I was left alone in Battis's office for several minutes. I took a seat in the chair in front of his desk.
When Mr. Battis walked in, he took a quick look at me and smiled. He liked me, I knew that, but now it was even more obvious.
Mr. Battis took two steps toward his window and looked out between the curtains.
"Something tells me that you are in the market for a better job...?"
"Yes." I crossed my legs. "That's true."
Still looking out the window, he said, "I believe we have the job for you."
"And what would that be, Mr. Battis?" I said.
"A hostess... with room to grow."
"A hostess...?"
"Can you dance, Miss Palmer?"
"Amory, I can do a lot of things."
"Then you can make a lot of money."
Mr. Battis told me to meet him here next Saturday and we (Ronnette included) would go to a place across the border called One-Eyed Jack's.
I thanked him and left his office. Walking back to the perfume counter, I made the decision that sobriety was not for me.
Ronnette said she'd cover for me awhile. I took her bullet back to the storage room. I took my hits, turned to leave, and there was BOB, crouched in the corner, smiling victoriously.
New game, Laura
August 23,1988
Dear Diary,
I feel so much better with cocaine back in my life!
I've been meaning to tell you what became of my meeting with Norma. I had been thinking about the very best way to help the elderly who find it difficult to leave the house.
I would deliver meals to the elderly people in the area who couldn't get out for a hot meal. I told her the name of the program could be Meals on Wheels.
Norma loved the idea and said she would make a few calls to people at city hall and maybe the hospital. We could find the best recipients that way, without doing much footwork. Norma agreed to provide the meals, two a day, four times a week. All profits to go fifty-fifty. I deliver them to the door, and maybe I'll regain some confidence... Or am I confident? Or am I so fucked up on coke that I can't tell?
So, today, I came to pick up two meals at the diner.
I was helping Norma pull the meals from the oven when Josie Packard came in.
She and Norma had a quick talk, during which Josie became a bit upset, emotional. Norma called me over and explained that Josie was being hassled at the mill again about her English... I could tell she was embarrassed by it.
I told her that I'd love to give her English lessons if she'd like.
Norma gave me a smile and a pat on the shoulder. Josie stepped forward and said, "I'd be more than happy to pay you for these services."
I shook her hand and she said that her first available day was next Monday evening... ? I told her that was fine. I would see her Monday.
I left the diner with the meals. I had to deliver them and get up to Johnny Horne's in forty-five minutes.
I went to Mrs. Tremond's apartment first. I left the tray at the front door along with the appropriate note, and a request for a house key of my own.
Harold Smith was my other delivery. As I think I told you, he's an interesting man. Very handsome. Apparently he was a botanist. For some reason he can't remember, he awoke one morning to find himself an agoraphobic. He believes death is just outside the door, and that late at night it calls to him from outside like a strange bird.
He invited me in but I was already late so I told him I'd have to take a rain check.
I got up to the Hornes' and they were all ready to leave. I told them to have a good time, that Johnny and I would be fine, not to worry.
I convinced Bobby to drop some coke off for me, and Johnny and I spent the evening reading his storybooks and eating ice cream.
More later, Laura
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August 31,1988
Dear Diary,
I just reread yesterday's entry and I suddenly feel very embarrassed about being alive. The girl who received this diary on her twelfth birthday has been dead for years, and I who took her place have done nothing but make a mockery of the dreams she once had. I'm sixteen years old, I'm a cocaine addict, a prostitute who fucks her father's employers, not to mention half the fucking town, and the only difference from last week is that now I'm getting paid for it. My life is whatever the other person in the room wants it to be.
Therefore, when I am alone, my life is nothing.
I dreamed last night that I was outside Jacques' cabin in the woods, and I was trying to find a way inside. There was no front door, only a window, identical to the one in my bedroom. I looked through the window and saw Waldo flying back and forth very, very slowly. It was as if he were moving in slow motion, but I could tell that he was panicked. He called out, "Laura, Laura," as if in warning... And suddenly BOB stepped into the square of the window and grabbed Waldo in his hands. BOB turned to me smiling, and with one squeeze, crushed Waldo to death.
