But the numb cunt he was married to was still on the phone.
'I understand that, Mike . . . . yes . . . yes, I am . . . I know . . . but . . . '
A longer pause.
'Bill Denbrough?' she exclaimed, and that ice –pick drilled into his ear again.
He stood outside the bedroom door until he got his breath back. Now it was ka-thud, ka-thud, ka-thud again: the booming had stopped. He briefly imagined the needle edging out of the red and then willed the picture away. He was a man, for Christ's sake, and a damned good one, not a furnace with a bad thermostat. He was in great shape. He was iron. And if she needed to relearn that, he would be happy to teach her.
He started in, then thought better of it and stood where he was a moment longer, listening to her, not particularly caring about who she was talking to or what she said, only listening to the rising-falling tones of her voice. And what he felt was the old familiar dull rage.
He had met her in a downtown Chicago singles bar four years ago. Conversation had been easy enough, because they both worked in the Standard Brands Building, and knew a few of the same people. Tom worked for King & Landry, Public Relations, on forty-two. Beverly Marsh — so she had been then — was an assistant designer at Delia Fashions, on twelve. Delia, which would later enjoy a modest vogue in the Midwest, catered to young people — Delia skirts and blouses and shawls and slacks were sold largely to what Delia Castleman called 'youth-stores' and what Tom called 'headshops.' Tom Rogan knew two things about Beverly Marsh almost at once: she was desirable and she was vulnerable. In less than a month he knew a third as welclass="underline" she was talented. Very talented. In her drawings of casual dresses a nd blouses he saw a money-machine of almost scary potential.
Not in the head-shops, though, he thought, but did not say (at least not then). No more badlighting, no more knock-down prices, no more shitty displays somewhere in the back of the store between the dope paraphernalia and the rock –group tee-shins. Leave that shit for the small-timers.
He had known a great deal about her before she knew he had any real interest in her, and that was just the way Tom wanted it. He had been looking for someone like Beverly Marsh all his life, and he moved in with the speed of a lion making a run at a slow antelope. Not that her vulnerability showed on the surface — you looked and saw a gorgeous woman, slim but abundantly stacked. Hips weren't so great, maybe, bu t she had a great ass and the best set of tits he had ever seen. Tom Rogan was a tit-man, always had been, and tall girls almost always had disappointing tits. They wore thin shirts and their nipples drove you crazy, but when you got those thin shirts off you discovered that nipples were really all they had. The tits themselves looked like the pull-knobs on a bureau drawer. 'More than a handful's wasted,' his college roommate had been fond of saying, but as far as Tom was concerned his college roommate had been so full of shit he squeaked going into a turn.
Oh, she had been some kind of fine-looking, all right, with that dynamite body and that gorgeous fall of red wavy hair. But she was weak . . . weak somehow. It was as if she was sending out radio signals which only he could receive. You could point to certain things — how much she smoked (but he had almost cured her of that), the restless way her eyes moved, never quite meeting the eyes of whoever was talking to her, only touching them from time to time and then leaping nimbly away; her habit of lightly rubbing her elbows when she was nervous; the look of her fingernails, which were kept neat but brutally short. Tom noticed this latter the first time he met her. She picked up her glass of white wine, he saw her nails, and thought: She keeps them short like that because she bites them.
Lions may not think, at least not the way people think . . . but they see. And when antelopes start away from a waterhole, alerted by that dusty-rug scent of approaching death, the cats can observe which one falls to the rear of the pack, maybe because it has a lame leg, maybe because it is just naturally slower . . . or maybe because its sense of danger is less
developed. And it might even be possible that some antelopes — and some women — want to be brought down.
Suddenly he heard a sound that jerked him rudely out of these memories — the snap of her cigarette lighter.
The dull rage came again. His stomach filled with a heat which was not entirely unpleasant. Smoking. She was smoking. They had had a few of Tom Rogan's Special Seminars on the subject. And here she was, doing it again. She was a slow learner, all right, but a good teacher is at his best with slow learners.
'Yes,' she said now. 'Uh-huh. All right. Yes . . . ' She listened, then uttered a strange, jagged laugh he had never heard before. 'Two things, since you ask — reserve me a room and say me a prayer. Yes, okay . . . uh-huh . . . me too. Goodnight.'
She was hanging up as he came in. He meant to come in hard, yelling at her to put it out, put it out now, RIGHT NOW!, but when he saw her the words died in his throat. He had seen her like this before, but only two or three times. Once before their first big show, once before the first private preview showing for national buyers, and once when they had gone to New York for the International Design Awards.
She was moving across the bedroom in long strides, the white lace nightgown molded to her body, the cigarette clamped between her front teeth (God he hated the way she looked with a butt in her mouth) sending back a little white riband over her left shoulder like smoke from a locomotive's stack.
But it was her face that really gave him pause, that caused the planned shout to die in his throat. His heart lurched — k a-BAMP! — and he winced, telling himself that what he felt was not fear but only surprise at finding her this way.
She was a woman who really came alive all the way only when the rhythm of her work spiked toward a climax. Each of those remembered occasions had of course been career-related. At those tunes he had seen a different woman from the one he knew so well — a woman who fucked up his sensitive fear-radar with wild bursts of static. The woman who came out in times of stress was strong but high-strung, fearless but unpredictable.
There was lots of color in her cheeks now, a natural blush high on her cheekbones. Her eyes were wide and sparkly, not a trace of sleep left in them. Her hair flowed and streamed. And . . . oh, looky here, friends and neighbors! Oh you just looky right here! Is she taking a suitcase out of the closet? A suitcase? By God, she is!
Reserve me a room . . . say me a prayer.
Well, she wasn't going to need a room in any hotel, not in the foreseeable future, because little Beverly Rogan was going to be staying right here at home, thank you very much, and taking her meals standing up for the next three or four days.
But she very well might need a prayer or two before he was through with her.
She tossed the suitcase on the foot of the bed and then went to her bureau. She opened the top drawer and pulled out two pairs of jeans and a pair of cords. Tossed them into the suitcase. Back to the bureau, cigarette streaming smoke over her shoulder. She grabbed a sweater, a couple of tee-shirts, one of the old Ship 'n Shore blouses that she looked so stupid in but refused to give up. Whoever had called her sure hadn't been a jet-setter. This was dull stuff, strictly Jackie –Kennedy-Hyannisport-weekend stuff.
Not that he cared about who had called her or where she thought she was going, since she wasn't going anywhere. Those were not the things which pecked steadily at his mind, dull and achy from too much beer and not enough sleep.