Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [130]
The kitchen is miraculously empty. Off it, to the left, is a door marked STORAGE. Beyond it is a short hall with compartments on both sides. These are behind locked gates made of heavy chickenwire, to discourage pilferage. Canned goods on one side, dry goods on the other. Then clothes. Shirts in one compartment. Pants in another. Dresses and skirts in another. Coats in yet another. At the very end of the hall is a beat-up wardrobe marked MISCELLANY. Callahan finds the vampire’s wallet and sticks it in his pocket, on top of his own. The two of them together make quite a lump. Then he unlocks the wardrobe and tosses in the vampire’s unsorted clothes. It’s easier than trying to take his ensemble apart, although he guesses that when the underwear is found inside the pants, there will be grumbling. At Home, used underwear is not accepted.
“We may cater to the low-bottom crowd,” Rowan Magruder has told Callahan once, “but we do have our standards.”
Never mind their standards now. There’s the vampire’s hair and teeth to think about. His watch, his ring, his wallet…and God, his briefcase and his shoes! They must still be out there!
Don’t you dare complain, he tells himself. Not when ninety-five per cent of him is gone, just conveniently disappeared like the monster in the last reel of a horror movie. God’s been with you so far—I think it’s God—so don’t you dare complain.
Nor does he. He gathers up the hair, the teeth, the briefcase, and takes them to the end of the alley, splashing through puddles, and tosses them over the fence. After a moment’s consideration he throws the watch, wallet, and ring over, too. The ring sticks on his finger for a moment and he almost panics, but at last it comes off and over it goes—plink. Someone will take care of this stuff for him. This is New York, after all. He goes back to Lupe and sees the shoes. They are too good to throw away, he thinks; there are years of wear left in those babies. He picks them up and walks back into the kitchen with them dangling from the first two fingers of his right hand. He’s standing there with them by the stove when Lupe comes walking into the kitchen from the alley.
“Don?” he asks. His voice is a little furry, the voice of someone who has just awakened from a sound sleep. It also sounds amused. He points at the shoes hooked over the tips of Callahan’s fingers. “Were you going to put those in the stew?”
“It might improve the flavor, but no, just in storage,” Callahan says. He is astounded by the calmness of his own voice. And his heart! Beating along at a nice regular sixty or seventy beats a minute. “Someone left them out back. What have you been up to?”
Lupe gives him a smile, and when he smiles, he is more beautiful than ever. “Just out there, having a smoke,” he says. “It was too nice to come in. Didn’t you see me?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Callahan said. “You looked lost in your own little world, and I didn’t want to interrupt you. Open the storage-room door for me, would you?”
Lupe opens the door. “That looks like a really nice pair,” he says. “Bally. What’s someone doing, leaving Bally shoes for the drunks?”
“Someone must have changed his mind about them,” Callahan says. He hears the bells, that poison sweetness, and grits his teeth against the sound. The world seems to shimmer for a moment. Not now, he thinks. Ah, not now, please.
It’s not a prayer, he prays little these days, but maybe something hears, because the sound of the chimes fades. The world steadies. From the other room someone is bawling for supper. Someone else is cursing. Same old same old. And he wants a drink. That’s the same, too, only the craving is fiercer than it’s ever been. He keeps thinking about how the rubber grip