Needful Things - Stephen King [216]
"Who's that?"
"Dr. Gaunt," she said with a nervous little laugh. "Dr. Leland Gaunt."
"Gaunt!" He looked at her in surprise. "What does he have to do with your hands?"
"Drive me down to his shop and I'll tell you on the way."
4
Five minutes later (one of the nicest things about living in Castle Rock, Alan sometimes thought, was that almost everything was only five minutes away), he swung into one of the slant spaces in front of Needful Things. There was a sign in the window, one Alan had seen before:
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.
It suddenly occurred to Alan-who hadn't thought about this aspect of the new store at all until now-that closed except "by appointment" was one fuck of a strange way to run a small-town business.
"Alan?" Polly asked hesitantly. "You look mad."
"I'm not mad," he said. "What in the world do I have to be mad about? The truth is, I don't know how I feel. I guess-" He uttered a short laugh, shook his head, and started again. "I guess I'm what Todd used to call 'gabberflasted.' Quack remedies? It just doesn't seem like you, Polly."
Her lips tightened at once, and there was a warning in her eyes when she turned to look at him. "'Quack' isn't the word I'd have used.
Quack is for ducks and and prayer-wheels from the ads in the back of Inside View. 'Quack' is the wrong word to use if a thing works, Alan. Do you think I'm wrong?"
He opened his mouth-to say what, he wasn't sure-but she went on before he could say anything.
"Look at this." She held her hands out in the sunshine flooding through the windshield, then opened them and closed them effortlessly several times.
"All right. Poor choice of words. What I-" "Yes, I'd say so. A very poor choice."
"I'm sorry."
She turned all the way around to face him then, sitting where Annie had so often sat, sitting in what had once been the Pangborn family car. Why haven't I traded this thing yet? Alan wondered.
What am I-crazy?
Polly placed her hands gently over Alan's. "Oh, this is starting to feel really uncomfortable-we never argue, and I'm not going to start now. I buried a good companion today. I'm not going to have a fight with my boyfriend, as well."
A slow grin lit his face. "That what I am? Your boyfriend?"
"Well you're my friend. Can I at least say that?"
He hugged her, a little astonished at how close they had come to having harsh words. And not because she felt worse; because she felt better. "Honey, you can say anything you want. I love you a bunch."
"And we're not going to fight, no matter what."
He nodded solemnly. "No matter what."
"Because I love you, too, Alan."
He kissed her cheek, then let her go. "Let me see this ashcan thing he gave you."
"It's not an ashcan, it's an azka- And he didn't give it to me, he loaned it to me on a trial basis. That's why I'm here-to buy it. I told you that. I just hope he doesn't want the moon and stars for it."
Alan looked at the sign in the display window, and at the shade pulled down over the door. He thought, I'm afraid that's just what he is going to want, darlin.
He didn't like any of this. He had found it hard to take his eyes away from Polly's hands during the funeral service he had watched her manipulate the catch on her purse effortlessly, dip into her bag for a Kleenex, then close the catch with the tips of her fingers instead of shuffling the bag awkwardly around so she could do it with her thumbs, which were usually a good deal less painful. He knew her hands were better, but this story about a magic charmand that was what it came down to when you scraped the frosting off the cake-made him extremely nervous. It reeked of confidence game.
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.
No-except for a few fancy restaurants like Maurice, he hadn't seen a business that kept appointment-only hours since he'd come to Maine.
And you could walk right off the street and get a table at Maurice nine times out of ten except in the summer, of course, when the tourists were