Needful Things - Stephen King [72]
He had slipped her the Xanax on just three occasions since then.
The third-and the scariest by far-was The Night of the Muddy Sheets.
He had been frantic to get her to take a cup of tea, and when she at last consented to drink one (after her short but extremely satisfactory dialogue with Crazy Nettle Cobb), he brewed it strong and dropped in not one Xanax but two. He was greatly relieved at how much her thermostat had dropped the next morning.
These were the things that Wilma jerzyck, confident in her power over her husband's mind, did not know; they were also the things which kept Wilma from simply driving her Yugo through Nettle's door and snatching her baldheaded (or trying to) on Friday morning.
2
Not that Wilma had forgotten Nettle, or forgiven her, or come to entertain the slightest doubt as to who had vandalized her bedlinen; no medicine on earth would have done those things.
Shortly after Pete left for work, Wilma got into her car and cruised slowly down Willow Street (plastered to the back bumper of the little yellow Yugo was a bumper sticker which told the world
IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY DRIVING DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT).
She turned right, onto Ford Street, and slowed to a crawl as she approached Nettle Cobb's neat little house. She thought she saw one of the curtains twitch, and that was a good start but only a start.
She went around the block (passing the Rusk home on Pond Street without a glance), past her own home on Willow, and around to Ford Street for the second time. This time she honked the Yugo's horn twice as she approached Nettle's house and then parked out front with the engine idling.
The curtain twitched again. No mistake this time. The woman was peering out at her. Wilma thought of her behind the curtain, I trembling with guilt and terror, and found she enjoyed the image even more than she enjoyed the one she had gone to bed withthe one where she was twisting the crazy bitch's noodle until it spun like that little girl's head in The Exorcist.
"Peekaboo, I see you," she said grimly as the curtain fell back in place. "Don't think I don't."
She circled the block again and stopped in front of Nettle's a second time, honking the horn to notify her prey of her arrival.
This time she sat out front for almost five minutes. The curtain twitched twice. At last she drove on again, satisfied.
Crazy broadwillspendthe rest oftheday lookingforme, she thought as she parked in her own driveway and got out. She'll be afraid to set foot out of her door.
Wilma went inside, light of foot and heart, and plunked down on the sofa with a catalogue. Soon she was happily ordering three new sets of sheets-white, yellow, and paisley.
3
Raider sat in the middle of the living-room carpet, looking at his mistress. At last he whined uneasily, as if to remind Nettle that this was a working day and she was already half an hour late. Today was the day she was supposed to vacuum the upstairs at Polly's, and the telephone man was coming with the new phones, the ones with the great big touch-tone pads. They were supposed to be easier for people who had the arthritis so terrible, like Polly did, to use.
But how could she go out?
That crazy Polish woman was out there someplace, cruising around in her little car.
Nettle sat in her chair, holding her lampshade in her lap. She had been holding it in her lap ever since the crazy Polish woman had driven past her house the first time. Then she had come again, parking and honking her horn. When she left, Nettle thought it might be over, but no-the woman had come back yet a third time.
Nettle had been sure the crazy Polish woman would try to come in.
She had sat in her chair, hugging the lampshade with one arm and Raider with the other, wondering