'I'll feel better when you're gone.'
'Fair enough. I won't take up much of your time.' He tucked the gun back into his waistband and got to his feet. His knees popped and Lisey thought again (marveled, really), This is no dream. This is really happening to me. He kicked the glass absently, and it rolled a little way onto the oyster-white wall-to-wall carpet out there in the main office. He hitched up his pants. 'Can't afford to linger in any case, Missus. Your cop'll be back, him or another, and I got an idear you got some kind of sister-twister goin on as well, isn't that so?'
Lisey made no reply.
Dooley shrugged as if to say Have it your way and then leaned out of the bar alcove. For Lisey it was a surreal moment, because she had seen Scott do exactly the same thing many times, one hand gripping each side of the doorless doorway, feet on the bare wood of the alcove, head and torso out in the study. But Scott would never have been caught dead in khakis; he had been a bluejeans man to the end. Also, there had been no bald spot at the back of his head. My husband died with a full head of hair, she thought.
'Awful nice place,' he said. 'What is it? Converted hayloft? Must be.'
She said nothing.
Dooley continued to lean out, now rocking back and forth a little, looking first left, then right. Lord of all he surveys, she thought.
'Real nice place,' he said. 'Just about what I would have expected. You got your three rooms—what I'd call rooms—and your three skylights, so there's plenty of natural light. Down home we call places all a-row like this shotgun houses or sometimes shotgun shacks, but ain't nothing shacky about this, is it?'
Lisey said nothing.
He turned to her, looking serious. 'Not that I begrudge him, Missus—or you, now that he's dead. I did some time in Brushy Mountain State Prison. Maybe the Prof told you that. And it was your husbun got me through the worst of it. I read all his books, and you know which one I liked best?'
Of course, Lisey thought. Empty Devils. You probably read it nine times.
But Dooley surprised her. 'The Coaster's Daughter. And I didn't just like it, Missus, I loved it. I've made it my bi'ness to read that book ever' two or three years since I found it in the jailhouse library, and I could quote you whole long passages of it. You know what part I like best? Where Gene finally talks back and tells his father he's leaving whether the old man likes it or not. Do you know what he tells that miserable holy-rollin old fuck, pardon my French?' That he has never understood the duty of love, Lisey thought, but she said nothing. Dooley didn't seem to mind; he was on a roll now, enraptured.
'Gene says his old man has never understood the duty of love. The duty of love! How beautiful is that? How many of us have felt something like that but haven't never had the words to say it? But your husbun did. For all of us who otherwise would have stood mute, that's what the Prof said. God must have loved your man, Missus, to give him such a tongue.'
Dooley looked up at the ceiling. The cords on his neck stood out.
'The DUTY! Of LOVE! And the ones God loves best he takes home soonest, to be with Him. Amen.' He lowered his head briefly. His wallet stuck out of his back pocket. It was on a chain. Of course it was. Men like Jim Dooley always wore their wallets on chains that were attached to their belt-loops. Now he looked up again and said: 'He deserved a nice place like this. I hope he enjoyed it, when he wasn't agonizin over his creations.'
Lisey thought of Scott at the desk he called Dumbo's Big Jumbo, sitting before his big-screen Mac and laughing at something he'd just written. Chewing either a plastic straw or his own fingernails. Sometimes singing along with the music. Making arm-farts if it was summer and hot and his shirt was off. That was how he agonized over his smucking creations. But she still said nothing. On the sound-system, Ole Hank gave way to his son. Junior was singing 'Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound.'
Dooley said: 'Giving me the old silent treatment? Well, more power to you, but it won't do you no good, Missus. You have got some correction comin. I won't try to sell you the old one about how it's gonna hurt me more than it's gonna hurt you, but I will say I've come to like your spunk in the short time I've known you, and that it's gonna—going to—hurt both of us. I also want to say I'll go as easy as I can, because I don't want to break that spirit of yours. Still—we had an agreement, and you didn't keep to it.'
An agreement? Lisey felt a chill sweep through her body. For the first time she got a clear picture of the breadth and complexity of Dooley's insanity. The gray wings threatened to descend across her vision and this time she fought them fiercely.
Dooley heard the rattle of the handcuff-chain (he must have had the cuffs in his sack, along with the mayonnaise jar) and turned to her.
Easy, babyluv, easy, Scott murmured. Talk to the guy—run your everlasting mouth.
This was advice Lisey hardly needed. As long as the talking was going on, the correctin would remain deferred.
'Listen to me, Mr. Dooley. We didn't have an agreement, you're mistaken about that—' She saw his brow begin to furrow, his look begin to darken, and hurried on. 'Sometimes it's hard to get things together over the phone, but I'm ready to work with you now.' She swallowed and heard a distinct click in her throat. She was ready for more water, a good long cool drink of it, but this didn't seem like a good time to ask. She leaned forward, fixed his eyes with her own, blue on blue, and spoke with all the earnestness and sincerity she could muster. 'I'm saying that as far as I'm concerned, you've made your point. And you know what? You were just looking at the manuscripts your…um…your colleague especially wants. Did you notice the black file-cabinets in the central space?' Now he was looking at her with his eyebrows hoisted and a skeptical little smile playing on his mouth…but that might only be his dickering look. Lisey allowed herself to hope. 'Looked to me like there was a right smart of boxes downstairs, too,' he said. 'More of his books, from the look of them.'
'Those are—' What was she going to tell him? Those are bools, not books? She guessed that most of them were, but Dooley wouldn't understand. They're practical jokes, Scott's version of itchy-powder and plastic vomit? That he'd understand but likely not believe.
He was still looking at her with that skeptical smile. Not a dickering look at all. No, this was a look that said While you're at it, why don't you go on and pull the other one, Missus?
'There's nothing in those cartons downstairs but carbon copies and Xeroxes and blank sheets,' she said, and it sounded like a lie because it was a lie, and what was she supposed to say? You're too crazy to understand the truth, Mr. Dooley? Instead she rushed on. 'The stuff Woodsmucky wants—the good stuff—is all up here. Unpublished stories…copies of letters to other writers…their letters back to him…'
Dooley threw back his head and laughed. 'Woodsmucky! Missus, you got your husbun's way with words.' Then the laughter faded, and although the smile stayed on his lips, there was no more amusement in his eyes. His eyes looked like ice. 'So what do you think I sh'd do? Hie over to Oxford or Mechanic Falls and rent a U-Haul, then come back here to load those filing cabinets up? Say, maybe you could get one of those deputy-boys to he'p me!'
'I—'
'Shut up.' Pointing a finger at her. The smile all gone by now. 'Why, if I was to go away and then come back, you'd have a dozen State Police graybacks here waitin for me, I reckon. They'd take me in and Missus, I tell you what, I'd deserve another ten years inside just for believin such a thing.'
'But—'
'And besides, that wadnt—wasn't—the deal we made. The deal was that you'd call the Prof, ole Woodsmucky— girl, I like that—and he'd send me a e-mail the special way we have, and then he'd arrange about the papers. Right?'
Some part of him actually believed this. Had to believe it, or why would he keep on with it when it was just the
