Roadwork - By Stephen King Page 0,76

going to come in, girl. There are no boats for nobody. You're never going to win a contest. There's no camera following you and people watching you straggle. This is it. All of it. Everything."

"You don't know what it's like here!" she cried.

"No, but I know what it's like here."

"You're not in charge of my life."

"I'm going to send you five hundred dollars-Olivia Brenner, c/o General Delivery, Las Vegas."

"I won't be here. They'll send it back."

"They won't. Because I'm not going to put on a return address."

"Throw it away, then."

"Use it to get a better job."

"No."

"Then use it for toilet paper," he said shortly, and hung up. His hands were shaking.

The phone tang five minutes later. The operator said: "Will you accept-"

"No," he said, and hung up.

The phone rang twice more that day, but it was not Olivia either time.

Around two in the afternoon Mary called him from Bob and Janet Preston's house-Bob and Janet, who always reminded him, like it or not, of Barney and Wilma Flintstone. How was he? Good. A lie. What was he doing for Christmas dinner? Going out to Old Customhouse tonight for turkey with all the trimmings. A lie. Would he like to come over here instead? Janet had all kinds of leftovers and would be happy to get rid of some. No, he really wasn't very hungry at the minute. The truth. He was pretty well looped, and on the spur of the moment he told her he would come to Walter's party. She sounded pleased. Did he know it was BYOB? When did Wally Hammer have a party that wasn't? he asked, and she laughed. They hung up and he went back to sit in front of the TV with a drink.

The phone rang again around seven-thirty, and by that time he was nothing as polite as looped-he was pissy-assed drunk.

"Lo?"

"Dawes?"

"Dozz here; whozzere?"

"Magliore, Dawes. Sal Magliore."

He blinked and peered into his glass. He looked at the Zenith color TV, where he had been watching a movie called Home for the Holidays. It was about a family that had gathered at their dying patriarch's house on Christmas Eve and somebody was murdering them one by one. Very Christmasy.

"Mr. Magliore," he said, pronouncing carefully. "Merry Christmas, sir! And the best of everything in the new year!"

"Oh, if you only knew how I dread '74," Magliore said dolefully. "That's the year the oil barons are going to take over the country, Dawes. You see if they don't. Look at my sales sheet for December if you don't believe me. I sold a 1971 Chevy Impala the other day, this car is clean as a whistle, and I sold it for a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks! Do you believe that? A forty-five percent knockdown in one year. But I can sell all the '71 Vegas I can get my hands on for fifteen, sixteen hundred bucks. And what are they, I ask you?"

"Little cars?" he asked cautiously.

"They're fucking Maxwell House coffee cans, that's what they are!" Magliore shouted. "Saltine boxes on wheels! Every time you look at the goddam things cross-eyed and say booga-booga at them the engine's outta tune or the exhaust system drops off or the steering linkage is gone. Pintos, Vegas, Gremlins, they're all the same, little suicide boxes. So I'm selling those as fast as I can get them and I can't move a nice Chevy Impala unless I fuckin' give it away. And you say happy new year. Jesus! Mary! Joseph the carpenter!"

"That's seasonal," he said.

"I didn't call about that anyway," Magliore answered. "I called to say congratulations."

"Congratuwhatchens?" He was honestly bewildered.

"You know. Crackle-crackle boom-boom."

"Oh, you mean-"

"Sssst. Not on the phone. Be cool, Dawes."

"Sure. Crackle-crackle boom-boom. That's good." He cackled.

"It was you, wasn't it, Dawes?"

"To you I wouldn't admit my middle name."

Magliore roared. "That's good. You're good, Dawes. You're a fruitcake, but you're a clever fruitcake. I admire that."

"Thanks," he said, and cleverly knocked back the rest of his drink.

"I also wanted to tell you that everything was going ahead on schedule down there. Rumble and roar."

The glass he was holding fell from his fingers and rolled across the rug.

"They've got seconds on all that stuff, Dawes. Thirds on most of it. They're paying cash until they got their bookwork straightened out, but everything is righton."

"You're crazy."

"No. I thought you ought to know. I told you, Dawes. Some things you can't get rid of."

"You're a bastard. You're lying. Why do you want to call a man up on Christmas night