Needful Things - Stephen King [197]
Then, in a burst of bright pink-orange light, it came to him.
Sally was inside! She had come over while he was out, and now she was waiting for him! Maybe she had decided that tonight was the night!
Premarital sex was wrong, of course, but sometimes you had to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette. And he was certainly up to the task of atoning for that particular sin if she was.
"Rooty-toot-toot!" cried Lester Pratt enthusiastically. "Sweet little Sally in her birthday suit!"
He ran for the porch in a crabby little strut, still clutching his throbbing balls. Now, however, they were throbbing with anticipation as well as pain. He took the key from beneath the doormat and let himself in.
"Sally?" he called. "Sal, are you here? Sorry I'm late-I went over to the Lake Auburn revival meeting with some of the guys, and..
."
He trailed off. There was no response, and that meant she wasn't here, after all. Unless !
He hurried upstairs as fast as he could, suddenly sure he would find her asleep in his bed. She would open her eyes and sit up, the sheet falling away from her lovely breasts (which he had felt-well, sort of-but never actually seen); she would hold her arms out to him, those lovely, sleepy, cornflower-blue eyes opening wide, and by the time the clock struck ten, they would be virgins no longer.
Rooty-toot!
But the bedroom was as empty as the kitchen and living room had been. The sheets and blankets were on the floor, as they almost always were; Lester was one of those fellows so full of energy and the holy spirit that he could not simply sit up and get out of bed in the morning; he bounded up, eager not just to meet the day but to blitz it, knock it to the greensward, and force it to cough up the ball.
Now, however, he walked downstairs with a frown creasing his wide, ingenuous face. The car was here, but Sally wasn't. What did that mean? He didn't know, but he didn't much like it.
He flipped on the porch light and went out to look in the car; maybe she had left him a note. He got as far as the head of the porch steps, then froze. There was a note, all right. It had been written across the Mustang's windshield in hot-pink spray-paint, probably from his own garage. The big capital letters glared at him:
GO TO HELL YOU CHEATING BASTARD
Lester stood on the top porch step for a long time, reading this message from his fiancee over and over and over again. The prayermeeting? Was that it? Did she think he'd gone over to the prayermeeting in Lake Auburn to meet some floozy? In his distress, it was the only idea that made any sense to him at all.
He went inside and called Sally's house. He let the phone ring two dozen times, but no one answered.
Sally knew he would call, and so she had asked Irene Lutjens if she could spend the night at Irene's place. Irene, all but bursting with curiosity, said yes, sure, of course. Sally was so distressed about something that she hardly looked pretty at all. Irene could hardly believe it, but it was true.
For her own part, Sally had no intention of telling Irene or anyone else what had happened. It was too awful, too shameful.
She would carry it with her to the grave. So she refused to answer Irene's questions for over half an hour. Then the whole story came pouring out of her in a hot flood of tears. Irene held her and listened, her eyes growing big and round.
"That's all right," Irene crooned, rocking Sally in her arms.
"That's all right, Sally-Jesus loves you, even if that son of a bitch doesn't. So do 1. So does Reverend Rose. And you certainly gave the musclebound creep something to remember you by, didn't you?"
Sally nodded, sniffling, and the other girl stroked her hair and made soothing sounds. Irene could hardly wait until tomorrow, when she could start calling her other girlfriends. They wouldn't