Paul watched her hasten down the walk to the driveway, intent not on meeting but intercepting him. Here was something much like his earlier fantasy come true. Not a cop but someone IN AUTHORITY. AUTHORITY had arrived at Annie's, and its arrival here could do nothing but shorten his own life.
Why not invite him in, Annie? he thought, trying not to choke on the dusty rag. Why not invite him in and show him your African bird?
Oh, no. She would no more invite Mr Rocky Mountain Businessman in than she would drive Paul to Stapleton International and put a first-class ticket back to New York in his hand.
She was talking even before she reached him, the breath pluming out of her mouth in shapes like cartoon balloons with no words written inside them. He held out a hand dressed in a narrowly elegant black leather glove. She looked at it briefly, contemptuously, then began to shake a finger in his face, more of those empty white balloons puffing from her mouth. She finished struggling into her coat and stopped shaking her finger long enough to rake the zipper up.
He reached into the pocket of his topcoat and brought out a sheet of paper. He held it out to her almost apologetically. Although Paul had no way of knowing exactly what it was, he was sure that Annie had an adjective for it. Cockadoodie, maybe.
She led him along the driveway, still talking. They passed beyond his sightline. He could see their shadows lying like construction-paper cutouts on the snow, but that was all. She had done it on purpose, he realized dully. If he, Paul, couldn't see them, then there was no chance that Mr Rancho Grande might look in through the guest-room window and see him.
The shadows remained on the melting snowpack of Annie's driveway for about five minutes. Once Paul actually heard Annie's voice, raised in an angry, hectoring shout. Those were a long five minutes for Paul. His shoulders ached. He found he couldn't move to ease the ache. After cuffing his hands together, she had somehow bound them to the bedstead.
But the dustcloth in his mouth was the worst. The stink of the furniture polish was making his head ache, and he was growing steadily more nauseated. He concentrated grimly on controlling it; he had no interest in choking to death, his windpipe full of vomit, while Annie argued with an elderly town official who got his hair trimmed once a week at the local tonsorial emporium and probably wore rubbers over his black oxfords all winter long.
Cold sick-sweat had broken on his forehead by the time they reappeared. Now Annie was holding the paper. She followed Mr Rancho Grande, shaking her finger at his back, those empty cartoon balloons issuing from her mouth. Mr Rancho Grande would not look around at her. His face was carefully blank. Only his lips, pressed together so tightly that they almost disappeared, gave away some inward emotion. Anger? Perhaps. Distaste? Yes. That was probably closer.
You think she's crazy. You and all your poker cronies - who probably control this whole minor-league ballpark of a town probably played a hand of Lowball or something to see who got this shit detail. No one likes to bring bad news to crazy people. But oh, Mr Rancho Grande! If you knew just how crazy she really is, I don't think you'd turn your back on her like that!
He got into the Bel Air. He closed the door. Now she stood beside the car, shaking her finger at his closed window, and again Paul could dimly hear her voice: “ - think you are so-so-so smaa- aart!” The Bel Air began to back slowly down the driveway. Mr Rancho Grande was ostentatiously not looking at Annie, whose teeth were bared.
Louder still: “You think you are such a great big wheel!” Suddenly she kicked the front bumper of Mr Rancho Grande's car, kicked it hard enough to knock packed chunks of snow out of the wheel-wells. The old guy had been looking over his right shoulder, guiding the car down the driveway. Now he looked back at her, startled out of the careful neutrality he had maintained all through his visit.
“Well I'll tell you something, you dirty bird! LITTLE DOGS GO TO THE BATHROOM ALL OVER BIG WHEELS! What do you think of that? Hah?” Whatever he thought of it, Mr Rancho Grande was not going to give Annie the satisfaction of seeing it - that neutral expression dropped over his face again like the visor on a suit of armor. He backed out of Paul's sight.
She stood there for moment, hands fisted on hips, then stalked back toward the house. He heard the kitchen door open and explode shut.
Well, he's gone, Paul thought. Mr Rancho Grande is gone but I'm here. Oh yes, I'm here.
9
But this time she didn't take her anger out on him.
She came into his room, her coat still on but now unzipped. She began to pace rapidly back and forth, not even looking his way. The piece of paper was still in her hand, and every now and then she would shake it in front of her own nose as if in self-chastisement.
“Ten-percent tax increase, he says! In arrears, he says! Liens! Lawyers! Quarterly payment, he says! Overdue! Cockadoodie! Kaka! Kaka-poopie-DOOPIE!” He grunted into the rag, but she didn't look around. She was in a room by herself. She walked back and forth faster, cutting the air with her solid body. He kept thinking she would tear the paper to shreds, but it seemed she did not quite dare do this.
“Five hundred and six dollars!” she cried, this time brandishing the paper in front of his nose. She absently tore the rag that was choking him out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. He hung his head over to one side, dry-heaving. His arms felt as if they were slowly detaching themselves from their sockets. “Five hundred and six dollars and seventeen cents! They know I don't want anyone out here! I told them didn't I? And look! Look!” He dry-heaved again, making a desperate burping sound.
“If you vomit I guess you'll just have to lie in it. Looks like I've got other fish to fry. He said something about a lie on my house. What's that?”
“Handcuffs… “ he croaked.
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “Sometimes you're such a baby.” She pulled the key from her skirt pocket and pushed him even farther to the left, so that his nose pressed the sheets. He screamed, but she ignored him. There was a click, a rattle, and then his hands were free. He sat up
gasping, then slid slowly down against his pillows, mindful to push his legs straight ahead as he did. There were pale furrows in his thin wrists. As he watched they began to fill in red.