I backed away from the window and ran from the house as fast as I could. No matter where I turned the house was always in front of me and each time I saw BOB he was closer to climbing out of the window.
I fell to my knees. Everything went silent. I looked up and there, thirty feet in front of me, was a gigantic owl. As I look back now, I am still unsure. "Was he a friend or an enemy?"
We stood staring at each other for a long time. It felt as if he wanted to say something, but he did not.
I awoke hoping that what the Log Lady said, "Owls are sometimes big," referred to tonight and meant that something good was going to happen to me. Now that I'm working at One-Eyed Jack's I could use a good omen. I will pay attention to everything the way the Log Lady told me I should. I suspect that this will be the first of many things I will need to pay close attention to.
Laura
P.S. I think that in order to ensure my privacy I will need to start a second diary, one that if found will give the intruder "the Laura" that everyone thinks lives inside of me.
I will have to spend time filling its pages. I wonder if life is still something I can make up.
November 13,1988
Dear Diary,
I was up at the Hornes' having a session with Johnny. One of his doctors, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, joined us to shoot a few rubber buffalo.
I was immediately aware of Lawrence's attraction to me, not that that was the issue, but where his attraction came from was.
He had fallen in love with the "two Lauras," the very reasons for which I wanted so desperately to die. What I considered a curse, he found enticing and honest. He did not mock my pain. He accepted it.
So Dr. Jacoby and I began to meet secretly at his office. He just lets me talk and I will sometimes try to shock him with the details of my darker self, yet he continues to accept them, accept me, always recognizing that the lighter part of me never wanted to do them in the first place. And so he forgives me. I know this may sound very sick and mean, perhaps, but I am almost consumed, at times, with hatred for him because never has he turned to me and confirmed my deepest fears-that I am becoming like BOB-bad.
Maybe it is the way he says it is: I have simply forgotten how to be loved.
Laura
January 13,1989
Dear Diary,
I haven't been writing to you because Dr. Jacoby gave me a pretty hot-pink tape recorder for Christmas. He said that it might help me to talk into it. I send him the tapes after I have listened to them myself. I find that even though I'm still very sad that listening to the tapes and all that they say helps me feel that the problems spoken on them are not my own.
I would write more often, but with all my work and the other diary I must keep "pleasantly updated," I have hardly any time to be as honest as I am with you.
I will write more when I can.
Laura
March 27,1989
Dear Diary,
; I had been promising to spend a few moments with Harold for weeks now, and finally today I was able to do so.
His apartment is small and filled with books from the toilet tank to the top of the fridge. I think he has to keep reading these stories because he so rarely has any stories of his own.
I like to play with Harold sometimes. I like the way he hangs on my every word as I describe some of my adventures. In particular those from One-Eyed Jack's (where by the way Jacques works as a blackjack dealer). My stories stimulate Harold. I know that. But yet he reacts almost violently, and with fear, when I make advances toward him, no matter how mild. I love Harold's tenderness and most often feel wonderful when I am with him and when I think about him. But sometimes I hate myself more than you can imagine for the aroused feelings I get when I see Harold's frightened face, which must be the same thing BOB sees when he looks at me. The prey, cornered... so degraded... made a toy. I am noticing that more and more, and I think BOB is, too, when he visits me, that I cannot hurt or be hurt enough lately.
Laura
June 4,1989
Dear Diary,
I have been working with Josie on her English lessons for a while now and she shows very few signs of improvement or efforts to improve. I know that Josie was a dancer and a prostitute in Hong Kong when Andrew fell in love with her and saved her life by bringing her here six years ago, and I think she still has more of that lifestyle in her than most realize. She's treating our sessions more like poorly executed seductions and the more she comes on to me the less I respect her. It's not that she's all over me. It's different than that... She mentions Bobby a lot and I can tell she is jealous of him. She makes too many insinuations to my sexual goings-on for me to believe she is not a darker person than the town thinks. Poor Sheriff Truman.
Laura
P.S. It makes me sick how every time I do something good I always end up-pardon the pun-getting fucked.
August 6,1989
Dear Diary,
Norma had taken care of almost all the deliveries that week, but asked if I would handle Mr. Penderghast since she had to go visit her husband, Hank, in prison that afternoon. I told her I'd be happy to.
