Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  “I know.” Not stating the obvious, which was Suitcoat and Tie had been trying to escape with a shitload of same.

  “Everyone is crazy. What do they think it is? A hurricane? A fucking snowstorm?” He glanced at Molly and said, “Excuse me.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, my parents say that all the time,” Molly said. She clung to Jared even tighter.

  Fish and Meat, running all along the back wall, was relatively calm, but Aisle 4—Vitamins, Health Supplements, and Pain Relievers—was a war zone. Battle had raged for the brown bottles of Genestra, Lumiday, Natrol, and half a dozen other over-the-counter brands. The middle shelves were completely stripped, and Jared guessed that was where the supplements designed to promote wakefulness had been.

  An elderly lady in a blue patterned muumuu hustled up the aisle toward them, pursued by JT Wittstock, the coach of the football team and father of two of Jared’s mother’s deputies, Will and Rupe Wittstock. Jared didn’t know the coach to speak to, but at the department’s Labor Day party Will and Rupe had won the sack race and then nearly had a fistfight over who got to keep the five-dollar trophy. (Lila, ever diplomatic about her crew and their families, described them as “very young and very energetic.”)

  The muumuu lady was slowed by her shopping basket, which was filled with bottles of something called Vita-Caff. Coach Wittstock grabbed her by the collar of her dress and hauled her backward. Her basket went flying and the bottles scattered, several rolling toward Jared, Mary, and Molly.

  “No!” she shouted. “No, please! We can share! We can sh—”

  “You scarfed up everything that was left,” Coach Wittstock snarled. “You call that sharing? I need some of these for my wife.”

  The coach and the muumuu lady grubbed on the floor after the bottles. He shoved her into one of the shelves, sending down a cascade of aspirin cartons. “You bully!” she cried. “You big mean bully!”

  Jared stepped forward without thinking about it, put his foot on top of Coach Wittstock’s balding head, and drove it sideways. Coach Wittstock went sprawling. The lady began to refill her basket. Coach crouched behind her for a moment: three-point stance, eyes shifting from side to side. The tread of Jared’s sneaker was faintly printed on his pate. Then he sprang forward and snatched the half-filled basket with the spry athleticism of a monkey stealing an orange. He sprinted past Jared (sparing him a stinkeye glare that said I’ll remember your face, bud), bumping his shoulder and sending him spinning down with Molly still on his back. They hit the floor and Molly wailed.

  Mary started toward them. Jared shook his head. “We’re all right. Make sure she is.” Looking at the muumuu lady, who was gathering up the few bottles of Vita-Caff Coach Wittstock had missed.

  Mary dropped to one knee. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Just shaken up. Why would that man . . . I suppose he said he had a wife . . . maybe a daughter . . . but I also have a daughter.”

  Her purse had ended up halfway down the littered aisle. It was ignored by the shoppers squabbling over the few remaining bottles of supplements. Jared helped Molly up and returned the purse to the lady. She put the Vita-Caff bottles inside.

  “I shall pay for these another day,” she said. And, as Mary assisted her to her feet: “Thank you. I shop here all the time, and some of these people are my neighbors, but I don’t know any of them tonight.”

  She limped away, holding her purse tight against her chest.

  “I want to go back to Gram’s!” Molly cried.

  “You get the stuff,” Mary said to Jared. “Her name is Norma, and she’s got a lot of frizzy blond hair. I’ll take Molly back to the car.”

  “I know. Mrs. Ransom told me,” Jared said. “Be careful.”

  She moved away, leading Molly by the hand, and then turned back. “If she’s reluctant to sell to you, tell her that Eric Blass sent you. That might help.”

  She must have seen the hurt in his eyes, because she gave a little wince before half-running for the front of the store, bent protectively over the frightened girl.

  6

  A man was standing halfway down the long produce section, smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in white pants and a white smock top with PRODUCE MANAGER on the left breast in red thread. He wore an almost peaceful expression on his face as he watched the pandemonium that had engulfed his store.

