Roadwork - Stephen King [78]
The young woman dragged her daughter, still crying for a bottle, out of the UWash-It. He closed his eyes and dozed off, waiting for his dryer to finish. A few minutes later he snapped awake, thinking he heard fire bells, but it was only a Salvation Army Santa who had taken up his position on the corner out front. When he left the laundry with his basket of clothes, he threw all his pocket change into Santa's pot.
"God bless you," Santa said.
December 25, 1973
The telephone woke him around ten in the morning. He fumbled the extension off the night table, put it to his ear, and an operator said crisply into his sleep, "Will you accept a collect call from Olivia Brenner?"
He was lost and could only fumble, "What? Who? I'm asleep."
A distant, slightly familiar voice said, "Oh for Chrissake," and he knew.
"Yes," he said. "I'll take it." Had she hung up on him? He got up on one elbow to see. "Olivia? You there?"
"Go ahead, please," the operator overrode him, not willing to vary her psalm.
"Olivia, are you there?"
"I'm here." The voice was crackling and distant.
"I'm glad you called."
"I didn't think you'd take the call."
"I just woke up. Are you there? In Las Vegas?"
"Yes," she said flatly. The word came out with curiously dull authority, like a plank dropped on a cement floor.
"Well, how is it? How are you doing?"
Her sigh was so bitter that it was almost a tearless sob. "Not so good. "
"No?"
"I met a guy my second no, third night here. Went to a party and go s-o-o-o fucked up-"
"Dope?" he asked cautiously, very aware that this was long distance and the government was everywhere.
"Dope?" she echoed crossly. "Of course it was dope. Bad shit, full of dex or something I think I got raped. "
The last trailed off so badly that he had to ask, "What?"
"Raped! " she screamed, so loudly that the receiver distorted. "That's when some stupid jock playing Friday night hippie plays hide the salami with you while your brains are somewhere behind you, dripping off the wall! Rape, do you know what rape is?"
"I know," he said.
"Bullshit, you know."
"Do you need money?"
"Why ask me that? I can't fuck you over the telephone. I can't even hand-job you."
"I have some money," he said. "I could send it. That's all. That's why." Instinctively he found himself speaking, not soothingly, but softly, so she would have to slow down and listen.
"Yeah, yeah."
"Do you have an address?"
"General Delivery, that's my address."
"You don't have an apartment?"
"Yeah, me and this other sad sack have got a place. The mailboxes are all broken. Never mind. You keep the money. I've got a job. Screw, I think I'm going to quit and come back. Merry Christmas to me."
"What's the job?"
"Pushing hamburgers in this fast-food joint. They got slots in the lobby, and people play them and eat hamburgers all night long, can you believe it? The last thing you have to do when your shift is over is to wipe off all the handles of the slot machines. They get all covered with mustard and mayo and catsup. And you should see the people here. All of them are fat. They've either got tans or burns. And if they don't want to fuck you, you're just part of the furniture. I've had offers from both sexes. Thank God my roomie's about as sex-oriented as a juniper bush, I oh, Christ, why am I telling you all this? I don't even know why I called you. I'm going to hitch out of here at the end of the week, when I get paid."
He heard himself say: "Give it a month."
"Don't go chickenshit. If you leave now you'll always wonder what you went out there for. "
"Did you play football in high school? I bet you did."
"I wasn't even the waterboy."
"Then you don't know anything, do you?"
"I'm thinking about killing myself."
"You don't even what did you say?"
"I'm thinking about killing myself." He said it calmly. He was no longer thinking about long distance and the people who might monitor long distance just for the fun of it-Ma Bell,