Rose Madder

by Stephen King

  "Who?" Norman shouted at the mask. Veins stood out at his temples, pulsing. "Who's kissing her? Who's feeling her up? And where are they? You tell me that!"

  But the mask was silent. If, that was, it had ever spoken at all.

  What are you going to do, Normie? That voice he knew. Dad's voice. A pain in the ass, but not scary. That other voice had been scary. Even if it had come out of his own throat, it had been scary.

  "Find her, " he whispered. "I'm going to find her, and then I'm going to teach her how to do the hanky panky. My version of it. "

  Yes, but how? How are you going to find her?

  The first thought that came to him was their clubhouse on Durham Avenue. There'd be a record of where Rose was living there, he was sure of it. But it was a bad idea, just the same. The place was a modified fortress. You'd need a keycard of some sort--one that probably looked quite a lot like his stolen bank card--to get in, and maybe a set of numbers to keep the alarm system from going off, as well.

  And what about the people there? Well, he could shoot the place up, if it came to that; kill some of them and scare the rest off. His service revolver was back at the hotel in the room safe--one of the advantages of traveling by bus--but guns were usually an asshole's solution. Suppose the address was in a computer? It probably was, everyone used those pups these days. He'd very likely still be fucking around, trying to get one of the women to give him the password and file name, when the police showed up and killed his ass.

  Then something came to him-another voice. This one drifted up from his memory like a shape glimpsed in cigarette smoke: ... sorry to miss the concert, but if I want that car, I can't pass up the ...

  What voice was that, and what couldn't its owner afford to pass up?

  After a moment, the answer to the first question came to him. It was Blondie's voice. Blondie with the big eyes and cute little ass. Blondie, whose real name was Pam something. Pam worked at the Whitestone, Pam might well know his rambling Rose, and Pam couldn't afford to pass something up. What might that something be? When you really thought about it, when you put on that old deerstalker hat and put that brilliant detective's mind to work, the answer wasn't all that difficult, was it? When you wanted that car, the only thing you couldn't afford to pass up was a few extra hours at work. And since the concert she was passing up was this evening, the chances were good that she was at the hotel right now Even if she wasn't, she would be soon. And if she knew, she would tell. The punk-rock bitch hadn't, but that was only because he hadn't had time enough to discuss the matter with her. This time, though, he'd have all the time he needed.

  He would make sure of it.

  2

  Lieutenant Hale's partner, John Gustafson, drove Rosie and Gertie Kinshaw to the District 3 police station in Lakeshore. Bill rode behind them on his Harley. Rosie kept turning in her seat to make sure he was still there. Gert noticed but did not comment.

  Hale introduced Gustafson as "my better half," but Hale was what Norman called the alpha-dog; Rosie knew that from the moment she saw the two men together. It was in the way Gustafson looked at him, even in the way he watched Hale get into the shotgun seat of the unmarked Caprice. Rosie had seen these things for herself a thousand times before, in her own home.

  They passed a bank clock--the same one Norman had passed not so long before--and Rosie bent her head to read the time. 4:09 p.m. The day had stretched out like warm taffy.

  She looked back over her shoulder, terrified that Bill might be gone, sure in some secret part of her mind and heart that he would be. He wasn't, though. He shot her a grin, lifted one hand, and waved at her briefly. She raised her own hand in return.

  "Seems like a nice guy," Gert said.

  "Yes," Rosie agreed, but she didn't want to talk about Bill, not with the two cops in the front seat undoubtedly listening to every word they said. "You should have stayed at the hospital. Let them take a look at you, make sure he didn't hurt you with that taser thing."

  "Shit, it was good for me," Gert said, grinning. She was wearing a huge blue-and-white-striped hospital bathrobe over her split jumper. "First time I've felt absolutely and completely awake since I lost my virginity at Baptist Youth Camp, back in 1974."

  Rosie tried for a matching grin and could manage only a wan smile. "I guess that's it for Swing into Summer, huh?" she said.

  Gert looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

  Rosie looked down at her hands and was not quite surprised to see they were rolled into fists. "Norman's what I mean. The skunk at the picnic. One big fucking skunk." She heard that word, that fucking, come out of her mouth and could hardly believe she'd said it, especially in the back of a police car with a couple of detectives in the front seat. She was even more surprised when her fisted left hand shot out sideways and struck the door panel, just above the window crank.