  He saw Jared approach, nodded at him, and spoke as if resuming a conversation they’d been having. “This shit will quiet down after all the women are asleep. They cause most of the trouble, you know. You’re looking at a man who knows. I’m a three-time loser in the marriage wars. Not just a loser, either. Routed I’ve been, each time. Like matrimony is Vicksburg, and I’m the Confederacy.”

  “I’m looking for—”

  “Norma, most likely,” the produce manager said.

  “Is she here?”

  “Nope. Left half an hour ago, after she sold the last of her product. Except for the stuff she kept for herself, I suppose. But I’ve got some fresh blueberries. Add em to your cereal, perks it right up.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass,” Jared said.

  “There is a bright side,” the produce manager said. “My alimony payments will soon cease. The South rises again. We been kilt, but we ain’t whupped yet.”

  “What?”

  “Just kilt, not whupped. ‘I’ll bring you a piece of Lincoln’s tailcoat, colonel.’ It’s Faulkner. Don’t they teach you kids anything in school these days?”

  Jared made his way toward the front of the store, avoiding the scrum at the checkout lanes. Several stations were unattended, and shoppers were hurrying through them with loaded baskets.

  Outside, a man in a checkered shirt sat on the bus bench with a shopping basket on his lap. It was loaded with cans of Maxwell House. He caught Jared’s eye. “My wife is napping,” he declared, “but I’m sure she’ll wake up soon.”

  “Hope that works out for you,” Jared said, and broke into a run.

  Mary was in the passenger seat of the Datsun with Molly on her lap. She gave the girl a shake as Jared got in behind the wheel, and spoke in a too-loud voice. “Here he is, here he is, it’s our pal Jared!”

  “Hi, Jared,” Molly said in a hoarse, teary voice.

  “Molly was getting all sleepy,” Mary said in that same too-loud, too-jolly voice. “But she’s awake now. Wiiiiide awake! We both are, aren’t we, Mols? Tell us some more about Olive, why don’t you?”

  The little girl climbed out of Mary’s lap and into the backseat. “I don’t want to.”

  “Did you get it?” Mary’s voice was low now. Low and strained. “Did you—”

  Jared started the car. “She’s gone. A lot of other people got there first. You’re out of luck. Mrs. Ransom, too.”

  He left the Shopwell parking lot fast, wheeling effortlessly around the cars that tried to get in his way. He was too upset to worry about his driving, and thus did it better than ever before.

  “Are we going to Gram’s now? I want to go to Gram’s.”

  “Right after I drop Mary,” Jared said. “She needs to call her bestie Eric, see if he’s holding.” It felt good for a second to strike at her, to unload the fear that was running through him. Only for a second, though. It was childish crap. He hated it and yet he couldn’t seem to help it.

  “What do you mean ‘holding’?” Molly asked, but no one answered her.

  It was twilight when they got to the Pak house. Jared pulled into the driveway and put Mrs. Ransom’s Datsun in park.

  Mary peered at him in the gathering gloom of Aurora’s first night. “Jere. I wasn’t going with him to see Arcade Fire. I was going to break the date.”

  He said nothing. Maybe she was telling the truth, maybe she wasn’t. All he knew was that she and Eric were chummy enough for Eric to have given her the name of a local dope dealer.

  “You’re being a baby,” Mary said.

  Jared stared straight ahead.

  “Okay, then,” M
ary said. “Okay, baby. Baby wants his bottle. The hell with it. And you.”

  “You two are fighting like my mother and father,” Molly said, and began to cry again. “I wish you’d stop. I wish you’d be boyfriend and girlfriend again.”

  Mary got out, slammed the door, and started up the driveway.

  She had almost reached the back stoop when Jared realized that there was an actual possibility that the next time he saw her, she might be buried in a white shroud of unknown origin. He looked at Molly and said, “Keep your eyes open. If you fall asleep, I’ll knock your block off.”

  Jared climbed out of the car and ran after Mary. He caught her just as she was opening the back door. She turned to him, startled. A cloud of moths circled the overhead light, and her face was dappled with their weaving shadows.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Mary, I’m really sorry. It’s just so crazy. For all I know my mother’s asleep in her car somewhere, and I’m scared, and I couldn’t get what you needed and I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Don’t go to sleep tonight. Please don’t.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Wonder of wonders—she kissed him back, mouth open, her breath mingling with his.

