Lunch at the Gotham Cafe
Page 5
I looked after the departing ambulance and tried to imagine the man inside it living wherever maitre d's live - Queens or Brooklyn or maybe even Rye or Mamaroneck. I tried to imagine what his dining room might look like, what pictures might be on the walls. I couldn't do that, but I found I could imagine his bedroom with relative ease, although not whether he shared it with a woman. I could see him lying awake but perfectly still, looking up at the ceiling in the small hours while the moon hung in the black firmament like the half-lidded eye of a corpse; I could imagine him lying there and listening to the neighbor's dog bark steadily and monotonously, going on and on until the sound was like a silver nail driving into his brain. I imagined him lying not far from a closet filled with tuxedos in plastic dry-cleaning bags. I could see them hanging there in the dark like executed felons. I wondered if he did have a wife. If so, had he killed her before coming to work? I thought of the blob on his shirt and decided it was a possibility. I also wondered about the neighbor's dog, the one that wouldn't shut up. And the neighbor's family.
But mostly it was Guy I thought about, lying sleepless through all the same nights I had lain sleepless, listening to the dog next door or down the street as I had listened to sirens and the rumble of trucks heading downtown. I thought of him lying there and looking up at the shadows the moon had tacked to the ceiling. Thought of that cry - Eeeeee!- building up in his head like gas in a closed room.
'Eeeee,' I said . . . just to see how it sounded. I dropped the package of Marlboros into the gutter and began stamping it methodically as I sat there on the curb. 'Eeeee. Eeeee. Eeeeee.'
One of the cops standing by the sawhorses looked over at me. 'Hey, buddy, want to stop being a pain in the butt?' he called over. 'We got us a situation here.'
Of course you do, I thought. Don't we all.
I didn't say anything, though. I stopped stamping - the cigarette pack was pretty well flattened by then, anyway - and stopped making the noise. I could still hear it in my head, though, and why not? It makes as much sense as anything else.
Eeeeeee.
Eeeeeee.
Eeeeeee.
FB2 document info
Document ID: bd3eb862-352a-4ec5-bfd9-ebf2aab8bcfc
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 20.3.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.10 software
Document authors :
Stephen King
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