  Gustafson jumped a little behind the wheel. Hale looked back, face expressionless, then faced forward again. He might have murmured something to his partner. Rosie didn't know for sure, didn't care.

  Gert took her hand, which was throbbing, and tried to soothe the fist away, working on it like a masseuse working on a cramped muscle. "It's all right, Rosie." She spoke quietly, her voice rumbling like a big truck in neutral.

  "No, it's not!" Rosie cried. "No, it's not, don't you say it is!" Tears were pricking her eyes now, but she didn't care about that, either. For the first time in her adult life she was weeping with rage rather than with shame or fear. "Why won't he go away? Why won't he leave me alone? He hurts Cynthia, he spoils the picnic ... fucking Norman!" She tried to strike the door again, but Gert held her fist prisoner. "Fucking skunk Norman!"

  Gert was nodding. "Yeah. Fuckin' skunk Norman."

  "He's like a ... a birthmark! The more you rub and try to get rid of it, the darker it gets! Fucking Norman! Fucking, stinking, crazy Norman! I hate him! I hate him!"

  She fell silent, panting for breath. Her face was throbbing, her cheeks wet with tears ... and yet she didn't feel exactly bad.

  Bill! Where's Bill?

  She turned, certain he would be gone this time, but he was there. He waved. She waved back, then faced forward again, feeling a little calmer.

  "You be mad, Rosie. You've got a goddam right to be mad. But--"

  "Oh, I'm mad, all right."

  "--but he didn't spoil the day, you know."

  Rosie blinked. "What? But how could they just go on? After ..."

  "How could you just go on, after all the times he beat you?"

  Rosie only shook her head, not comprehending.

  "Some of it's endurance," Gert said. "Some, I guess, is plain old stubbornness. But what it is mostly, Rosie, is showing the world your gameface. Showing that we can't be intimidated. You think this is the first time something like this has happened? Huh-uh. Norman's the worst, but he's not the first. And what you do when a skunk shows up at the picnic and sprays around is you wait for the breeze to blow the worst of it away and then you go on. That's what they're doing at Ettinger's Pier now, and not just because we signed a play-or-pay contract with the Indigo Girls, either. We go on because we have to convince ourselves that we can't be beaten out of our lives ... our right to our lives. Oh, some of them will have left--Lana Kline and her patients are history, I imagine--but the rest will rally 'round. Consuelo and Robin were heading back to Ettinger's as soon as we left the hospital."

  "Good for you guys," Lieutenant Hale said from the front seat.

  "How could you let him get away?" Rosie asked him accusingly. "Jesus, do you even know how he did it?"

  "Well, strictly speaking, we didn't let him get away," Hale said mildly. "It was Pier Security's baby; by the time the first metro cops got there, your husband was long gone."

  "We think he stole some kid's mask," Gustafson said. "One of those whole-head jobs. Put it on, then just boogied. He was lucky, I'll tell you that much."

  "He's always been lucky," Rosie said bitterly. They were turning into the police station parking lot now,
Bill still behind them. To Gert she said, "You can let go of my hand now."

  Gert did and Rosie immediately hit the door again. The hurt was worse this time, but some newly aware part of her relished that hurt.

  "Why won't he let me alone?" she asked again, speaking to no one. And yet she was answered by a sweetly husky voice which spoke from deep in her mind.

  You shall be divorced of him, that voice said. You shall be divorced of him, Rosie Real.

  She looked down at her arms and saw that they had broken out all over in gooseflesh.

  3

  His mind lifted off again, up up and away, as that foxy bitch Marilyn McCoo had once sung, and when he came back he was easing the Tempo into another parking space. He didn't know where he was for sure, but he thought it was probably the underground parking garage half a block down from the Whitestone, where he'd stowed the Tempo before. He caught sight of the gas gauge as he leaned over to disconnect the ignition wires and saw something interesting: the needle was all the way over to F. He'd stopped for gas at some point during his last blank spot. Why had he done that?

  Because gas wasn't really what I wanted, he answered himself.

