Needful Things - Stephen King [161]
"Do you promise?"
"Oh yes indeed, Mr. Keeton. You are quite important to me.
In fact, I would go so far as to say I could not do without you."
Mr. Gaunt rang off. Keeton put his pistol and the gun-cleaning kit away. Then he went upstairs, dumped his soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, showered, and dressed. When he came down, Myrtle shrank away from him at first, but Keeton spoke kindly to her and kissed her cheek. Myrtle began to relax. Whatever the crisis had been, it seemed to have passed.
3
Everett Frankel was a big red-haired man who looked as Irish as County Cork which was not surprising, since it was from Cork that his mother's ancestors had sprung. He had been Ray Van Allen's P.A. for four years, ever since he'd gotten out of the Navy.
He arrived at Castle Rock Family Practice at quarter to eight that Monday morning, and Nancy Ramage, the head nurse, asked him if he could go right out to the Burgmeyer farm. Helen Burgmeyer had suffered what might have been an epileptic seizure in the night, she said. If Everett's diagnosis confirmed this, he was to bring her back to town in his car so the doctor-who would be in shortlycould examine her and decide if she needed to go to the hospital for tests.
Ordinarily, Everett would have been unhappy to be sent on a house-call first thing, especially one so far out in the country, but on an unseasonably hot morning like this, a ride out of town seemed like just the thing.
Besides, there was the pipe.
Once he was in his Plymouth, he unlocked the glove compartment and took it out. It was a meerschaum, with a bowl both deep and wide. It had been carved by a master craftsman, that pipe; birds and flowers and vines circled the bowl in a pattern that actually seemed to change when one looked at it from different angles. He had left the pipe in the glove compartment not just because smoking was forbidden in the doctor's office but because he didn't like the idea of other people (especially a snoop like Nancy Ramage) seeing it. First they would want to know where he had gotten it. Then they would want to know how much he had paid for it.
Also, some of them might covet it.
He put the stem between his teeth, marvelling again at how perfectly right it felt there, how perfectly in its place. He tilted down the rearview mirror for a moment so he could see himself, and approved completely of what he saw. He thought the pipe made him look older, wiser, handsomer. And when he had the pipe clenched between his teeth, the bowl pointed up a bit at just the right debonair angle, he felt older, wiser, handsomer.
He drove down Main Street, meaning to cross the Tin Bridge between the town and the country, and then slowed as he approached Needful Things. The green awning tugged at him like a fishhook. It suddenly seemed very important-imperative, in factthat he stop.
He pulled in, started to get out of the car, then remembered that the pipe was still clenched between his teeth. He took it out (feeling a small pang of regret as he did so) and locked it in the glove compartment again. This time he actually reached the sidewalk before returning to the Plymouth to lock all four doors. With a nice pipe like that, it didn't do to take chances. Anybody might be tempted to steal a nice pipe like that. Anybody at all.
He approached the shop and then stopped, feeling disappointed.
A sign hung in the window.
CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY
it read.
Everett was about to turn away when the door opened. Mr.
Gaunt stood there, looking resplendent and quite debonair himself in a fawn-colored jacket with elbow patches and charcoal-gray pants.
"Come in, Mr. Frankel," he said. "I'm glad to see you."
"Well, I'm on my way out of town-business-and I thought I'd just stop and tell you again how much I like my pipe. I've always wanted one just like that."
Beaming, Mr. Gaunt said, "I know."
"But I see you're closed, so I won't bother y-" "I am never closed to my favorite customers, Mr. Frankel, and I put you among that number. High among that number.