Here’s something you’ll laugh at, I bet. Once I wrote down “Rembrandt Painting” on the DAYBOARD. Then I spent the afternoon at the movies and walking in the park, watching people making out and dogs catching Frisbees, thinking how eventual it would be if the cleaners actually brought me my own fucking Rembrandt. Think of it, a 216
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
genuine Old Master on the wall of a house in the Sunset Knoll section of Columbia City. How eventual would that be?
And it happened, in a manner of speaking. My Rembrandt was hung on the living room wall when I got home, over the sofa where the velvet clowns used to be. My heart was beating about two hundred a minute as I walked across the room toward it. When I got closer, I saw it was just a copy . . . you know, a reproduction. I was dis-appointed, but not very. I mean, it was a Rembrandt. Just not an orig-inal Rembrandt.
Another time, I wrote “Autographed Photo of Nicole Kidman” on the DAYBOARD. I think she’s the best-looking actress alive, she just gets me on so much. And when I got home that day, there was a public-ity still of her on the fridge, held there by a couple of those little veg-etable magnets. She was on her Moulin Rouge swing. And that time it was the real deal. I know because of the way it was signed: “To Dinky Earnshaw, with love & kisses from Nicole.”
Oh, baby. Oh, honey.
Tell you something, my friend—if I worked hard and really wanted it, there might be a real Rembrandt on my wall someday. Sure.
In a job like this, there is nowhere to go but up. In a way, that’s the scary part.
IV
I never have to make grocery lists. The cleaners know what I like—
Stouffer’s frozen dinners, especially that boil-in-the-bag stuff they call creamed chipped beef and Ma had always called shit on a shingle, frozen strawberries, whole milk, pre-formed hamburger patties that you just have to slap in a hot frying pan (I hate playing with raw meat), Dole puddings, the ones that come in plastic cups (bad for my complexion but I love em), ordinary food like that. If I want something special, I write it down on DINKY’S DAYBOARD.
Once I asked for a homemade apple pie, specifically not from the 217
STEPHEN KING
supermarket, and when I came back that night around the time it was getting dark, my pie was in the fridge with the rest of the week’s groceries. Only it wasn’t wrapped up, it was just sitting there on a blue plate. That’s how I knew it was homemade. I was a little hesitant about eating it at first, not knowing where it came from and all, and then I decided I was being stupid. A person doesn’t really know where supermarket food comes from, not really. I mean, we assume it’s okay because it’s wrapped up or in a can or “double-sealed for your protection,” but anyone could have been handling it with dirty fingers before it was double-sealed, or sneezing great big whoops of booger-breath on it, or even wiping their asses with it. I don’t mean to gross you out, but it’s true, isn’t it? The world is full of strangers, and a lot of them are “up to no good.” I have had personal experience of this, believe me.
Anyway, I tried the pie and it was delicious. I ate half of it Friday night and the rest on Saturday morning, while I was running the numbers in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Most of Saturday night I spent on the toilet, shitting my guts out from all those apples, I guess, but I didn’t care. The pie was worth it. “Like mother used to make” is what people say, but it can’t be my mother they say it about. My Ma couldn’t fry Spam.
V
I never have to write down underwear on the DAYBOARD. Every five weeks or so the old drawers disappear and there are brand-new Hanes Jockey-shorts in my bureau, four three-packs still in their plastic bags. Double-sealed for my protection, ha-ha. Toilet-paper, laun-dry soap, dishwasher soap, I never have to write any of that shit down.