Roadwork - Stephen King [53]
That made her smile.
"You don't even want to turn down the sheets?"
"You're a big girl."
She looked at him calmly. "You can come up with me if you want," she said. "I decided that an hour ago."
"No but you don't have any idea how attractive the invitation is. I've only slept with three women in my entire life, and the first two were so long ago I can hardly remember them. Before I was married."
"Are you kidding?"
"Not at all."
"Listen, it wouldn't be just because you gave me a ride or let me sleep over or anything like that. Or the money you offered."
"It's good of you to say that," he said, and got up. "You better go up now." But she didn't follow his suit. "You ought to know why you're not doing it." "I should?"
"Yes. If you do things and can't explain them-like you said-that might be okay because they still get done. But if you decide not to, you ought to know why."
"All right," he said. He nodded toward the dining room, where the money still lay in the silver dish. "It's the money. You're too young to be off whoring."
"I won't take it," she said promptly.
"I know you won't. That's why I won't. I want you to take it."
"Because everybody isn't as nice as you?"
"That's right." He looked at her challengingly.
She shook her head in an exasperated way and stood up. "All right. But you're a bourgeois, you know that?"
"Yes."
She came over and kissed him on the mouth. It was exciting. He could smell her, and the smell was nice. He was almost instantly hard.
"Go on," he said.
"If you reconsider during the night-"
"I won't." He watched her go to the stairs, her feet bare. "Hey?"
She turned, her eyebrows raised.
"What's your name?"
"Olivia, if it matters. Stupid, isn't it? Like Olivia DeHaviland."
"No, it's okay. I like it. Night, Olivia."
"Night. "
She went up. He heard the light click on, the way he had always heard it when Mary went up before him. If he listened closely, he might be able to hear the quietly maddening sound of her sweater against her skin as she pulled it over her head, or the snap of the catch that held her jeans nipped in to her waist "
Using the Space Command module, he turned on the TV.
His penis was still fully erect, uncomfortable. It bulged against the crotch of his pants, what Mary had sometimes called the rock of ages and sometimes the snake-that-turned-to-stone in their younger days, when bed was nothing but another playground sport. He pulled at the folds of his underwear and when it didn't go down, he stood up. After a while the erection wilted and he sat down again.
When the news was over, a movie came on-John Agar in Brain from Planet Arous. He fell asleep sitting in front of the TV with the Space Command module still clasped loosely in one hand. A few minutes later there was a stirring beneath the fly of his pants as his erection returned, stealthily, like a murderer revisiting the scene of an ancient crime.
December 7, 1973
But he did go to her in the night.
The dream of Mr. Piazzi's dog came to him, and this time he knew the boy approaching the dog was Charlie before the bitch struck. That made it worse and when Mr. Piazzi's dog lunged, he struggled up from sleep like a man clawing his way out of a shallow, sandy grave.
He clawed at the air, not awake but not asleep either, and he lost his sense of balance on the couch, where he had finally curled up. He tottered miserably on the edge of balance for a moment, disoriented, terrified for his dead son who died over and over again in his dreams.
He fell onto the floor, banging his head and hurting his shoulder, and came awake enough to know he was in his own living room and that the dream was over. The reality was miserable, but not actively terrifying.
What was he doing? A sort of gestalt reality of what he had done to his life came to him, a hideous overview. He had ripped it right down the middle, like a cheap piece of cloth. Nothing was right anymore. He was