  “I’m officially awake,” she said, pulling back to look into his face. “Now take Little Red Blabbing Hood back to her gram.”

  He started down the steps, rethought that, went back, and kissed her again.

  “Wowee,” Molly said when he returned to the car. He could hear in her voice that her mood had dramatically improved. “You guys were really sucking face.”

  “We were, weren’t we?” Jared said. He felt dazed, a stranger in his own body. He could still feel her lips and taste her breath. “Let’s get you home.”

  The last leg of that long, strange trip was only nine blocks, and Jared drove it without incident, finally rolling along Tremaine Street, past the empty houses. He pulled into Mrs. Ransom’s driveway. The headlights swept across the figure seated in a lawn chair, a body without face. Jared slammed on the brakes. Mrs. Ransom sat in the glare, a mummy.

  Molly began to scream and Jared doused the headlights. He threw the Datsun into reverse and banged across the street to his own driveway.

  When he unfastened Molly’s seatbelt, Jared drew the kid from the car and into his arms. She clung to him, and that was all right. It felt good.

  “No worries,” he said, stroking her hair. It was in clumps, matted with sweat. “You’re staying with me. We’re going to put on some movies and pull an all-nighter.”

  CHAPTER 14

  1

  Maura Dunbarton—once the subject of newspaper headlines, now largely forgotten—sat on the lower bunk of B-11, the cell she had shared with Kayleigh Rawlings for the last four years. The cell door was open. On B Wing, all the cell doors were open, and Maura did not believe they would roll closed and be locked from the Booth tonight. No, not tonight. The tiny TV set in the wall was on and tuned to NewsAmerica, but Maura had muted the sound. She knew what was going on; by now even the dimmest inmate in Dooling knew. RIOTING AT HOME AND ABROAD, read the super running across the bottom of the screen. This was followed by a list of cities. Most were American, because you cared about your own before you cared about those in more distant places, but Maura had also seen Calcutta, Sydney, Moscow, Cape Town, Mexico City, Bombay, and London before she stopped looking.

  It was funny, when you thought about it; what were all those men rioting about? What did they think they could accomplish? Maura wondered if there would have been riots if it had been the other half of the human race who were falling asleep. She thought it unlikely.

  Kayleigh’s head, swaddled in a white helmet that pulsed in and out with her breathing, lay in Maura’s lap. Maura held one of Kayleigh’s white-gloved hands, but she didn’t attempt to tamper with the material. There had been an announcement over the prison intercom system that it could be dangerous to do so, and the same warning had been thoroughly conveyed on the news broadcasts. Though the filament was slightly sticky, and very dense, Maura could still feel Kayleigh’s fingers buried inside, like pencils encased in thick plastic. She and Kayleigh had been lovers almost from the time Kayleigh, years younger, took up residence in B-11, doing time for assault with a deadly weapon. Age difference aside, they matched. Kayleigh’s slightly cockeyed sense of humor fit Maura’s cynicism. Kay was good-natured, filling the dark pits that had been eaten into Maura’s character by the things she had seen and the things she had done. She was a slick dancer, she was a wonderful kisser, and although they didn’t make love often these days, when they did, it was still good. As they lay together with their legs entwined, there was no prison for a little while, and no confusing outside world, either. It was just them.

  Kayleigh was also a fine singer; she had won the prison talent show three years running. Last October there hadn’t been a dry eye in the house when she finished singing—a capella—“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Maura supposed all that was over now. People talked in their sleep; few if any sang in their sleep. Even if Kayleigh should be moved to sing, it would come out all muffled. And what if that crap was all down her throat, as well? And in her lungs? It probably was, although if that were the case, how she could go on breathing was a mystery.

  Maura raised one knee, then the other, back and forth, up and down, rocking her lover gently. “Why did you have to go to sleep, honey? Why couldn’t you wait?”

