inevitable. In her mind she could already feel the freeze as icewater doused the back of her neck.
'No!'
She twisted her right shoulder a little farther, opened her fingers a little wider, let the glass slide a tiny bit deeper into the straining pocket of her hand. The cuff was digging into the back of that hand, sending jabs of pain all the way up to her elbow, but Jessie ignored them. The muscles of her left arm were twanging wildly now, and the shakes were communicating themselves to the tilted, unstable shelf. Another tube of makeup tumbled to the floor. The last few slivers of ice chimed faintly. Above the shelf, she could see the shadow of the glass on the wall. In the long sunset light it looked like a grain silo blown atilt by a strong prairie wind.
More . . . just a little bit more . . .
There IS no more!
There better be, There's got to be.
She stretched her right hand to its absolute tendon-creaking limit and felt the glass slide a tiny bit farther down the shelf. Then she closed her fingers again, praying it would finally be enough, because now there really was no more — she had pushed her resources to their absolute limit. It almost wasn't; she could still feel the wet glass trying to squirm away. It had begun to seem like a live thing to her, a sentient being with a mean streak as wide as a turnpike passing lane. Its goal was to keep flirting toward her and then squirming away until her sanity broke and she lay here in the shadows of twilight, handcuffed and raving.
Don't let it get away Jessie don't you dare DON'T YOU DARE LET THAT FUCKING GLASS GET AWAY —
And although there was no more, not a single foot-pound of pressure, not a single quarter-inch of stretch, she managed a little more anyway, turning her right wrist one final bit in toward the board. And this time when she curved her fingers around the glass, it remained motionless.
I think maybe I've got it. Not for sure, but maybe. Maybe.
Or maybe it was just that she