  He leaned forward again, meaning to look at himself in the rear-view mirror, then remembered it was on the floor. He picked it up and looked at himself closely. His face was bruised, swelling in several places; it was pretty goddam obvious that he'd been in a fight, but the blood was all gone. He had scrubbed it away in some gas-station restroom while a self-serve pump filled the Tempo's tank on slow automatic feed. So he was fit to be seen on the street--as long as he didn't press his luck--and that was good.

  As he disconnected the ignition wires he wondered briefly what time it was. No way to tell; he wasn't wearing a watch, the shitbox Tempo didn't have a clock, and he was underground. Did it matter? Did it--

  "Nope, " a familiar voice said softly. "Doesn't matter. The time is out of joint. "

  He looked down and saw the bullmask staring up at him from its place in the passenger-side footwell: empty eyes, disquieting wrinkled smile, absurd flower-decked horns. All at once he wanted it. It was stupid, he hated the garlands on the horns and hated the stupid happy-to-be-castrated smile even more ... but it was good luck, maybe. It didn't really talk, of course, all of that was just in his mind, but without the mask he certainly never would have gotten away from Ettinger's Pier. That was for damned sure.

  Okay, okay, he thought, viva ze bool, and he leaned over to get the mask.

  Then, with seemingly no pause at all, he was leaning forward and clamping his arms around Blondie's waist, squeezing her tight-tight-tight so she couldn't get enough breath to scream. She had just come out of a door marked HOUSEKEEPING, pushing her cart in front of her, and he thought he'd probably been waiting out here for her quite awhile, but that didn't matter now because they were going right back into HOUSXEEPING, just Pam and her new friend Norman, viva ze bool.

  She was kicking at him and some of the blows landed on his shins, but she was wearing sneakers, and he hardly felt the hits. He let go of her waist with one hand, pulled the door closed behind him, and shot the bolt across. A quick look around, just to make sure the place was empty except for the two of them. Late Saturday afternoon, middle of the weekend, it should have been ... and was. The room long and narrow, with a short row of lockers standing at the far end. There was a wonderful smell--a fragrance of clean, ironed linen that made Norman think of laundry day at their house when he was a kid.

  There were big stacks of neatly folded sheets on pallets, Dandux laundry baskets full of fluffy bathtowels, pillowcases piled on shelves. Deep stacks of coverlets lined one wall. Norman shoved Pam into these, watching with no interest at all as the skirt of her uniform flipped up high on her thighs. His sex-drive had gone on vacation, perhaps even into permanent retirement, and maybe that was just as well. The plumbing between his legs had gotten him into a lot of trouble over the years. It was a nell of a note, the sort of thing that might lead you to think that God had more in common with Andrew Dice Clay than you maybe wanted to believe. For twelve years you didn't notice it, and for the next fifty--or even sixty--it dragged you around behind it like some raving baldheaded Tasmanian devil.

  "Don't scream, " he said. "Don't scream, Pammy. I'll kill you if you do. " It was an empty threat--for now, at least--but she wouldn't know that.

  Pam had drawn in a deep breath; now she let it out in a soundless rush. Norman relaxed slightly.

  "Please don't hurt me, " she said, and boy, was that original, he'd certainly never heard that one before, nope, nope.

  "I don't want to hurt you, " he said warmly. "I certainly don't. " Something was flopping in his back pocket. He felt for it and touched rubber. The mask. He wasn't exactly surprised. "All you have to do is tell me what I want to know, Pam. Then you go on your happy way and I go on mine. "

  "How do you know my name?"

  He gave her that evocative interrogation-room shrug, the one that said he knew lots of things, that was his job.

  She sat in the pile of tumbled dark maroon coverlets just like the one on his bed up on the ninth floor, smoothing her skirt down over her knees. Her eyes were a really extraordinary shade of blue. A tear gathered on the lower lid of the left one, trembled, then slipped down her cheek, leaving a trail of mascara-soot.

  "Are you going to rape me?" she asked. She was looking at him with those extraordinary baby blues of hers, great eyes--who needs to pussywhip a man when you've got eyes like those, right, Pammy?--but he didn't see the look in them he wanted to see. That was a look you saw in the interrogation room when a guy you'd been whipsawing with questions all day and half the night was finally getting ready to break: a humble look, a pleading look, a look that said I'll tell you anything, anything at all, just let off me a little. He didn't see that look in Pammy's eyes.

