Cujo

sitting all week in the sun. This is some nice little game we're playing. We've got Rob Martin on our side. We've got that refugee from the Home for Old Actors on our side. Undoubtedly we'll have Summers Marketing & Research on our side, since they bill us. How wonderful. We've got everybody on our side but the people who matter.'

'Nothing's decided, Rog. Not yet.'

'Althea doesn't really understand how much is at stake,' Roger said. 'My fault; okay, so I'm a chicken, duck-duck. But she loves it in Bridgton, Vic. She loves it there. And the girls, they've got their school friends ... and the lake in the summer ... they don't know what the fuck's coming down at all.'

'Yeah, it's scary. I'm not trying to talk you out of that, Rog.'

'Does Donna know how bad it is?'

'I think she just thought it was an awfully good joke on us at first But she's getting the drift of it now.'

'But she never took to Maine the way the rest of us did.'

'Not at first, maybe. I think she'd raise her hands in horror at the idea of taking Tad back to New York now.'

'What am I going to do?' Roger asked again. 'I'm no kid any more. You're thirty-two, but Vic, I'm going to be forty-one next month. What am I supposed to do? Start Liking my resume around? Is J. Walter Thompson going to welcome me in with open arms? 'Hi, Rog-baby, I've been holding your old spot for you. You start at thirty-five-five.' Is that what he's going to say?'

Vic only shook his head, but a part of him was a little irritated with Roger.

'I used to be just mad. Well, I'm still mad, but now I'm more scared than anything else. I lie in bed at night and try to imagine how it's going to be - after. What it's going to be. I can't imagine it. You look at me and you say to yourself, 'Roger's dramatizing.' You -'

'I never thought any such thing,' Vic said, hoping he didn't sound guilty.

'I won't say you're lying,' Roger said, 'but I've been working with you long enough to have a pretty good idea of how you think. Better than you might know. Anyway I wouldn't blame you for the thought -but there's a big difference between thirty-two and fortyone, Vic. They kick a lot of the guts out of you in between thirtytwo and forty-one.'

'Look, I still think we've got a fighting chance with this proposal -'

'What I'd Iike to do is bring about two dozen boxes of Red Razberry Zingers along with us to Cleveland,' Roger said, 'and then get them to bend over after they tie the can to our tails. I'd have a place for all that cereal, you know it?'

Vic clapped Roger on the shoulder. 'Yeah, I get you.'

'What are you going to do if they pull the account?' Roger asked.

Vic had thought about that. He had been around it from every possible angle. It would have been fair to say that he had gotten to the problem quite a while before Roger had been able to make himself approach it.

'If they pull out, I'm going to work harder than I ever have in my life,' Vic said. 'Thirty hours a day, if I have to. If I have to rope in sixty small New England accounts to make up for what Sharp billed, then I'll do it.'

'We'll kill ourselves for nothing.'

'Maybe,' Vic said. 'But we'll go down with all guns firing. Right?'

'I figure,' Roger said unsteadily, 'that if Althea goes to work, we can hold on to the house for about a year. That ought to be just about enough time to sell it, the way interest rates are.'

Suddenly Vic felt it trembling right behind his lips: the whole shitty black mess that Donna had managed to get herself into because of her need to keep pretending that she

believed it - how still the night must be! How calm!

She felt very alive.

Her heart was a small, powerful machine flexing in her chest. Her blood was up. Her eyes seemed to move effortlessly and perfectly in their bed of moisture. Her kidneys were heavy but not unpleasantly so. This was it; this was for keeps. The thought that it was her life she was putting on the line, her very own real life, had a heavy, silent fascination, like a great weight which has reached the outermost degree of its angle of repose. She swung the car door shut - clunk.

She waited, scenting the air like an animal. There was nothing. The maw of Joe Camber's barn-garage was dark and silent. The chrome of the Pinto's front bumper twinkled dimly. Faintly, the Dixieland music played on, fast and brassy and cheerful. She bent down, expecting her knees to pop, but they didn't. She picked up a handful of the loose gravel. One by one she began to toss the stones over the Pinto's hood at the place she couldn't see.

The first small stone landed in front of Cujo's nose, clicked off more stones, and then lay still. Cujo twitched a little. His tongue hung out. He seemed to be grinning. The second stone struck beyond him. The third struck his shoulder. He didn't move. THE WOMAN was still trying to draw him out.

Donna stood by the car, frowning. She had heard the first stone click off the gravel, also the second. But the third ... it was as if it had never come down. There had been no minor click. What did that mean?

Suddenly she didn't want to run for the porch door until she could see that there was nothing lurking in front of the car. Then, yes. Okay. But ... just to make sure.

She took one step. Two. Three.

Cujo got ready. His eyes glowed in the darkness.

Four steps from the door of the car. Her heart was a drum in her chest.

Now Cujo could see THE WOMAN's hip and thigh. In a moment she would see him. Good. He wanted her to see him.

Five steps from the door.

Donna turned her head. Her neck creaked like the spring on an old screen door. She felt a premonition, a sense of low sureness. She turned her head, looking for Cujo. Cujo was there. He had been there all the time, crouched low, hiding from her, waiting for her, laying back in the tall bushes.

Their eyes locked for a moment - Donna's wide blue ones, Cujo's muddy red ones. For a moment she was looking out of his eyes, seeing herself, seeing THE WOMAN - was he seeing himself through hers?

Then he sprang at her.

There was no paralysis this time. She threw herself backward, fumbling behind her for the doorhandle. He was snarling and grinning, and the drool ran out between his teeth in thick strings. He landed where she had been and skidded stiff-legged in the gravel, giving her a precious extra second.

Her thumb found the door button below the handle and depressed it. She pulled. The door was stuck. The door wouldn't open. Cujo leaped at her.

It was as if someone had slung a medicine ball right into the soft, vulnerable flesh of her breasts. She could feel them push out toward her ribs - it hurt - and then she had the dog by the throat, her fingers sinking into its heavy, rough fur, trying to hold it away from her. She could hear the quickening sob of her respiration. Starlight ran across Cujo's mad eyes in dull semicircles. His teeth were snapping only inches from her face and she could smell a dead world on his breath, terminal sickness, senseless murder. She thought crazily of the drain backing up just before her mother's party, spurting green goo all over the ceiling.

Somehow, using all her strength, she was able to fling him away when his back feet left the ground in another lunge at her throat. She beat helplessly behind her for the door button. She found it, but before she could even push it in. Cujo came again. She kicked out at him, and the sole of her sandal struck his muzzle, already badly lacerated in his earlier kamikaze charges at the door. The dog sprawled back on his haunches, howling out his pain