The Dark Half - Stephen King [64]
She shook her head so fast and hard her hair flew in a storm around her face. And all the time she was shaking her head, those beautiful dark eyes never left his face, and the blonde man felt a stirring along his leg. Sir, do you have a folding ruler in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
This time the smile touched his eyes as well as his mouth, and he thought she relaxed just the tiniest bit.
'I want you to lean forward and dial Thad Beaumont's number.' She only gazed at him, her eyes bright and lustrous with shock. 'Beaumont,' he said patiently. 'The writer. Do it, sis. Time fleets ever onward like the winged feet of Mercury.'
'My book,' she said. Her mouth was now too swollen to close comfortably and it was getting harder to understand her. Eye ook, it sounded like.
'Eye ook?' he asked. 'Is that anything like a skyhook? I don't know what you're talking about. Make sense, sissy.'
Carefully, painfully, enunciating: 'My book. Book. My address book. I don't remember his number.'
The straight-razor slipped through the air toward her. It seemed to make a sound like a human whisper. That was probably just imagination, but both of them heard it, nevertheless. She shrank back even further into the wheat-colored cushions, swollen lips pulling into a grimace. He turned the razor so the blade caught the low, mellow light of the table lamp. He tipped it, let the light run along it like water, then looked at her as if they would both be crazy not to admire such a lovely thing.
'Don't shit me, sis.' Now there was a soft Southern slur to his words. 'That's one thing you never want to do, not when you're dealing with a fella like me. Now dial his motherfucking number.' She might not have Beaumont's number committed to memory, not all that much business to do there, but she would have Stark's. In the book biz, Stark was your basic movin' unit, and it just so happened the phone number was the same for both men.
Tears began to spill out of her eyes. 'I don't remember,' she moaned. I doan eemembah.
The blonde man got ready to cut her — not because he was angry with her but because when you let a lady like this get away with one lie it always led to another — and then reconsidered. It was, he decided, perfectly possible that she had temporarily lost her grip on such mundane things as telephone numbers, even those of important clients like Beaumont/Stark. She was in shock. If he had asked her to dial the number of her own agency, she might well have come up just as blank.
But since it was Thad Beaumont and not Rick Cowley they were talking about, he could help.
'Okay,' he said. 'Okay, sis. You're upset. I understand. I don't know if you believe this or not, but I even sympathize. And you're in luck, because it just so happens I know the number myself. I know it as well as I know my own, you might say. And do you know what? I'm not even going to make you dial it, partly because I don't want to sit here until hell freezes over, waiting for you to get it right, but also because I do sympathize. I am going to lean over and dial it myself. Do you know what that means?'
Miriam Cowley shook her head. Her dark eyes appeared to have eaten up most of her face.
'It means I'm going to trust you. But only so far; only just so far and no further, old girl. Are you listening? Are you getting all this?'
Miriam nodded frantically, her hair flying. God, he loved a woman with a lot of hair.
'Good. That's good. While I dial the phone, sis, you want to keep your eyes right on this blade. It will help you keep your happy thoughts in good order.'
He leaned forward and began to pick out the number on the old-fashioned rotary dial. Amplified clicking sounds came from the message recorder beside the phone as he did so. It sounded like a carny Wheel of Fortune slowing down. Miriam Cowley sat with the phone handset in her lap, looking alternately at the