and she knew she had it licked.
She smiled at the dog and raised both of her middle fingers from closed fists. She held them against the glass, which was now slightly fogged on the outside with Cujo’s breath. “Go get fucked,” she whispered.
After what seemed an endless time, the dog put its forepaws down and went back into the barn. Her mind turned down that same dark track again
(what’s it eating in there?) and then she slammed a door shut somewhere in her mind.
But there would be no more sleep, not for a long time, and it was so long until dawn. She sat upright behind the wheel, trembling, telling herself over and over again that it was ridiculous, really ridiculous, to feel that the dog was some kind of hideous revenant which had escaped from Tad’s closet, or that it knew more about the situation than she did.
Vie jerked awake in total darkness, rapid breath as dry as salt in his throat. His heart was triphammering in his chest, and he was totally disoriented—so disoriented that for a moment he thought he was falling, and reached out to clutch the bed.
He closed his eyes for a moment, forcibly holding himself together, making himself coalesce.
(you are in)
He opened his eyes and saw a window, a bedstand, a lamp.
(the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston Massachusetts)
He relaxed. That reference point given, everything came together with a reassuring click, making him wonder how he could have been so lost and totally apart, even momentarily. It was being in a strange place, he supposed. That, and the nightmare.
Nightmare! Jesus, it had been a beaut. He couldn’t remember having such a bad one since the falling dreams that had plagued him off and on during early puberty. He reached for the Travel-Ette clock on the nightstand, gripped it in both hands, and brought it close to his face. It was twenty minutes of two. Roger was snoring lightly in the other bed, and now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark he could see him, sleeping flat on his back. He had kicked the sheet over the end of the bed. He was wearing an absurd pair of pajamas covered with small yellow college pennants.
Vic swung his legs out of bed, went quietly into the bathroom, and closed the door. Roger’s cigarettes were on the washstand and he helped himself to one. He needed it. He sat on the toilet and smoked, tapping ashes into the sink.
An anxiety dream, Donna would have said, and God knew he had enough to be anxious about. Yet he had gone to bed around ten thirty in better spirits than he had been in for the last week. After arriving back at the hotel, he and Roger had spent half an hour in the Ritz-Carlton’s bar, kicking the apology idea around, and then, from the bowels of the huge old wallet he hauled around, Roger produced the home number of Yancey Harrington. Harrington was the actor who played the Sharp Cereal Professor.
“Might as well see if he’ll do it before we go any further,” Roger said. He had picked up the phone and dialed Harrington, who lived in Westport, Connecticut. Vic hadn’t known just what to expect. If pressed for his best guess, he would have said that probably Harrington would have to be stroked a little—he had been just miserable over the Zingers affair and what he considered it had done to his image.
Both of them had been in for a happy surprise. Harrington had agreed instantly. He recognized the realities of the situation and knew the Professor was pretty well finished (“Poor old guy’s a gone goose,” Harrington had said glumly). But he thought the final ad might be just the thing to get the company over the affair. Put it back on the rails, so to speak.
“Bullshit,” Roger said, grinning, after he had hung up. “He just likes the idea of one final curtain call. Not many actors in advertising get a chance like that. He’d buy his own plane ticket to Boston if we asked him to.”
So Vic had gone to bed happy and had fallen asleep almost instantly. Then, the dream. He was standing in front of Tad’s closet door in the dream and telling Tad that there was nothing in there, nothing at all. I’ll show you once and for all, he told Tad. He opened the closet door and saw that Tad’s clothes and toys were gone. There was a forest growing