The waste lands - Stephen King [95]
A group of school-kids were lining up for a tour. Public school, Jake was almost sure—they were dressed as casually as he was. No blazers from Paul Stuart, no ties, no jumpers, no simple little skirts that cost a hundred and twenty-five bucks at places like Miss So Pretty or Tweenity. This crowd was Kmart all the way. On impulse, Jake stood at the end of the line and followed them into the museum.
The tour took an hour and fifteen minutes. Jake enjoyed it. The museum was quiet. Even better, it was air-conditioned. And the pictures were nice. He was particularly fascinated by a small group of Frederick Remington’s Old West paintings and a large picture by Thomas Hart Benton that showed a steam locomotive charging across the great plains toward Chicago while beefy farmers in bib overalls and straw hats stood in their fields and watched. He wasn’t noticed by either of the teachers with the group until the very end. Then a pretty black woman in a severe blue suit tapped him on the shoulder and asked who he was.
Jake hadn’t seen her coming, and for a moment his mind froze. Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached into his pocket and closed his hand around the silver key. His mind cleared immediately, and he felt calm again.
“My group is upstairs,” he said, smiling guiltily. “We’re supposed to be looking at a bunch of modern art, but I like the stuff down here a lot better, because they’re real pictures. So I sort of . . . you know . . .”
“Snuck away?” the teacher suggested. The corners of her lips twitched in a suppressed smile.
“Well, I’d rather think of it as French leave.” These words simply popped out of his mouth.
The students now staring at Jake only looked puzzled, but this time the teacher actually laughed. “Either you don’t know or have forgotten,” she said, “but in the French Foreign Legion they used to shoot deserters. I suggest you rejoin your class at once, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. They’ll be almost done now, anyway.”
“What school is it?”
“Markey Academy,” Jake said. This also just popped out.
He went upstairs, listening to the disembodied echo of foot-falls and low voices in the great space of the rotunda and wondering why he had said that. He had never heard of a place called Markey Academy in his life.
12
HE WAITED AWHILE IN the upstairs lobby, then noticed a guard looking at him with growing curiosity and decided it wouldn’t be wise to wait any longer—he would just have to hope the class he had joined briefly was gone.
He looked at his wristwatch, put an expression on his face that he hoped looked like Gosh! Look how late it’s getting!, and trotted back downstairs. The class—and the pretty black teacher who had laughed at the idea of French leave—was gone, and Jake decided it might be a good idea to get gone himself. He would walk awhile longer—slowly, in deference to the heat—and catch a subway.
He stopped at a hot-dog stand on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second, trading in a little of his meager cash supply for a sweet sausage and a Nehi. He sat on the steps of a bank building to eat his lunch, and that turned out to be a bad mistake.
A cop came walking toward him, twirling his nightstick in a complex series of maneuvers. He seemed to be paying attention to nothing but this, but when he came abreast of Jake he abruptly shoved his stick back into his loop and turned to him.
“Say-hey, big guy,” he said. “No school today?”
Jake had been wolfing his sausage, but the last bite abruptly stuck in his throat. This was a lousy piece of luck