For the first time today, Gwendy feels like maybe everything will be okay. “You’re very welcome, Harold. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas.” She pats his arm affectionately and turns to leave.
“Not so fast,” Harold says, raising a hand. He ducks behind the desk and comes back up with a wrapped gift of his own. He hands it to Gwendy.
She looks at him in surprise, and then reads the gift tag: To Congresswoman Gwendy Peterson; From Harold & Beth. “Thank you,” she says, genuinely touched. “Both of you.” She opens the present. It’s a thick hardcover book with a bright orange dust jacket. She turns it over so she can see the front cover—and the room shifts, up, down, and up again, like she just sat down on a teeter-totter at the playground.
“You okay, Congresswoman?” Harold asks. “You already have a copy?”
“No, no,” Gwendy says, holding up the book. “I’ve never read it, but I’ve always wanted to.”
“Oh, good,” he says, relieved. “I can barely make heads or tails of the jacket copy, but my wife read it and said it was fascinating.”
Gwendy forces a smile on her face. “Thank you again, Harold. It really is a lovely surprise.”
“Thank you again, Congresswoman Peterson. You shouldn’t have, but I’m sure glad you did.” He bursts out laughing.
Gwendy slips the book inside her leather tote and heads for the elevator. On the ride down, she takes another peek at the cover, just to make sure she’s not losing her mind.
She’s not.
The book Harold gave her is Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s the same novel Richard Farris was reading on the bench in Castle View twenty-five years earlier—on the day he first gave Gwendy the button box.
18
GWENDY IS LEANING TOWARD canceling her long-scheduled dinner plans with friends even before the copy of Gravity’s Rainbow shows up, but Harold’s well-meaning, yet not-so-pleasant surprise, cinches the deal. She goes straight home, unburies the button box from its hiding place, changes into sweatpants and a baggy sweater, and calls out for delivery.
While her friends—two former classmates from Brown—dine on filet mignon and grilled vegetables at historic Old Ebbitt Grill on Fifteenth (where you have to call weeks in advance for a table), Gwendy sits alone in her dining room, picking at the sorriest excuse for a garden salad she’s ever seen and nibbling on a slice of pizza.
She’s not really alone, of course. The button box is there, resting on the opposite end of the table, watching her eat like a silent suitor. A few minutes earlier, she looked up from her dinner and asked quite sincerely, “Okay, you’re back. What do I do with you now?” The box didn’t answer.
Gwendy’s attention is currently focused on an evening news program playing on the den television, and she’s not happy. She still can’t believe Clinton lost to this idiot. “The President of the United States is a flipping moron,” she says, stuffing a piece of lettuce that’s closer to brown than it is green into her mouth. “You tell ’em, Bernie.”
Anchorman Bernard Shaw, with his distinguished salt-and-pepper hair and thick mustache, does just that: “…recap the sequence of events that has brought us to this potentially catastrophic standoff. Initially, spy-satellite photographs led U.S. officials to suspect that North Korea was developing a new nuclear facility near the Yongbyon nuclear center that was originally disabled by the 1994 accord. Based on these photographs, Washington demanded an inspection of the facility and Pyongyang countered by demanding the U.S. pay $300 million for the right to inspect the site. Earlier this week, President Hamlin responded angrily—and, many say, disrespectfully—in public comments directed at the North Korean leader, refusing to pay any such inspection fee and calling the proposal ‘ludicrous and laughable.’ Now, within the past hour, Pyongyang has released a written statement referring to President Hamlin as ‘a brainwashed bully’ and threatening to pull out of the 1994 accord. No response from the White House yet, but one unnamed official claims…”
“That’s just great,” Gwendy says, getting up from the table and tossing the remains of her salad into the trash. “A pissing contest between two egomaniacs. I’m going to get a lot of calls over this…”
19
GWENDY PULLS THE BLANKET over her chest and gives the box one last look before turning off the bedside lamp. Earlier in the evening, after brushing her teeth and washing her face, she placed the button box on the dresser next to her jewelry tray and hairbrushes. Now, she’s wondering if she should move it closer. Just to be safe.
She reaches out to turn on the light again—but freezes when she hears the creak of a door opening on hinges that need oiling. She immediately recognizes the sound. It’s her closet door.
Unable to move, she watches in terror as a dark figure emerges from inside the walk-in closet. She tries to bark out a warning—Stop, I have a gun! I’m calling 911!; anything that might buy her a little more time—but realizes that she’s holding her breath. Suddenly remembering the button box on the dresser, she yanks off the thick blanket and scrambles across the bed.
But the intruder is too fast.
He lunges at her, strong arms grabbing her around the waist and wrestling her back onto the bed. She screams and flails at her attacker, clawing at his eyes, ripping off the ski mask he’s wearing.
Gwendy sees his face in the glow of the television and gasps.
The intruder is Frankie Stone—somehow alive again and looking exactly as he did almost twenty years earlier on the night he killed her boyfriend—baggy camo pants, dark glasses, and a tight tee-shirt, wearing that stupid grin of his, greasy brown hair staining his shoulders, shotgun pattern of acne scattered across his cheeks.
He flips her over and pins Gwendy against the mattress, and she can smell the stale, alcohol-tainted foulness of his breath as he hisses, “Give me the box, you dumb bitch. Give it to me right now or I’ll eat you alive”—and then his jaws yawn open impossibly wide and the world goes dark as Frankie Stone closes his mouth and engulfs her.
20
GWENDY JERKS UPRIGHT IN bed, clutching a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets to her chest and gasping for breath. Her eyes dart to the closet door across the room—it’s closed tight—and then to her dresser. The button box is exactly as she left it, sitting there in the dark with its watchful gaze.
21
“ARE YOU SURE YOU don’t want me to stow your bag, Congresswoman Peterson?”
Gwendy looks at the co-pilot who had introduced himself just minutes earlier when she first boarded the eight-seat private plane, but she’s already forgotten his name. “No, it’s fine. I packed my laptop and I’ll probably fiddle around with some work once we’re in the air.”
“Very well,” he says. “We should be taking off in about twenty minutes.” He gives her a reassuring smile—the kind that says, Your life is in my hands, lady, but I slept great last night and only did a little bump of cocaine this morning, so hey it’s all good—and ducks back into the cockpit.
Gwendy yawns and looks out the window at the busy runway. The last thing she wants to do during the short flight is fiddle with her laptop. She’s exhausted from not sleeping the night before and in a foul mood. Not even forty-eight hours have passed since the button box’s return to her life, and she’s already moved on from shock and curiosity to anger and resentment. She glances at her carry-on suitcase, tucked underneath the seat in front of her, and fights the urge to check on the box again.