Roadwork - Stephen King [80]
"Mr. Magliore," he said, pronouncing carefully. "Merry Christmas, sir! And the best of everything in the new year! "
"Oh, if you only knew how I dread '74," Magliore said dolefully. "That's the year the oil barons are going to take over the country, Dawes. You see if they don't. Look at my sales sheet for December if you don't believe me. I sold a 1971 Chevy Impala the other day, this car is clean as a whistle, and I sold it for a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks! Do you believe that? A forty-five percent knockdown in one year. But I can sell all the '71 Vegas I can get my hands on for fifteen, sixteen hundred bucks. And what are they, I ask you?"
"Little cars?" he asked cautiously.
"They're fucking Maxwell House coffee cans, that's what they are! " Magliore shouted. "Saltine boxes on wheels! Every time you look at the goddam things cross-eyed and say booga-booga at them the engine's outta tune or the exhaust system drops off or the steering linkage is gone. Pintos, Vegas, Gremlins, they're all the same, little suicide boxes. So I'm selling those as fast as I can get them and I can't move a nice Chevy Impala unless I fuckin' give it away. And you say happy new year. Jesus! Mary! Joseph the carpenter!"
"That's seasonal," he said.
"I didn't call about that anyway," Magliore answered. "I called to say congratulations."
"Congratuwhatchens?" He was honestly bewildered.
"You know. Crackle-crackle boom-boom."
"Oh, you mean-'
"Sssst. Not on the phone. Be cool, Dawes."
"Sure. Crackle-crackle boom-boom. That's good." He cackled.
"It was you, wasn't it, Dawes?"
"To you I wouldn't admit my middle name."
Magliore roared. "That's good. You're good, Dawes. You're a fruitcake, but you're a clever fruitcake. I admire that."
"Thanks," he said, and cleverly knocked back the rest of his drink.
"I also wanted to tell you that everything was going ahead on schedule down there. Rumble and roar."
The glass he was holding fell from his fingers and rolled across the rug.
"They've got seconds on all that stuff, Dawes. Thirds on most of it. They're paying cash until they got their bookwork straightened out, but everything is righton."
"You're crazy."
"No. I thought you ought to know. I told you, Dawes. Some things you can't get rid of. "
"You're a bastard. You're lying. Why do you want to call a man up on Christmas night and tell him lies?"
"I ain't lying. It's your play again, Dawes. In this game, it's always gonna be your play."
"I don't believe you."
"You poor son of a bitch," Magliore said. He sounded honestly sorry and that was the worst part. "I don't think it's gonna be a very happy new year for you either. " He hung up.
And that was Christmas.
December 26, 1973
There was a letter from them in the mail (he had begun to see the anonymous people downtown that way, the personal pronoun in italics and printed in drippy, ominous letters like the printing on a horror movie poster), as if to confirm what Magliore had said.
He held it in his hand, looking down at the crisp white business envelope, his mind filled with almost all the bad emotions the human mind can feel: Despair, hatred, fear, anger, loss. He almost tore it into small pieces and threw it into the snow beside the house, and then knew he couldn't do that. He opened it, nearly tearing the envelope in half, and realized that what he felt most was cheated. He had been gypped. He had been rooked. He had destroyed their machines and their records, and they had just brought up a few replacements. It was like trying to fight the Chinese Army singlehanded.
It's your play again, Dawes. In this game it's always gonna be your play.
The other letters had been form jobs, sent from the office of the highway department. Dear Friend, a big crane is going to come to your house sometime soon. Be on the lookout for this exciting event as WE IMPROVE YOUR CITY!
This was from the city council,