Darlene looked up, across the room, and wasn't surprised to see that the bank of TVs that had been showing horse races and boxing matches were now showing the spinning roulette wheel and her.
I'm even a TV star. Lucky me. Lucky me. Oh, so lucky me.
The ball spun. The ball bounced. It almost caught, then spun again, a little white dervish racing around the polished wood circumference of the wheel.
Odds! she suddenly cried. What are the odds?
Thirty to one, the tall bald man said. Twenty-four thousand dollars should you win, madam.
Darlene closed her eyes and opened them in 322. She was still sitting in the chair, with the envelope in one hand and the quarter that had fallen out of it in the other. Her tears of laughter were still wet on her cheeks.
Lucky me, she said, and squeezed the envelope so she could look into it.
No note. Just another part of the fantasy, misspellings and all.
Sighing, Darlene slipped the quarter into her uniform pocket and began to clean up 322.
Instead of taking Paul home, as she normally did after school, Patsy brought him to the hotel. He's sneezing all over the place, she explained, her voice dripping with disdain, which only a 13-year-old can muster in such quantities. He's, like, choking on it. I thought maybe you'd want to
take him to the Doc in the Box.
Paul looked at her silently from his watering, patient eyes. His nose was as red as the stripe on a candy cane. They were in the lobby; there were no guests checking in currently, and Mr. Avery (Tex to the maids, who unanimously hated the little cowboy) was away from the desk. Probably back in the office salving his saddle sores.
Darlene put her palm on Paul's forehead, felt the warmth simmering there, and sighed. Suppose you're right, she said. How are you feeling, Paul?
Ogay, Paul said in a distant, fog horning voice.
Even Patsy looked depressed. He'll probably be dead by the time he's 16, she said. The only case of, like, spontaneous AIDS in the history of the world.
You shut your dirty little mouth! Darlene said, much more sharply than she had intended, but Paul was the one who looked wounded.
He winced and looked away from her.
He's a baby, too, Patsy said hopelessly. I mean, really.
No, he's not. He's sensitive, that's all. And his resistance is low.
She fished in her uniform pocket. Paul? Want this?
He looked back at her, saw the quarter, and smiled a little.
What are you going to do with it, Paul? Patsy asked him as he took it. Take Deirdre McCausland out on a date? She snickered.
I'll thing of subthing, Paul said.
Leave him alone, Darlene said. Don't bug him for a little while.
Could you do that?
Yeah - but what do I get? Patsy asked her. I walked him over here safe - I always walk him safe -so what do I get?
Braces, Darlene thought, if I can ever afford them. And she was suddenly overwhelmed by unhappiness, by a sense of life as some vast cold junk pile - deluminum slag, perhaps - that was always looming over you, always waiting to fall, cutting you to screaming ribbons even before it crushed the life out of you. Luck was a joke.
Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.
Mom? Mommy? Patsy sounded suddenly concerned. I don't want anything. I was just kidding around, you know.
I've got a Sassy for you, Darlene said. I found it in one of my rooms and put it in my locker.
This month's? Patsy sounded suspicious.
Actually this month's. Come on.
They were halfway across the room when they heard the drop of the coin and the unmistakable ratchet of the handle and whir of the drums as Paul pulled the handle of the slot machine beside the desk, then let it go.
Oh, you dumb hoser! You're in trouble now, Patsy cried. She did not sound exactly unhappy about it. How many times has Mom told you not to throw your money away on stuff like that? Slots're for the tourists!
But Darlene didn't even turn around. She stood looking at the door that led back to the maids' country, where the cheap cloth coats from Ames and Wal-Mart hung in a row like dreams that have grown seedy and been discarded, where the time clock ticked, where the air always smelled of Melissa's perfume and Jane's Ben-Gay. She stood listening to the drums whir, she stood waiting for the rattle of coins into the tray, and by the time they began to fall she was already thinking about how she could ask Melissa to watch the kids while she went down to the casino. It wouldn't take long.
Lucky me, she thought, and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her lids, the sound of the falling coins seemed very loud. It sounded like metal slag falling on top of a coffin.
It was all going to happen just the way she had imagined - she was somehow sure that it was - and yet that image of life as a huge slag heap, a pile of alien metal, remained. It was like an indelible stain that you know will never come out of some favorite piece of clothing.
Yet Patsy needed braces, Paul needed to see a doctor about his constantly running nose and constantly watering eyes, he needed a Sega system the way Patsy needed some colorful underwear that would make her feel funny and sexy, and she needed what? What did she need? Deke back?
Sure. Deke back, she thought, almost laughing. I need him back like I need puberty back, or labor pains. I need well (nothing) Yes, that was right. Nothing, zero, empty, adios. Black days, empty nights, and laughing all the way.
I don't need anything, because I'm lucky, she thought, her eyes still closed. Tears, squeezing out from beneath her closed lids, while behind her Patsy was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Oh, my God! Oh, you booger, you hit the jackpot. Paulie! You hit the damn jackpot!
Lucky, Darlene thought. So lucky. Oh, lucky me.
STEPHEN
KING
THE MAN IN THE BLACK SUIT
I am now a very old man and this is something that happened to me when I was very young--only nine years old. It was 1914, the summer after my brother, Dan, died in the west field and not long before America got into the First World War. I’ve never told anyone about what happened at the fork in the stream that day, and I never will. I’ve decided to write it down, though, in this book, which I will leave on the table beside my bed. I can’t write long, because my hands shake so these days and I have next to no strength, but I don’t think it will take long.
Later, someone may find what I have written. That seems likely to me, as it is pretty much human nature to look in a book marked
'Diary' after its owner has passed along. So, yes--my works will probably be read. A better question is whether anyone will believe them. Almost certainly not, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not belief I’m interested in but freedom. Writing can give that, I’ve found.
For twenty years I wrote a column called 'Long Ago and Far Away' for the Castle Rock Call, and I know that
