Needful Things - Stephen King [227]
She nodded inside her hands.
"Then do as I say, Polly," he whispered. He took one of her hands away from her face and began caressing it. "Do as I say, and keep your mouth shut." He looked closely at her wet cheeks and her streaming, reddened eyes. A little look of disgust puckered his lips for a moment.
"I don't know which makes me sicker-a crying woman or a laughing man. Wipe your goddamned face, Polly."
Slowly, dreamily, she took a lace-edged handkerchief from her purse and began to do it.
"That's good," he said, and rose. "I'll let you go home now, Polly; you have things to do. But I want you to know it has been a great pleasure doing business with you. I have always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves."
12
"Hey, Brian-want to see a trick?"
The boy on the bicycle looked up fast, the hair flying off his forehead, and Alan saw an unmistakable expression on his face: naked, unadulterated fear.
"Trick?" the boy said in a trembling voice. "What trick?"
Alan didn't know what the boy was afraid of, but he understood one thing-his magic, which he had relied upon often as an icebreaker with children, had for some reason been exactly the wrong thing this time.
Best to get it out of the way as soon as possible and start over again.
He held up his left arm-the one with the watch on it-and smiled into Brian Rusk's pale, watchful, frightened face. "You'll notice that there's nothing up my sleeve and that my arm goes all the way up to my shoulder. But now presto!"
Alan passed his open right hand slowly down his left arm, snapping the little packet effortlessly out from beneath his watch with his right thumb as he did so. As he closed his fist, he slipped the almost microscopic loop that held the packet closed. He clasped his left hand over his right, and when he spread them apart, a large tissue-paper bouquet of unlikely flowers bloomed where there had been nothing but thin air a moment before.
Alan had done this trick hundreds of times and never better than on this hot October afternoon, but the expected reaction-a moment of stunned surprise followed by a grin that was one part amazement and two parts admirationeidn't dawn on Brian's face.
He gave the bouquet a cursory glance (there seemed to be relief in that brief look, as if he had expected the trick to be of a far less pleasant nature) and then returned his gaze to Alan's face.
"Pretty neat, huh?" Alan asked. He stretched his lips in a big smile that felt every bit as genuine as his grand father's dentures.
"Yeah," Brian said.
"Uh-huh. I can see you're blown away." Alan brought his hands together, deftly collapsing the bouquet again. It was easy-too easy, really. It was time to buy a new copy of the Folding Flower Trick; they only lasted so long. The tiny spring in this one was getting loose and the brightly colored paper would soon begin to rip.
He opened his hands again, smiling rather more hopefully now.
The ' bouquet was gone; was once more just a small packet of paper under his watchband. Brian Rusk did not return his smile; his face wore no real expression at all. The remnants of his summer tan could not cover the pallor beneath, nor the fact that his complexion was in an unusual state of pre-pubescent revolt: a scatter of pimples on the forehead, a bigger one by the corner of his mouth, blackheads nesting on either side of his nose. There were purplish shadows under his eyes, as if his last good night's sleep had been a long time ago.
This kid is a long way from right, Alan thought. There's something badly sprained, maybe even broken here. There seemed to be two likely possibilities: either Brian Rusk had seen whoever had vandalized the jerzyck house, or he had done it himself. It was paydirt either way, but if it was the second choice, Alan could barely imagine the size and weight of the guilt which must now be harrowing this boy.
"That's a great trick, Sheriff Pangborn," Brian said in a colorless, emotionless voice. "Really."
"Thanks-glad you liked it. Do you know what I want to talk to you about, Brian?"
"I guess I do," Brian