Pet Sematary - Stephen King [31]
Perhaps the lowest point of the afternoon had come just after Steve left. Charlton came in and laid a pink memo slip on Louiss desk. Bangor Carpet will be here at 9:00 tomorrow, it read.
Carpet? he had asked.
It will have to be replaced, she said apologetically. No way the stains going to come out, Doctor.
Of course not. At that point Louis had gone into the dispensary and taken a Tuinal-what his first med school roommate had called Tooners. Hop up on the Toonerville Trolley, Louis, hed say, and Ill put on some Creedence. More often than not Louis had declined the ride on the fabled Toonerville, and that was maybe just as well; his roomie had flunked out halfway through his third semester and had ridden the Toonerville Trolley all the way to Vietnam as a medical corpsman. Louis sometimes pictured him over there, stoned to the eyeballs, listening to Creedence do Run Through the Jungle.
But he needed something. If he was going to have to see that pink slip about the carpet on his note-minder board every time he glanced up from the front file spread out in front of them, he needed something.
He was cruising fairly well when Mrs. Baillings, the night
like doing it-it made him feel like the most rancid sort of gossip
-but Missy would accept no money for sitting, and he was grateful to her for the evening he and Rachel had shared.
Gage was fast asleep before Louis had gotten the mile between Missys house and their own; even Ellie was yawning and glassy-eyed. He put Gage into fresh diapers, poured him into his sleeper suit, and popped him into his crib. Then he read Ellie a storybook. As usual, she clamored for Where the Wild Things Are, being a veteran wild thing herself. Louis convinced her to settle for The Cat in the Hat. She was asleep five minutes after he carried her up, and Rachel tucked her in.
When he came downstairs again, Rachel was sitting in the living room with a glass of milk. A Dorothy Sayers mystery was open on one long thigh.
Louis, are you really all right?
Honey, Im fine, he said. And thanks. For everything.
We aim to please, she said with a curving, slightly saucy smile. Are you going over to Juds for a beer?
He shook his head. Not tonight. Im totally bushed.
I hope I had something to do with that.
I think you did.
Then grab yourself a glass of milk, Doctor, and lets go to bed.
He thought perhaps he would lie awake, as he often had when he was interning, and days that were particularly hairy would play over and over in his mind. But he slid smoothly toward sleep, as if on a slightly inclined, frictionless board. He had read somewhere that it takes the average human being just seven minutes to turn off all the switches and uncouple from the day. Seven minutes for conscious and subconscious to revolve, like the trick wall in an amusement-park haunted house. Something a little eerie in that.
He was almost there when he heard Rachel say, as if from a great distance, day after tomorrow.
Ummmmmm?
Jolander. The vet. Hes taking Church the day after tomorrow.
Oh. Church. Treasure your cojónes while you got em, Church, old boy. Then he slipped away from everything, down a hole, sleeping deeply and without dreams.
16
Something woke him much later, a crash loud enough to cause him to sit up in bed, wondering if Ellie had fallen onto the floor or if maybe Gages crib had collapsed. Then the moon sailed out from behind a cloud,