Needful Things - Stephen King [10]
"Take your time," Mr. Gaunt said. "Shopping is a joy when one takes one's time, Brian, and a pain in the nether quarters when one doesn't."
"Say, are you from overseas somewhere?" Brian asked. Mr.
Gaunt's use of "one" instead of "you" interested him. It reminded him of the old stud-muffin who hosted Masterpiece Theatre, which his mother sometimes watched if the TV Guide said it was a lovestory.
"I," Gaunt said, am from Akron."
"Is that in England?"
"That is in Ohio," Leland Gaunt said gravely, and then revealed his strong, irregular teeth in a sunny grin.
It struck Brian as funny, the way lines in TV shows like Cheers often struck him funny. In fact, this whole thing made him feel as if he had wandered into a TV show, one that was a little mysterious but not really threatening. He burst out laughing.
He had a moment to worry that Mr. Gaunt might think he was rude (perhaps because his mother was always accusing him of rudeness, and as a result Brian had come to believe he lived in a huge and nearly invisible spider's web of social etiquette), and then the tall man joined him. The two of them laughed together, and all in all, Brian could not remember when he had had such a pleasant afternoon as this one was turning out to be.
"Go on, look," Mr. Gaunt said, waving his hand. "We will exchange histories another time, Brian."
So Brian looked. There were only five items in the biggest glass case, which looked as if it might comfortably hold twenty or thirty more. One was a pipe. Another was a picture of Elvis Presley wearing his red scarf and his white jump-suit with the tiger on the back. The King (this was how his mother always referred to him) was holding a microphone to his pouty lips. The third item was a Polaroid camera.
The fourth was a piece of polished rock with a hollow full of crystal chips in its center. They caught and flashed gorgeously in the overhead spot, The fifth was a splinter of wood about as long and as thick as one of Brian's forefingers.
He pointed to the crystal. "That's a geode, isn't it?"
"You're a well-educated young man, Brian. That's just what it is.
I have little plaques for most of my items, but they're not unpacked yet-like most of the stock. I'll have to work like the very devil if I'm going to be ready to open tomorrow." But he didn't sound worried at all, and seemed perfectly content to remain where he was.
"What's that one?" Brian asked, pointing at the splinter. He was thinking to himself that this was very odd stock indeed for a smalltown store. He had taken a strong and instant liking to Leland Gaunt, but if the rest of his stuff was like this, Brian didn't think he'd be doing business in Castle Rock for long. If you wanted to sell stuff like pipes and pictures of The King and splinters of wood, New York was the place where you wanted to set up shop or so he had come to believe from the movies he'd seen, anyway.
"Ah!" Mr. Gaunt said. "That's an interesting item! Let me show it to you!"
He crossed the room, went around the end of the case, pulled a fat ring of keys from his pocket, and selected one with hardly a glance.
He opened the case and took the splinter out carefully.
"Hold out your hand, Brian."
"Gee, maybe I better not," Brian said. As a native of a state where tourism is a major industry, he had been in quite a few gift shops in his time, and he had seen a great many signs with this little poem printed on them: "Lovely to look at / delightful to hold, / but if you break it, / then it's sold." He could imagine his mother's horrified reaction if he broke the splinter-or whatever it was-and Mr.
Gaunt, no longer so friendly, told him that its price was five hundred dollars.
"Why ever not?" Mr. Gaunt asked, raising his eyebrows-but