Annie stuffed the cuffs absently into her skirt pocket, as if police restraints were found in most decent houses, like Kleenex or coathangers.
“What's a lien?” she asked again. “Does that mean they own my house? Is that what it means?”
“No,” he said. “It means that you… He cleared his throat and got another after-taste of that fumey dust-rag. His chest hitched as he dry-heaved again. She took no notice of that; simply stood impatiently staring at him until he could talk. After awhile he could. “Just means you can't sell it.”
“Just? Just? You got a funny idea of just, Mr Paul Sheldon. But I suppose the troubles of a poor widow like me don't seem very important to a rich Mister Smart Guy like you.”
“On the contrary. I think of your troubles as my troubles, Annie. I just meant that a lien isn't much compared to what they could do if you got seriously in arrears. Are you?”
“Arrears. That means in the bucket, doesn't it?”
“In the bucket, in the hole, behind. Yes.”
“I'm no shanty-Irish moocher!” He saw the thin sheen of her teeth as her upper lip lifted. “I pay my bills. I just… this time I just… “ You forgot, didn't you? You forgot, just the way you keep forgetting to change February on that damned calendar. Forgetting to make the quarterly property-tax payment is a hell of a lot more serious than forgetting to change the calendar page, and you're upset because this is the first time you forgot something that big. Fact is, you're getting worse, Annie, aren't you? A little worse every day. Psychotics can cope in the world - after a fashion - and sometimes, as I think you well know, they get away with some very nasty shit. But there's a borderline between the lands of manageable and unmanageable psychosis. You're getting closer to that line every day… and part of you knows it.
“I just hadn't got around to it yet,” Annie said sullenly. “Having you here has kept me busier than a one-armed paperhanger.” An idea occurred to him - a really fine one. The potential for brownie-points in this idea seemed almost unlimited. “I know,” he said with quiet sincerity. “I owe you my life and I haven't been anything but a pain in the tail to you. I've got about four hundred bucks in my wallet. I want you to pay your arrears with it.”
“Oh, Paul - “ She was looking at him, both confused and pleased. “I couldn't take your money - “
“It's not mine,” he said. He grinned at her, his number-one Who loves ya, baby? grin. And inside he thought: What I want, Annie, is for you to do one of your forgetting acts when I've got access to one of your knives and I'm sure I can move well enough to use it. You'll be frying in hell ten seconds before you know you're dead. “It's yours. Call it a down-payment, if you want.” He paused, then took a calculated risk: “If you don't think I know I'd be dead if it wasn't for you, you're crazy.”
“Paul… I don't know… “
“I'm serious.” He allowed his smile to melt into an expression of winning (or so he hoped - please, God, let it be winning) sincerity. “You did more than save my life, you know. You saved two lives - because without you, Misery would still be lying in her grave.” Now she was looking at him shiningly, the paper in her hand forgotten.
“And you showed me the error of my ways, got me back on track again. I owe you a lot more than four hundred bucks just for that. And if you don't take that money, you're going to make me feel bad.”
“Well, I… all right. I… thank you.”
“I should be thanking you. May I see that paper?” She gave it to him with no protest at all. It was an overdue tax notice. The lien was little more than a formality. He scanned it quickly, then handed it back.
“Have you got money in the bank?” Her eyes shifted away from his. “I've got a little put aside, but not in the bank. I don't believe in banks.”
“This says they can't execute the lien on you unless the bill remains unpaid by March 25th. What's today?” She frowned at the calendar. “Goodness! That's wrong.” She untacked it, and the boy on his sled disappeared Paul watched this happen with an absurd pang of regret. March showed a white-water stream rushing pell-mell between snowy banks.
She peered myopically at the calendar for a moment and then said: “Today is March 25th.” Christ, so late, so late, he thought.
“Sure - that's why he came out.” He wasn't telling you they had slapped a lien on your house, Annie - he was telling you they would have to if you didn't cough up by the time the town offices closed tonight. Guy was actually trying to do you a favor. “But if you pay this five hundred and six dollars before - “
“And seventeen cents,” she put in fiercely. “Don't forget the cockadoodie seventeen cents.”
“All right, and seventeen cents. If you pay it before they close the town offices this afternoon, no lien. If people in town really feel about you the way you say they do, Annie - “
“They hate me! They are all against me, Paul!”
“ - then your taxes are one of the ways they'll try to pry you out. Hollering “lien” at someone who has missed on quarterly property-tax payment is pretty weird. It smells. Well - it stinks. If you missed a couple of quarterly payments, they might try to take your home - sell it at auction. It's a crazy idea, but I guess they'd technically be within their rights.” She laughed, a harsh, barking sound. “Let them try! I'd guthole a few of them! I'll tell you that much. Yes, sir! Yessiree Bob!”
“In the end they'd guthole you,” he said quietly. “But the isn't the point.”
“Then what is?”
“Annie, there are probably people in Sidewinder who at two and three years behind on their taxes. No one is taking their homes or auctioning their furnishings down at the town hall. The worst that happens to people like that most of the time is that they lose their town water. The Roydmans, now.” He looked at her shrewdly. “You think they pay their taxes on time?”
“That white trash?” she nearly shrieked. “Hah!”
“I think they are on the prod for you, Annie.” He did in fact believe this.
“I'll never go! I'll stay up here just to spite them! I'll stay up here and spit in their eye!”
“Can you come up with a hundred and six bucks to go with the four hundred in my wallet?”
“Yes.” She was beginning to look cautiously relieved.
