Needful Things - Stephen King [137]
She walked on up the street. Mr. Gaunt looked around and saw her. His face lit up in a smile.
"Ms. Chalmers! How nice that you could drop by!"
She smiled wanly. The pain, which had abated for awhile that morning, was now creeping back, thrusting its network of thin, cruel wires through the flesh of her hands. "I thought we'd agreed on Polly."
"Polly, then. Come inside it's awfully good to see you. What's all the excitement?"
"I don't know," she said. He held the door for her and she went past him into the shop. "I suppose someone's been hurt and needs to go to the hospital. Medical Assistance in Norway is awfully slow on the weekends. Although why the dispatcher would send two cruisers "
Mr. Gaunt closed the door behind them. The bell tinkled. The shade on the door was down, and with the sun now going the other way, the interior of Needful Things was gloomy but, Polly thought, if gloom could ever be pleasant, this gloom was. A small reading lamp shed a golden circle on the counter by Mr. Gaunt's old-fashioned cash register. A book lay open there. It was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mr. Gaunt was looking at her closely, and Polly had to smile again at the expression of concern in his eyes.
"My hands have been kicking up the very dickens these last few days," she said. "I guess I don't exactly look like Demi Moore."
"You look like a woman who is very tired and in quite a lot of discomfort," he said.
The smile on her face wavered. There was understanding and deep compassion in his voice, and for a moment Polly was afraid she might burst into tears. The thought which kept the tears at bay was an odd one: His hands. If I cry, he'll try to comfort me. He'll put his hands on me.
She buttressed the smile.
"I'll survive; I always have. Tell me-did Nettle Cobb happen to drop by?"
"Today?" He frowned. "No; not today. If she had, I would have shown her a new piece of carnival glass that came in yesterday. It's not as nice as the one I sold her last week, but I thought she might be interested. Why do you ask?"
"Oh no reason," Polly said. "She said she might, but Nettle Nettle often forgets things." ,'She strikes me as a woman who has had a hard life," Mr. Gaunt said gravely.
"Yes. Yes, she has." Polly spoke these words slowly and mechanically. She could not seem to take her eyes from his. Then one of her hands brushed against the edge of a glass display case, and that caused her to break eye-contact. A little gasp of pain escaped her.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, fine," Polly said, but it was a lie she wasn't even within shouting distance of fine.
Mr. Gaunt clearly understood this. "You're not well," he said decisively. "Therefore I'm going to dispense with the small-talk.
The item which I wrote you about did come in. I'm going to give it to you and send you home." :'Give it to me?" 'Oh, I'm not offering you a present," he said as he went behind the cash register. "We hardly know each other well enough for that, do we?"
She smiled. He was clearly a kind man, a man who, naturally enough, wanted to do something nice for the first person in Castle Rock who had done something nice for him. But she was having a hard time responding-was having a hard time even following the conversation. The pain in her hands was monstrous. She now wished she hadn't come, and, kindness or no kindness, all she wanted to do was get out and go home and take a pain-pill.
"This is the sort of item a vendor has to offer on trial-if he's an ethical man, that is." He produced a ring of keys, selected one, and unlocked the drawer under the cash register. "If you try it for a couple of days and discover it is worthless to you-and I have to tell you that will probably be the case you return it to me. If, on the other hand, you find it provides you with some relief, we can talk price." He smiled at her. "And for you, the price would be rock-bottom, I can assure you."
She looked at him, puzzled. Relief? What was he talking about?
He brought