Thinner - Stephen King [75]
The people hanging out in Bar Harbor were young, brainy, fashionably liberal, and rich. They also partied all night long, apparently. Billy had phoned ahead to make a reservation at the Frenchman's Bay Motel and had lain awake until the small hours of the morning listening to conflicting rock music pouring from six or eight different bars. The tally of wrecked cars and traffic violations mostly DWI's - in the local paper was impressive and a little disheartening.
Billy watched a Frisbee fly over the crowds in their preppy clothes and thought: You want to know why this place and these people depress you? I'll tell you. They are studying to live in places like Fairview, that's why. They'll finish school, get married to women who will conclude their first affairs and rounds of analysis at roughly the same time, and settle down on the Lantern Drives of America. There they will wear red pants when they play golf, and each and every New Year's Eve will be the occasion of much tit-grabbing.
'Yeah, that's depressing, all right,' he muttered, and a couple passing by looked at him strangely.
They're still here.
Yes. They were still here. The thought was so natural, so positive, that it was neither surprising nor particularly exciting. He had been a week behind them - they could be up in the Maritimes by now or halfway down the coast again; their previous pattern suggested they would be gone by now, and certainly Bar Harbor, where even the souvenir shops looked like expensive East Side auction rooms, was a little too tony to put up with a raggle-taggle band of Gypsies for long. All very true. Except they were still here, and he knew it.
'Old man, I smell you,' he whispered.
Of course you smell him. You are supposed to.
That thought caused a moment's unease. Then he got up, tossed the remainder of his cone into a trash barrel, and walked back to the ice-cream vendor. The vendor did not seem particularly pleased to see Billy returning.
'I wonder if you could help me,' Billy said.
'No, man, I really don't think so,' the vendor said, and Billy saw the revulsion in his eyes.
'You might be surprised.' Billy felt a sense of deep calm and predestination - not deja vu but real predestination. The ice-cream vendor wanted to turn away, but Billy held him with his own eyes - he found he was capable of that now, as if he himself had become some sort of supernatural creature. He took out the packet of photographs - it was now rumpled and sweat-stained. He dealt out the familiar tarot hand of images, lining them up along the counter of the man's booth.
The vendor looked at them, and Billy felt no surprise at the recognition in the man's eyes, no pleasure - only that faint fear, like pain waiting to happen when the local anesthetic wears off. There was a clear salt tang in the air, and gulls were crying over the harbor.
'This guy,' the ice-cream vendor said, staring fascinated at the photograph of Taduz Lemke. 'This guy - what a spook!'
'Are they still around?'
'Yeah,' the ice-cream vendor said. 'Yeah, I think they are. The cops kicked 'em out of town the second day, but they were able to rent a field from a farmer in Tecknor that's one town inland from here. I've seen them around. The cops have gotten to the point where they're writing 'em up for broken taillights and stuff like that. You'd think they'd take the hint.'
'Thank you.' He began to collect his pictures again.
'You want another ice cream?'
'No, thank you.' The fear was stronger now - but the anger was there too, a buzzing, pulsing tone under everything else.
'Then would you mind just sort of rambling on, mister? You're not particularly good for business.'
'No,' Billy said. 'I suppose I'm not.'
He headed back toward his car. The tiredness had left him.
That night at a quarter past nine, Billy parked his rental car on the soft shoulder of Route 37-A, which leaves Bar Harbor to the northwest. He was on top of a hill, and a sea breeze blew around him, ruffling his hair and making his loose clothes flap on his body.