  Jeanette and Angel came by then, pushing a cart with two large coffee urns and two large plastic pitchers of juice on it. Maura could smell their approach before she saw them because man, that brew smelled bitter. Officer Rand Quigley was shepherding them along. Maura wondered how many of the female guards were left. She guessed not many. And few would show up for the next shift. Maybe none.

  “Coffee, Maura?” Angel asked. “It’ll pep you right the fuck up.”

  “No,” Maura said. Up and down went her knees. Up and down. Rock-a-bye Kayleigh, in the treetop.

  “Sure? It’ll keep you goin. If I’m lyin, I’m dyin.”

  “No,” Maura repeated. “Get on.”

  Quigley didn’t like Maura’s tone. “Watch your mouth, inmate.”

  “Or what? You’ll tonk me on the head with your stick and put me to sleep? Go ahead. That might be the only way I manage it.”

  Quigley didn’t reply. He looked frazzled. Maura didn’t see why he should be. None of this would touch him; no man would bear this cross.

  “You get that insomnia, don’t you?” Angel asked.

  “Yeah. Takes one to know one.”

  “Lucky us,” Angel said.

  Wrong, Maura thought. Unlucky us.

  “Is that Kayleigh?” Jeanette asked.

  “No,” Maura said. “It’s Whoopi fucking Goldberg under that mess.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jeanette said, and she looked sorry, and that hurt Maura’s heart in a way she had been guarding against. She would not cry in front of Officer Quigley or these young ones, though. She would not.

  “Get on, I said.”

  When they were gone with their fucked-up coffee wagon, Maura bent over her sleeping cellie—if you could call it sleep. To Maura it looked more like a magic spell from a fairy tale.

  Love had come late for her and it was a miracle that it had come at all, she knew that. Like a rose blooming in a bomb crater. She should be grateful for the time the two of them had had, all the greeting cards and pop songs said so. But when she looked at the grotesque membrane covering Kayleigh’s sweet face, she found that her well of gratitude, always shallow, was now dry.

  Not her eyes, though. With the coffee crew and Officer Quigley gone (nothing left but the trailing stink of that strange brew), she let the tears come. They fell on the white stuff enclosing Kayleigh’s head and the white stuff sucked the moisture up greedily.

  If she’s somewhere close, and if I could just go to sleep, maybe I could catch up. Then we could go together.

  But no. Because of th
e insomnia. She had lived with it since the night she had methodically slaughtered her entire family, finishing with Slugger, their elderly German shepherd. Petting him, soothing him, letting him lick her hand, then cutting his throat. If she got two hours of unconsciousness at night, she considered herself lucky. On many nights she got none at all . . . and nights in Dooling could be long. But Dooling was just a place. Insomnia had been her real prison across these years. Insomnia was boundless, and it never put her on Good Report.

  I’ll be awake after most of them are asleep, she thought. Guards and inmates both. I’ll have the run of the place. Always assuming I want to stay, that is. And why would I want to go anywhere else? She might wake up, my Kayleigh. With a thing like this, anything is possible. Isn’t it?

  Maura couldn’t sing the way Kayleigh could—hell, couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket—but there was a song Kayleigh especially liked, and now Maura sang it to her as she gently raised her knees up and down, as if operating the pedals of an invisible organ. Maura’s husband had listened to it all the time, and Maura had learned the words by osmosis. Kay heard her singing it to herself once, and demanded Maura teach her. “Aw, that’s naughty!” Kayleigh had exclaimed. It had been on an LP by a bunch of goofy potato eaters. That was how long Maura had been inside; her husband had owned an extensive collection of LPs. He didn’t matter now. Mr. Dunbarton had been put into an everlasting slumber early on the morning of January 7, 1984. She’d given him the knife first, right in the chest, plunged it like a shovel into loam, and he sat straight up, and his eyes had said, Why?

  Because, that was why. And she’d have killed him or anyone else over and over and over again, would do it this very moment, if it would bring Kayleigh back to her.

  “Listen, Kay. Listen:

  “In the female prison there are seventy women . . . I wish it was with them that I did dwell . . .”

  On the little TV, downtown Las Vegas appeared to be burning up.

  “Then that old triangle . . . Could jingle jangle . . .”