“I won’t,” Nettle said.
I know what you did, you crazy bitch, I know what you did, I know what you did, and I… am going to… get you!
“I won’t answer it. I’m going to work. She’s the one who’s crazy, not me. I never did a thing to her! Not one solitary thing!”
Raider barked agreement.
The telephone stopped ringing.
Nettle relaxed a little… but her heart was still pounding hard.
“You be a good boy,” she told Raider, stroking him. “I’ll be back late, because I’m going in late. But I love you, and if you remember that, you will be a good doggy all day long.”
This was a going-to-work incantation which Raider knew well, and he wagged his tail. Nettle opened the front door and peered both ways before stepping out. She had a bad moment when she saw a bright flash of yellow, but it wasn’t the crazy Polish woman’s car; the Pollard boy had left his Fisher-Price tricycle out on the sidewalk, that was all.
Nettle used her housekey to lock the door behind her, then walked around to the rear of the house to make sure the shed door was locked.
It was. She set off for Polly’s house, her purse over her arm and her eyes searching for the crazy Polish woman’s car (she was trying to decide if she should hide behind a hedge or simply stand her ground if she saw it). She was almost to the end of the block when it came to her that she had not checked the front door as carefully as she should have done. She glanced anxiously at her watch and then retraced her steps. She checked the front door. It was locked tight. Nettle sighed with relief, and then decided she ought to check the lock on the woodshed door, too, just to be safe.
“Better safe than sorry,” she muttered under her breath, and went around to the back of the house.
Her hand froze in the act of pulling on the handle of the woodshed door.
Inside, the telephone was ringing again.
“She’s crazy,” Nettle moaned. “I didn’t do anything!”
The shed door was locked, but she stood there until the telephone fell silent. Then she set sail for work again with her purse hanging over her arm.
4
This time she had gone almost two blocks before the conviction that she still might not have locked the front door recurred, gnawing at her. She knew she had, but she was afraid she hadn’t.
She stood by the blue U.S. mailbox at the corner of Ford and Deaconess Way, indecisive. She had almost made up her mind to push on when she saw a yellow car drift through the intersection a block down.
It wasn’t the crazy Polish woman’s car, it was a Ford, but she thought it might be an omen. She walked rapidly back to her house and checked both doors again. Locked. She got to the end of her walk before it occurred to her that she ought to doublecheck the cupboard door of the armoire as well, and make sure it was also locked.
She knew that it was, but she was afraid that it wasn’t.
She unlocked the front door and went inside. Raider jumped up on her, tail wagging wildly, and she petted him for a moment-but only a moment. She had to close the front door, because the crazy Polish woman might come by anytime. Anytime at all.
She slammed it, turned the thumb-bolt, and went back out to the woodshed. The cupboard door was locked, of course. She went back into the house and stood in the kitchen for a minute. Already she was beginning to worry, beginning to think she had made a mistake and the cupboard door really wasn’t locked. Maybe she hadn’t tugged on the pull hard enough to be really absolutely one hundred per cent sure. it might only be stuck.
She went back to check it again, and while she was checking, the telephone began to ring. She hurried back into the house with the key to the armoire clutched in her sweaty right hand. She barked her shin on a footstool and cried out in pain.
By the time she got to the living room, the telephone had stopped again.
“I can’t go to work today,” she muttered. “I have to… to…
(stand guard) That was it. She had to stand guard.
She picked up the phone and dialled quickly before her mind could start to gnaw at itself again, the way Raider gnawed at his rawhide chewy toys.
“Hello?” Polly said. “This is You Sew and Sew.”
“Hi, Polly. It’s me.”
“Nettle? Is everything all right?”
“Yes, but I’m calling from home, Polly. My stomach is upset.”
By now this was no lie. “I wonder if I could have the day off. I know about vacuuming the upstairs… and the telephone man is coming… but…”
“That’s all right,” Polly said at once. “The phone man isn’t coming until two, and I meant to leave early today, anyway. My hands still hurt too much to work for long. I’ll let him in.”
“If you really need me, I could-”
“No, really,” Polly assured her warmly, and Nettle felt tears prick her eyes. Polly was so kind.
“Are they sharp pains, Nettle? Shall I call Dr. Van Allen for you.
“No-just kind of crampy. I’ll be all right. If I can come in this afternoon, I will.”
“Nonsense,” Polly said briskly. “You haven’t asked for a day off since you came to work for me. just crawl into bed and go back to sleep. Fair warning: if you try to come in, I’ll just send you home.”
“Thank you, Polly,” Nettle said. She was on the verge of tears.
“You’re very good to me.”
“YOU deserve goodness. I’ve got to go, Nettle-customers. Lie down. I’ll call this afternoon to see how you’re doing.”
“Thank you. “You’re More than welcome. Bye-bye.”
“Toodle-oo,” Nettle said, and hung up.
She went at once to the window and twitched the curtain aside.
The street was empty-for now. She went back into the shed, used the key to open the armoire, and took out the lampshade. A feeling of calm and ease settled over her as soon as she had it cradled in her arms. She took it into the kitchen, washed it in warm, soapy water, rinsed it, and dried it carefully.
She opened one of the kitchen drawers and removed her butcher knife. She took this and the lampshade back into the living room and sat down in the gloom. She sat that way all morning, bolt upright in her chair, the lampshade in her lap and the butcher knife clenched in her right hand.
The phone rang twice.
Nettle didn’t answer it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
Friday, the eleventh of October, was a banner day at Castle Rock’s newest shop, particularly as morning gave way to afternoon and people began to cash their paychecks. Money in the hand was an incentive to shop; so was the good word of mouth sent around by those who had stopped in on Wednesday. There were a number of people, of course, who believed the judgments of people crude enough to visit a new store on the very first day it was open could not be trusted, but they were a minority, and the small silver bell over the front door of Needful Things jingled prettily all day long.
More stock had been either unpacked or delivered since Wednesday.
It was hard for those interested in such things to believe there had been a delivery-no one had seen a truck-but it really didn’t matter much, one way or the other. There was a lot more merchandise in Needful Things on Friday; that was the important thing.
Dolls, for instance. And beautifully crafted wooden jigsaw puzzles, some of them double-sided. There was a unique chess set: the pieces were chunks of rock crys@ carved into African animals by some primitive but fabulously talented hand-loping giraffes for knights, rhinos with their heads combatively lowered for castles, jackals for pawns, lion kings, sinuous leopard queens. There was a necklace of black pearls which was clearly expensive-how expensive nobody quite dared to ask (at least not that day)-but their beauty made them almost painful to look at, and several visitors to Needful Things went home feeling melancholy and oddly distraught, with the image of that pearl necklace dancing in the darkness just behind their eyes, black on black. Nor were all of these women.