3. Then, and with the first knob turned, a second knob be comes unblocked on the right pedestal. This second knob must be turned 270 degrees, which is to say it must be placed in the third position, always counterclockwise.
4. This third step unblocks a third knob on the left pedestal, but only for a five-second interval. During those five seconds the third knob must be turned five more positions, but this time alternating clockwise movements with counterclockwise ones. Therefore, obviously, the third knob will end up having moved 90 degrees clockwise respective to its initial position.
5. The fifth step, and undoubtedly the most complex, requires the triggering of a fourth knob that has been unblocked by the third, which must be turned three times counterclock wise but keeping in mind that each turn must be carried out at precise intervals of ten and a half seconds, not including the time it takes to make the turn, so the three successive turns must be done at seconds 11, 22 and 33 of the triggering sequence. Any error in this sequence blocks the entire mechanism. The correct triggering raises the green leather cover on the top and reveals the two-inch-deep secret compartment. Due to the complexity of this fifth step, a stethoscope is just about essential in order to hear the primitive clockwork timers inside the piece of furniture.
Lucas Giraut is pressing on one of the animal-vegetable motifs of the desk's frieze with a frown when the silhouette of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD.'s intern appears on the frosted glass door and knocks. Giraut maintains the pressure on the frieze's ornamental motif and extends his other arm as far as he can to push the button that opens the door. The click of the door opening sounds at the same moment as the click of the desk's inner gears when the two ornamental motifs of the frieze give way. The intern enters with two cups of coffee and a little pitcher of milk on a tray and looks at the two men squatting on the office floor with her brow furrowed.
“Of course,” says the redheaded lawyer, still pressing his hand on one of the animal-vegetable motifs of the frieze, “I feel obliged to take note of the state of this office and of everything I'm seeing here. For legal record.”
The intern leaves the tray with coffee and milk on top of one of the furniture surfaces covered with towels and leaves without saying anything. Now Giraut begins to turn the desk's knobs, his face gathered in concentration as he listens to the inner gears with the stethoscope.
“I represent people who are extremely concerned about inappropriate relationships.” The way the redheaded lawyer is squatting, with his arms extended and his hands resting on various points of the desk, makes you think of childhood games involving placing your hands and feet on different colored spots on a plastic rug. “Relationships that are somewhat disquieting. Like that girl, for example. You know what girl I mean. A twelve-year-old girl. Imagine the possible repercussions if some impertinent journalist decided to make public the fact that you have done certain inappropriate things with a twelve-year-old girl. In the event that we went to court on this.” One of Giraut's arms is intertwined with the redheaded lawyer's extended arm. “Which is something, I insist, that no one wants.”
Lucas Giraut has his shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows. The jacket of his slate gray Lino Rossi suit is hung over the back of one of the sheet-covered office chairs. The coat the redheaded lawyer who claims to represent Fanny Giraut is wearing doesn't reveal enough of his suit to allow for a suitological analysis. Giraut is now triggering the third knob in the sequence of knobs that open the secret compartment of his new collector's item.
“We are only looking to put you somewhere safe,” says the redheaded lawyer. “Somewhere where you can't harm yourself. Or anyone else, of course.”
The leather-covered top of the Victorian magic desk circa 1860 lifts up, revealing the secret compartment. The redheaded lawyer takes a sip of his coffee.
“I want curtains.” Lucas Giraut stands up and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a meticulously folded handkerchief. “If you stay for a few minutes you can help me choose curtains.”
In some part of the office a towel-covered telephone rings.
CHAPTER 21. The Day of the Publisher's Advance Excerpt
Valentina Parini readjusts her butt on the toilet lid where she is sitting with her legs crossed and her brow furrowed as she tries to concentrate on her reading. And it's not exactly easy. It's dark inside the stall and one of her eyes is covered by the stupid patch they make her wear, and someone is knocking insistently on the stall door.
“Parini!” shouts the prepubescent voice again from the other side of the bathroom stall door. “Come out already! I know you're in there! This time you're really in for it!” There is a moment of silence, perhaps to give Valentina Parini the chance to answer. Or perhaps the voice outside is considering how far it can go with its threats. “They're saying the principal's going to make the janitor come bust the door down with an ax!”
Valentina Parini readjusts her green glasses on her nose that's barely big enough to hold them up and sighs. She came down to the first-floor bathrooms at school a little more than half an hour ago, and she knew they would come looking for her. But she didn't imagine that everything was going to happen so quickly. Things must really be bad out there, she tells herself. She goes down to the bathrooms to read every time she gets a chance to slip away, often during basketball practice. Sometimes she can spend two hours locked in a stall before someone comes looking for her. But this time, it's obvious something's different. She's been hearing shouting and commotion in the hallway outside for a while now. On a couple of occasions she's heard her name mentioned in a frantic tone. And finally someone came looking for her. It's Adelfi, the retard. And all this has to happen just on the day that she got the Publisher's Advance Excerpt in the mail. With the first four chapters of Stephen King's new novel.
“Pariniiii!” screams the voice from the other side of the door. Drawing out the last vowel with exasperation.
When Adelfi, the retard, came into the bathroom about ten minutes ago, her voice already sounded pretty agitated. After insisting for a while, Adelfi had started to sound frustrated and finally worn out. Maybe she'd get tired of bugging her soon and go back to wherever she came from.
The Publisher's Advance Excerpt arrived at Valentina Parini's house that morning, in a brown envelope with the publishing house's logo on it. She had taken it out of the mailbox using a long serrated bread knife. It took her almost five minutes to get it out of the mailbox because her hands were trembling with excitement. Then she had only had time to tear open the envelope and admire the barely fifty-page booklet before her mother came down the stairs. Forcing her to hide the Excerpt and the bread knife in her school backpack as fast as she could, before adopting an innocent smile that her mother had looked at suspiciously before deactivating the car doors' locks with the remote control on her key ring.
The four chapters, which she is now almost done reading in a bathroom stall on the first floor of the Italian Academy of Barcelona, have not disappointed her at all. The story, or at least what the excerpt allowed her to guess at, is reminiscent of The Stand, but with touches of Tommyknockers and even Dreamcatcher. The main character, named Chuck Kimball, is a journalist in Portland, Maine, the author's hometown. Like so many of Stephen King's heroes, he's middle-aged, divorced and has a son. He is also in recovery after a drug and alcohol crisis. One day Kimball arrives at work at the news desk of his local paper and discovers that everyone has started to change. His coworkers and even his boss, whom he's given the nickname “Cosmic Bitch,” are suddenly friendly and filled with team spirit and comradeship. Kimball doesn't know what to do. The same thing happens in the bar he goes to after work, where he is about to relapse and have a drink, and later with his neighbors. No one seems alarmed by the transformation. The truth starts to come out the next morning, when Kimball discovers that his best friend at the newspaper, Gary Revkin, has disappeared. Everyone on the newspaper staff works as a team to hide his disappearance. They even get mad when he asks about it. Finally Kimball finds Revkin dead inside a garbage Dumpster. His colleagues on the paper seem to have killed him in some sort of collective ritual. There are insinuations of mind control and a race of psychic beings that are like angels.