The one place they don’t mess around with much is the study off the dining room. I keep that room fairly dark, the shades always pulled, and they have never raised them to let in so much as a crack of daylight, like they do in the rest of the house. It never smells of Lemon Pledge in there, either, although every other room just about reeks of 219
STEPHEN KING
it on Friday nights. Sometimes it’s so bad I have these sneezing fits.
It’s not an allergy; more like a nasal protest-demonstration.
Someone vacuums the floor in there, and they empty the waste-paper basket, but no one has ever moved any of the papers that I keep on the desk, no matter how cluttered-up and junky-looking they are.
Once I put a little piece of tape over where the drawer above the knee-hole opens, but it was still there, unbroken, when I got back home that night. I don’t keep anything top secret in that drawer, you understand; I just wanted to know.
Also, if the computer and modem are on when I leave, they’re still on when I come back, the VDT showing one of the screen-saver programs (usually the one of the people doing stuff behind their blinds in this high-rise building, because that’s my favorite). If my stuff was off when I left, it’s off when I come back. They don’t mess around in Dinky’s study.
Maybe the cleaners are a little afraid of me, too.
VII
I got the call that changed my life just when I thought the combination of Ma and delivering for Pizza Roma was going to drive me crazy. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but in this case, it’s true.
The call came on my night off. Ma was out with her girlfriends, playing Bingo at the Reservation, all of them smoking up a storm and no doubt laughing every time the caller pulled B-12 out of the hopper and said, “All right, ladies, it’s time to take your vitamins.” Me, I was watching a Clint Eastwood movie on TNT and wishing I was anywhere else on Planet Earth. Saskatchewan, even.
The phone rings, and I think, oh good, it’s Pug, gotta be, and so when I pick it up I say in my smoothest voice, “You have reached the Church of Any Eventuality, Harkerville branch, Reverend Dink speaking.”
“Hello, Mr. Earnshaw,” a voice says back. It was one I’d never heard before, but it didn’t seem the least put-out or puzzled by my bullshit.
220
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
I was mortified enough for both of us, though. Have you ever noticed that when you do something like that on the phone—try to be cool right from the pickup—it’s never the person you expected on the other end? Once I heard about this girl who picked up the phone and said “Hi, it’s Helen, and I want you to fuck me raw” because she was sure it was her boyfriend, only it turned out to be her father. That story is probably made up, like the one about the alligators in the New York sewers (or the letters in Penthouse), but you get the point.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, too flustered to wonder how the owner of this strange voice knows that Reverend Dink is also Mr. Earnshaw, actual name Richard Ellery Earnshaw. “I thought you were someone else.”
“I am someone else,” the voice says, and although I didn’t laugh then, I did later on. Mr. Sharpton was someone else, all right. Seriously, eventually someone else.
“Can I help you?” I asked. “If you wanted my mother, I’ll have to take a message, because she’s—”
“—out playing Bingo, I know. In any case, I want you, Mr. Earnshaw. I want to offer you a job.”
For a moment I was too surprised to say anything. Then it hit me—some sort of phone-scam. “I got a job,” I go. “Sorry.”
“Delivering pizza?” he says, sounding amused. “Well, I suppose.
If you call that a job.”
“Who are you, mister?” I ask.
“My name is Sharpton. And now let me ‘cut through the bullshit,’ as you might say, Mr. Earnshaw. Dink? May I call you Dink?”
“Sure,” I said. “Can I call you Sharpie?”
“Call me whatever you want, just listen.”
“I’m listening.” I was, too. Why not? The movie on the tube was Coogan’s Bluff, not one of Clint’s better efforts.
“I want to make you the best job-offer you’ve ever had, and the best one you probably ever will have. It’s not just a job, Dink, it’s an adventure.”
“Gee, where have I heard that before?” I had a bowl of popcorn in my lap, and I tossed a handful into my mouth. This was turning into fun, sort of.
221
STEPHEN KING
“Others promise; I deliver. But this is a discussion we must have face-to-face. Will you meet me?”
“Are you a queer?” I asked.
“No.” There was a touch of amusement in his voice. Just enough so that it was hard to disbelieve. And I was already in the hole, so to speak, from the smartass way I’d answered the phone. “My sexual orientation doesn’t come into this.”
“Why’re you yanking my chain, then? I don’t know anybody who’d call me at nine-thirty in the fucking night and offer me a job.”
“Do me a favor. Put the phone down and go look in your front hall.”
Crazier and crazier. But what did I have to lose? I did what he said, and found an envelope lying there. Someone had poked it through the mail-slot while I was watching Clint Eastwood chase Don Stroud through Central Park. The first envelope of many, although of course I didn’t know that then. I tore it open, and seven ten-dollar bills fell out into my hand. Also a note.
This can be the beginning of a great career!
I went back into the living room, still looking at the money.
Know how weirded-out I was? I almost sat on my bowl of popcorn.
I saw it at the last second, set it aside, and plopped back on the couch.
I picked up the phone, really sort of expecting Sharpton to be gone, but when I said hello, he answered.
“What’s this all about?” I asked him. “What’s the seventy bucks for? I’m keeping it, but not because I think I owe you anything. I didn’t fucking ask for anything.”
“The money is absolutely yours,” Sharpton says, “with not a string in the world attached. But I’ll let you in on a secret, Dink—a job isn’t just about money. A real job is about the fringe benefits. That’s where the power is.”
“If you say so.”
“I absolutely do. And all I ask is that you meet me and hear a little more. I’ll make you an offer that will change your life, if you take it. That will open the door to a new life, in fact. Once I’ve made that offer, you can ask all the questions you like. Although I must be honest and say you probably won’t get all the answers you’d like.”
222
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
“And if I just decide to walk away?”
“I’ll shake your hand, clap you on the back, and wish you good luck.”
“When did you want to meet?” Part of me—most of me—still thought all this was a joke, but there was a minority opinion forming by then. There was the money, for one thing; two weeks’ worth of tips driving for Pizza Roma, and that’s if business was good. But mostly it was the way Sharpton talked. He sounded like he’d been to school
. . . and I don’t mean at Sheep’s Rectum State College over in Van Drusen, either. And really, what harm could there be? Since Skipper’s accident, there was no one on Planet Earth who wanted to take after me in a way that was dangerous or painful. Well, Ma, I suppose, but her only weapon was her mouth . . . and she wasn’t into elaborate practical jokes. Also, I couldn’t see her parting with seventy dollars.
Not when there was still a Bingo game in the vicinity.
“Tonight,” he said. “Right now, in fact.”
“All right, why not? Come on over. I guess if you can drop an envelope full of tens through the mail-slot, you don’t need me to give you the address.”
“Not at your house. I’ll meet you in the Supr Savr parking lot.”
My stomach dropped like an elevator with the cables cut, and the conversation stopped being the least bit funny. Maybe this was some kind of setup—something with cops in it, even. I told myself no one could know about Skipper, least of all the cops, but Jesus. There was the letter; Skipper could have left the letter lying around anywhere. Nothing in it anyone could make out (except for his sister’s name, but there are millions of Debbies in the world), no more than anyone could’ve made out the stuff I wrote on the sidewalk outside Mrs. Bukowski’s yard . . . or so I would have said before the goddam phone rang. But who could be absolutely sure? And you know what they say about a guilty conscience. I didn’t exactly feel guilty about Skipper, not then, but still . . .