Gerald's Game - Stephen King [47]
(except you can Jessie; you dreamed about the smoked glass; you dreamed about how the sun went out; you dreamed about the flat and tearful smell that was like minerals in well-water; you dreamed about his hands)
and she was drenched with sweat but felt too weak to reach for the pitcher of water on the bed-table. She remembered lying there, wet and sticky and fever-smelling on the outside, parched and full of phantoms on the inside; lying there and thinking that her real disease was not bronchitis but thirst. Now, all these years later, she felt exactly the same way.
Her mind kept trying to return to the horrible moment when she had realized she wasn't going to be able to bridge the last sliver of distance between the glass and her mouth. She kept seeing the tiny sprays of air-bubbles in the melting ice, kept smelling the faint aroma of minerals trapped in the aquifer far beneath the lake. These images taunted her like an unreachable itch between the shoulderblades.
Nevertheless, she made herself wait. The part of her that was Goody Burlingame said she needed to take some time in spite of the taunting images and her throbbing throat. She needed to wait for her heart to slow down, for her muscles to stop trembling, for her emotions to settle a bit.
Outside, the last color was fading from the air; the world was going a solemn and melancholy gray. On the lake, the loon lifted its piercing cry into the evening gloom.
'Shut your yap, Mr Loon,' Jessie said, and chuckled. It sounded like a rusty hinge.
All right, dear, the Goodwife said. I think it's time to try. Before it gets dark. Better dry your hands again first, though.
She cupped both hands around the bedposts this time, rubbing them up and down until they produced squeaks. She held up her right hand and wiggled it in front of her eyes. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, she thought. Then, carefully, she reached just beyond the place where the glass stood on the edge of the shelf. She began to patter her fingers along the wood again. The handcuff clinked against the side of the glass once and she froze, waiting for it to overturn. When it didn't, she resumed her cautious exploration.
She had almost decided that what she was looking for had slid down the shelf — or entirely off it — when she finally touched the corner of the blow-in card. She tweezed it between the first and second fingers of her right hand and brought it carefully up and away from the shelf and the glass. Jessie steadied her grip on the card with her thumb and looked at it curiously.
It was bright purple, with noisemakers dancing tipsily along the upper edge. Confetti and streamers drifted down between the words. Newsweek was celebrating BIG BIG SAVINGS, the card announced, and it wanted her to join the party. Newsweek's writers would keep her up to date on world events, take her behind the scenes with world leaders, and offer her in-depth coverage of arts, politics, and the sporting life. Although it did not come right out and say so, the card pretty much implied that Newsweek could help Jessie make sense of the entire cosmos. Best of all, those lovable lunatics in Newsweek's subscription department were offering a deal so amazing it could make your urine steam and your head explode: if she used THIS VERY CARD to subscribe to Newsweek for three years, she would get each issue AT LESS THAN HALF THE NEWSSTAND PRICE! And was money a problem? Absolutely not! She would be billed later.
I wonder if they have Direct Bed Service for handcuffed ladies, Jessie thought. Maybe with George Will or Jane Bryant Quinn or one of those other pompous old poops to turn the pages for me — handcuffs make doing that so dreadfully difficult, you know.
Yet below the sarcasm,