Gerald's Game - Stephen King [7]
'But if you continue screwing around and teasing me, I'll go straight to my sister's from here, find out who did her divorce, and call her. I'm not joking. I do not want to play this game!'
Now something really incredible was happening, something she never would have suspected in a million years: his grin was resurfacing. It was coming up like a sub which has finally reached friendly waters after a long and dangerous voyage. That wasn't the really incredible thing, though. The really incredible thing was that the grin no longer made Gerald look harmlessly retarded. It now made him look like a dangerous lunatic.
His hand stole out again, caressed her left breast, then squeezed it painfully. He finished this unpleasant bit of business by pinching her nipple, a thing he had never done before.
'Ow, Gerald! That hurts!'
He gave a solemn, appreciative nod that went very strangely with his horrible grin. 'That's good, Jessie. The whole thing, I mean. You could be an actress. Or a call-girl. One of the really high-priced ones.' He hesitated, then added: 'That's supposed to be a compliment.'
'What in God's name are you talking about?' Except she was pretty sure she knew. She was really afraid now. Something bad was loose in the bedroom; it was spinning around and around like a black top.
But she was also still angry — as angry as she had been on the day Will had goosed her.
Gerald actually laughed. 'What am I talking about? For a minute there, you had me believing it. That's what I'm talking about.' He dropped a hand onto her right thigh. When he spoke again, his voice was brisk and weirdly businesslike. 'Now — do you want to spread them for me, or do I have to do it? Is that part of the game, too?'
'Let me up!'
'Yes . . . eventually.' His other hand shot out. This time it was her right breast he pinched, and this time the pinch was so hard it fired off nerves in little white sparkles all the way down her side to her hip. 'For now, spread those lovely legs, me proud beauty!'
She took a closer look at him and saw a terrible thing: he knew. He knew she wasn't kidding about not wanting to go on with it.
He knew, but he had chosen not to know he knew. Could a person do that?
You bet, the no-bullshit voice said. If you're a hotshot shyster in the biggest corporate law-firm north of Boston and south of Montreal, I guess you can know whatever you want to know and not know whatever you don't want to. I think you're in big trouble here, honey. The kind of trouble that ends marriages. Better grit your teeth and squint your eyes, because I think one bitch of a vaccination shot is on the way.
That grin. That ugly, mean-spirited grin.
Pretending ignorance. And doing it so hard that later on he would be able to pass a lie-detector test on the subject. I thought it was part of the game, he would say, all hurt and wide-eyed. I really did. And if she persisted, driving at him with her anger, he would eventually fall back to the oldest defense of them all . . . and then slip into it, like a lizard into a crack in a rock: You liked it. You know you did. Why don't you admit it?
Pretending into ignorance. Knowing but planning to go ahead anyway. He'd handcuffed her to the bedposts, had done it with her own cooperation, and now, oh shit, let's not gild the lily, now he meant to rape her, actually rape her while the door banged and the dog barked and the chainsaw snarled and the loon yodeled out there on the lake. He really meant to do it. Yessir, boys, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, you ain't really had pussy until you've had pussy that's jumping around underneath you like a hen on a hot griddle. And if she did go to Maddy's when his exercise in humiliation was over, he