Salem's Lot - Stephen King [18]
‘Sit down. I’ll be back.’
He went in, closing the screen door softly behind him, and she sat down in one of the rockers.
She liked him in spite of his strangeness. She was not a believer in love at first sight, although she did believe that instant lust (going under the more innocent name of infatuation) occurred frequently. And yet he wasn’t a man that would ordinarily encourage midnight entries in a locked diary; he was too thin for his height, a little pale. His face was introspective and bookish, and his eyes rarely gave away the train of his thoughts. All this topped with a heavy pelt of black hair that looked as if it had been raked with the fingers rather than brushed.
And that story -
Neither Conway’s Daughter nor Air Dance hinted at such a morbid turn of mind. The former was about a minister’s daughter who runs away, joins the counterculture, and takes a long, rambling journey across the country by thumb. The latter was the story of Frank Buzzey, an escaped convict who begins a new life as a car mechanic in another state, and his eventual recapture. Both of them were bright, energetic books, and Hubie Marsten’s dangling shadow, mirrored in the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, did not seem to lie over either of them.
As if by the very suggestion, she found her eyes dragged away from the river and up to the left of the porch, where the last hill before town blotted out the stars.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I hope these’ll be all right.
‘Look at the Marsten House,’ she said.
He did. There was a light on up there.
7
The drinks were gone and midnight passed; the moon was nearly out of sight. They had made some light conversation, and then she said into a pause:
‘I like you, Ben. Very much.’
‘I like you, too. And I’m surprised… no, I don ‘t mean it that way. Do you remember that stupid crack I made in the park? This all seems too fortuitous.’
‘I want to see you again, if you want to see me.’
‘I do.’
‘But go slow, Remember, I’m just a small-town girl.’
He smiled. ‘It seems so Hollywood. But Hollywood good. Am I supposed to kiss you now?’
‘Yes,’ she said seriously, ‘I think that comes next.’
He was sitting in the rocker next to her, and without stopping its slow movement forth and back, he leaned over and pressed his mouth on hers, with no attempt to draw her tongue or to touch her. His lips were firm with the pressure of his square teeth, and there was a faint taste-odor of rum and tobacco.
She began to rock also, and the movement made the kiss into something new. It waxed and waned, light and then firm. She thought: He’s tasting me. The thought wakened a secret, clean excitement in her, and she broke the kiss before it could take her further.
‘Wow,’ he said.
‘Would you like to come to dinner at my house tomorrow night?’ she asked. ‘My folks would love to meet you, I bet.’ In the pleasure and serenity of this moment, she could throw that sop to her mother.
‘Home cooking?’
‘The homiest.’
‘I’d love it. I’ve been living on TV dinners since I moved in.’
‘Six o’clock? We eat early in Sticksville.’
‘Sure. Fine. And speaking of home, I better get you there. Come on.’
They didn’t speak on the ride back until she could see the night light twinkling on top of the hill, the one her mother always left on when she was out.
‘I wonder who’s up there tonight?’ she asked, looking toward the Marsten House.
‘The new owner, probably,’ he said noncommittally.
‘It didn’t look like electricity, that light,’ she mused. ‘Too yellow, too faint. Kerosene lamp, maybe.’
‘They probably haven’t had a chance to have the power turned on yet.’
‘Maybe. But almost anyone with a little foresight would call up the power company before they moved in.’ He didn’t reply. They had come to her driveway.
‘Ben,’ she said suddenly, ‘is your new book about the Marsten House?’
He laughed and kissed