at monsieur’s bedside. A single egg, poached or scrambled, three days a week. High-fiber cereal the other four days. Then into the wheelchair. Over to the window. Find the hole in the paper. Fall into the nineteenth century, when men were men and women wore bustles. Lunch. Afternoon nap. Up again, sometimes to edit, sometimes just to read. She had everything Somerset Maugham had ever written (once Paul found himself wondering dourly if she had John Fowles’s first novel on her shelves and decided it might be better not to ask), and Paul began to work his way through the twenty-odd volumes that comprised Maugham’s oeuvre, fascinated by the man’s canny grasp of story values. Over the years Paul had grown more and more resigned to the fact that he could not read stories as he had when he was a kid; by becoming a writer of them himself, he had condemned himself to a life of dissection. But Maugham first seduced him and then made him a child again, and that was wonderful. At five o’clock she would serve him a light supper, and at seven she would roll in the black-and-white television and they would watch M*A*S*H and WKRP in Cincinnati. When these were over, Paul would write. When he was done, he would roll the wheelchair slowly (he could have gone much faster, but it was just as well that Annie should not know that) over to the bed. She would hear, come in, and help him back into bed. More medication. Boom. Out like a light. And the next day would be just the same. And the next. And the next.
Being such a straight arrow was part of the reason for this amazing fecundity, but Annie herself was a bigger one. After all, it was her single hesitant suggestion about the bee-sting which had shaped the book and given it its urgency when Paul had firmly believed he could never feel urgent about Misery again.
He’d been sure of one thing from the start: there really was no Miser’s Return. His attention had been focused only on finding a way to get the bitch out of her grave without cheating before Annie decided to inspire him by giving him an enema with a handful of Ginsu knives. Minor matters such as what the fucking book was supposed to be about would have to wait.
During the two days following Annie’s trip to town to pay her tax-bill, Paul tried to forget his failure to take advantage of what could have been a golden opportunity to escape and concentrated on getting Misery back to Mrs. Ramage’s cottage instead. Taking her to Geoffrey’s home was no good. The servants—most notably Geoffrey’s gossipy butler, Tyler—would see and talk. Also, he needed to establish the total amnesia which had been caused by the shock of being buried alive. Amnesia? Shit, the chick could barely talk. Sort of a relief, given Misery’s usual burblings.
So—what next? The bitch was out of her grave, now where was the fucking story? Should Geoffrey and Mrs. Ramage tell Ian that Misery was still alive? Paul didn’t think so but he wasn’t sure—not being sure of things, he knew, was a charmless corner of purgatory reserved for writers who were driving fast with no idea at all where they were going.
Not Ian, he thought, looking out at the barn. Not Ian, not yet. The doctor first. That old asshole with all the n’s in his name. Shinebone.
The thought of the doctor brought Annie’s comment about the bee-stings to mind, and not for the first time. It kept recurring at odd moments. One person in every dozen . . .
But it just wouldn’t play. Two unrelated women in neighboring townships, both allergic to stings in the same rare way?
Three days following the Great Annie Wilkes Tax Bail-out, Paul had been drowsing his way into his afternoon nap when the guys in the sweatshop weighed in, and weighed in heavy. This time it wasn’t a flare; this time it was an H-bomb explosion.
He sat bolt upright in bed, ignoring the flare of pain which shot up his legs.
“Annie!” he bawled. “Annie, come in here!”
He heard her thump down the stairs two at a time and then run down the hallway. Her eyes were wide and scared when she came in.
“Paul! What’s wrong? Are you cramping? Are you—”
“No,” he said, but of course he was; his mind was cramping. “No. Annie, I’m sorry if I scared you, but you gotta help