  Yet.

  "Pam--"

  "Please don't rape me, please don't, but if you do, if you have to, please wear a condom, I'm so scared of AIDS. "

  He gawped at her, then burst out laughing. It hurt his stomach to laugh, it hurt his diaphragm even worse, and most of all it hurt his face, but for awhile there was just no way he could stop. He told himself he had to stop, that some hotel employee, maybe even the house dick, might happen by and hear laughter coming from in here and wonder what it meant, but not even that helped; in the end, the throe had to pass on its own.

  Blondie watched him with amazement at first, then smiled tentatively herself. Hopefully.

  Norman at last managed to get himself under control, although his eyes were streaming with tears by that time. "I'm not going to rape you, Pam, " he said at last--when he was capable of saying anything without laughing it into insincerity.

  "How do you know my name?" she asked again. Her voice was a little stronger this time.

  He hauled the mask out, stuck his hand inside it, and manipulated it as he had for the asshole accountant in the Camry. "Pam-Pam-bo-Bam, banana-fanna-fo-Fam, fee-fi-mo-Mam, " he made it sing. He bopped it back and forth, like Shari Lewis with fucking Lamb Chop, only this was a bull, not a lamb, a stupid fucking fagbull with flowers on its horns. Not a reason in the world why he should like the fucking thing, but the fact was, he sort of did.

  "I sort of like you, too, " Ferd the fagbull said, looking up at Norman with its empty eyes. Then it turned back to Pam, and with Norman to move its lips, it said: "You got a problem with that?"

  "N-N-No, " she said, and the look he wanted still wasn't in her eyes, not yet, but they were making progress, she was terrified of him--of them--that much was for sure.

  Norman squatted down, hands dangling between his thighs, Ferdinand's rubber horns now pointing at the floor. He looked at her sincerely. "Bet you'd like to see me out of this room and out of your life, wouldn't you, Pammy?"

  She nodded so vigorously her hair bounced up and down on her shoulders.

  "Yeah, I thought so, and that's fine by me. You tell me one thing and I'll be gone like a cool bre
eze. It's easy, too." He leaned forward toward her, Ferd's horns dragging on the floor. "All I want to know is where Rose is. Rose Daniels. Where does she live?"

  "Oh my God." What color there still was in Pammy's face--two spots of red high up on her cheekbones--now disappeared, and her eyes widened until it seemed they must tumble from their sockets. "Oh my God, you're him. You're Norman. "

  That startled and angered him--he was supposed to know her name, that was how it worked, but she wasn't supposed to know his--and everything else followed upon that. She was up and off the coverlets while he was still reacting to his name in her mouth, and she almost got away completely. He sprang after her, reaching out with his right hand, the one that still had the bullmask on it. Faintly he could hear himself saying that she wasn't going anywhere, that he wanted to talk to her and intended to do it right up close.

  He grabbed her around the throat. She gave a strangled cry that wanted to be a scream and lunged forward with surprising, sinewy strength. Still he could have held her, if not for the mask. It slipped on his sweaty hand and she tore away, fell away toward the door, arms out to either side, flailing, and at first Norman didn't understand what happened next.

  There was a noise, a meaty sound that was almost a pop like a champagne cork, and then Pam began to flail wildly, her hands beating at the door, her head back at a strange stiff angle, like someone staring intently at the flag during a patriotic ceremony.

  "Huh?" Norman said, and Ferd rose up in front of his eyes, askew on his hand. Ferdinand looked drunk.

  "Ooops, " said the bull.

  Norman yanked the mask off his hand and stuffed it in his pocket, now aware of a pattering sound, like rain. He looked down and saw that Pam's left sneaker was no longer white. Now it was red Blood was pooling around it; it ran down the door in long drips. Her hands were still fluttering. To Norman they looked like small birds.

  She looked almost nailed to the door, and as Norman stepped forward he saw that, in a way, she was. There was a coathook on the back of the damned thing. She'd torn free of his hand, plunged forward, and impaled herself. The coathook was buried in her left eye.

  "Oh Pam, shit, you fool, " Norman said. He felt both furious and dismayed. He kept seeing the bull's stupid grin, kept hearing it say Ooops, like some wiseass character in a Warner Bros. cartoon.