Song of Susannah - Stephen King [94]
Because she was shy.
And my goodness, things in the lobby of the Plaza–Park had changed while the hijacking mommy-bitch had been upstairs waiting for her phone call. They had changed a lot.
Susannah leaned forward with her elbows propped on the edge of the Dogan’s main instrument panel and her chin propped on the palms of her hands.
This might be interesting.
* * *
Seven
Mia stepped out of the elevator, then attempted to step right back in. She thumped against the doors instead, and hard enough to make her teeth come together with a little ivory click. She looked around, bewildered, at first not sure how it was that the little descending room had disappeared.
Susannah! What happened to it?
No answer from the dark-skinned woman whose face she now wore, but Mia discovered she didn’t actually need one. She could see the place where the door slid in and out. If she pushed the button the door would probably open again, but she had to conquer her sudden strong desire to go back up to Room 1919. Her business there was done. Her real business was somewhere beyond the lobby doors.
She looked toward those doors with the sort of lip-biting dismay which may escalate into panic at a single rough word or angry look.
She’d been upstairs for a little over an hour, and during that time the lobby’s early-afternoon lull had ended. Half a dozen taxis from La Guardia and Kennedy had pulled up in front of the hotel at roughly the same time; so had a Japanese tour-bus from Newark Airport. The tour had originated in Sapporo and consisted of fifty couples with reservations at the Plaza–Park. Now the lobby was rapidly filling with chattering people. Most had dark, slanted eyes and shiny black hair, and were wearing oblong objects around their necks on straps. Every now and then one would raise one of these objects and point it at someone else. There would be a brilliant flash, laughter, and cries of Domo! Domo! There were three lines forming at the desk. The beautiful woman who’d checked Mia in during quieter times had been joined by two other clerks, all of them working like mad. The high-ceilinged lobby echoed with laughter and mingled conversation in some strange tongue that sounded to Mia like the twittering of birds. The banks of mirror-glass added to the general confusion by making the lobby seem twice as full as it actually was.
Mia cringed back, wondering what to do.
“Front!” yelled a desk clerk, and banged a bell. The sound seemed to shoot across Mia’s confused thoughts like a silver arrow. “Front, please!”
A grinning man—black hair slicked against his skull, yellow skin, slanting eyes behind round spectacles—came rushing up to Mia, holding one of the oblong flash-things. Mia steeled herself to kill him if he attacked.
“Ah-yoo takea pickcha me and my wife?”
Offering her the flash-thing. Wanting her to take it from him. Mia cringed away, wondering if it ran on radiation, if the flashes might hurt her baby.
Susannah! What do I do?
No answer. Of course not, she really couldn’t expect Susannah’s help after what had just happened, but…
The grinning man was still thrusting the flash-machine at her. He looked a trifle puzzled, but mostly undaunted. “Yooo take-ah pickcha, preese?” And put the oblong thing in her hand. He stepped back and put his arm around a lady who looked exactly like him except for her shiny black hair, which was cut across her forehead in what Mia thought of as a wench-clip. Even the round glasses were the same.
“No,” Mia said. “No, cry pardon…no.” The panic was very close now and very bright, whirling and gibbering right in front of her
(yooo take-ah pickcha, we kill-ah baby)
and Mia’s impulse was to drop the oblong flasher on the floor. That might break it, however, and release the deviltry that powered the flashes.
She put it down carefully instead, smiling apologetically at the astonished Japanese couple (the man still had his arm