lips: the whole shitty black mess that Donna had managed to get herself into because of her need to keep pretending that she was still nineteen-going-on-twenty. He felt a certain dull anger at Roger, Roger who had been happily and unquestioningly married for fifteen years. Roger who had pretty, unassuming Althea to warm his bed (if Althea Breakstone had so much as contemplated infidelity, Vic would have been surprised), Roger who had absolutely no idea of how many things could go wrong at once.
“Listen,” he said. “Thursday I got a note in the late mail—”
There was a sharp rap at the door.
“That’ll be room service,” Roger said. He picked up his shirt and wiped his face with it . . . and with the tears gone, it was suddenly unthinkable to Vic that he should tell Roger. Maybe because Roger was right after all, and the big difference was the nine years lying between thirty-two and forty-one.
Vic went to the door and got his beers and his sandwich. He didn’t finish what he had been about to say when the room-service waiter knocked, and Roger didn’t ask him. He was back in the ballgame and his own problems.
Vic sat down to eat his sandwich, not entirely surprised to and that most of his appetite was gone. His eyes fell on the telephone, and, still munching, he tried home again. He let it ring a dozen times before hanging up. He was frowning slightly. It was five past eight, five minutes past Tad’s usual bedtime. Perhaps Donna had met someone, or maybe they had gotten feeling dragged down by the empty house and gone visiting. After all, there was no law that said the Tadder had to be in bed on the stroke of eight, especially when it stayed light so late and it was so damned hot. Sure, that was likely. They had maybe gone down to the Common to goof around until it got cool enough to make sleep possible. Right.
(or maybe she’s with Kemp)
That was crazy. She had said it was over and he believed it. He really did believe it. Donna didn’t lie.
(and she doesn’t play around, either, right, champ?)
He tried to dismiss it, but it was no good. The rat was loose and it was going to be busy gnawing at him for some time now. What would she have done with Tad if she had suddenly taken it into her head to go off with Kemp? Were the three of them maybe in some motel right now, some motel between Castle Rock and Baltimore? Don’t be a chump, Trenton. They might—
The band concert, that was it, of course. There was a concert at the Common bandstand every Tuesday night. Some Tuesdays the high school band played, sometimes a chamber music group, sometimes a local ragtime group that called themselves the Ragged Edge. That’s where they were, of course—enjoying the cool and listening to the Ragged Edge belt their way through John Hurt’s “Candy Man” or maybe “Beulah Land.”
(unless she’s with Kemp)
He drained his beer and started on another.
Donna just stood outside the car for thirty seconds, moving her feet slightly on the gravel to get the pins and needles out of her legs. She watched the front of the garage, still feeling that if Cujo came, he would come from that way—maybe out of the mouth of the barn, maybe from around one of the sides, or perhaps from behind the farm truck, which looked rather canine itself by starlight—a big dusty black mongrel that was fast asleep.
She stood there, not quite ready to commit herself to it yet. The night breathed at her, small fragrances that reminded her of how it had been to be small, and to smell these fragrances in all their intensity almost as a matter of routine. Clover and hay from the house at the bottom of the hill, the sweet smell of honeysuckle.
And she heard something: music. It was very faint, almost not there, but her ears, almost eerily attuned to the night now, picked it up. Someone’s radio, she thought at first, and then realized with a dawning wonder that it was the band concert on the Common. That was Dixieland jazz she was hearing. She could even identify the tune; it was “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.” Seven miles, she thought. I never would have believed it—how still the night must bel How calm!
She felt very alive.
Her heart was a small, powerful machine flexing in her chest. Her