I have sixteen keys on my key chain other than the five that are my own. Every so often, I daydream of the fantastic access I have to homes that are not my own. I understand the thrill a burglar must feel upon entering an apartment and suddenly being able to decide that anything in sight is his own.
Mr. Penderghast is the most trusting and the most kind of any of the elderly I deliver to. I inserted the key into his door and entered quietly. I could hear the television on in his bedroom and called out to him that I was there.
He did not answer.
When I found him, he was behind his bedroom door, his hands still tight to the doorknob as if he had used it as a support in his attempt to move, simply, through his own house. For a man who was so gentle, I thought it was a shame that he should die wearing such an expression of struggle. The look in his eyes and the shape of his mouth told me he felt left behind and betrayed by his friends. I waited almost an hour before I phoned for the ambulance. I sat down next to him and watched him, so still, holding death.
I do not think that hour there told me anything I could not have imagined myself, but being there, in that silence, gave me hope that at least there are no wars after death.
I have seen more death than I have seen life. Sometimes even the most tired cliches apply. I believe I am merely living my life in order to die.
Laura
October 5,1989
Dear Diary,
In the middle of my shift last night at One-Eyed Jack's, I left my room and went into the office. I wanted to use the bathroom there because it had a lock on it. I had come down so hard that I needed more than just a bullet hit, I needed a couple big fat lines... When I exited the bathroom I used the other door which connects to Blackie's room. She was on the bed with a tourniquet on her arm shooting heroin. I may be fucked up, but I don't shoot that shit up my arm. That's an idiot's drug.
Blackie leaned her head back, having obviously just caught the high. I said to her directly, "I came in here for my money.
Euphoric, and a bit patronizingly, she said, "You'll get it tonight."
"That's what you told me last night." I paused. "Maybe if you stopped shooting that shit up your arm you wouldn't forget the things you've said."
Blackie stood up, settling into her high, and said that she was sick of my little-girl attitude and that I should grow up. She also added that she thought I should stop "frollicking in the snow"... that the customers were beginning to notice. I told her that was ridiculous, the customers hadn't noticed anything but better sex and better service than they'd ever had there before.
"But they haven't fucked me yet," Blackie replied.
I hesitated purposely, then said, "Oh, I thought that fucking you was punishment for those who..."
Blackie interrupted me with a slap across the face. She looked me in the eye and said, "I'm going to teach you a thing or two about fucking right now."
I smiled the way BOB would and thought to myself, I'll be the one teaching the lesson.
By the time I left Blackie, she was on the floor, naked except for her jewelry, and was humiliated because I had been able to take total control and show her things she had never thought possible. I took her into a very dark erotic place... but I left her there alone.
As I opened the door Blackie threw her final, and only remaining, punch.
"You better watch that cocaine use, Laura. It could get you fired."
I knew right then that it was to be my last night at One-Eyed Jack's.
Laura
P.S. I'm going to have to tell the world about Benjamin.
October 10,1989
Dear Diary,
I phoned Josie and told her I wouldn't be able to make the lesson that night until at least ten o'clock. She said that was fine and that she would be waiting for me.
That night I took advantage of the fact that someone wanted me so badly. And yet I found myself, as always, instructing my partner on how to please me. This experience, in particular, left me feeling empty and angry, and without respect for yet another person in town.
Laura
P.S. On the way home from Josie's I had a horrible vision of little Danielle running up to me to explain that BOB had been visiting her. He had told her I had sent him to her. When I came out of the vision, I realized that BOB had not come to visit me in over a week....
I hoped that this was only a vision, and not a premonition. Perhaps I should warn Danielle...
October 31,1989
Dear Diary,
It's Halloween. No mask necessary.
Blackie's sister, Nancy, from One-Eyed Jack's, brought my clothes and the money they owed me stuffed into a plastic pumpkin. She asked if she could talk to me outside for a moment because
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Undated
Dear Diary,
I spent the afternoon with Dr. Jacoby at his office. He wanted to see me and go over what I had said to him on my tapes. He wanted to hear more about James Hurley and the fact that I had mentioned going sober because of him. I told him James was someone I had known for a long time, although not so well. I told him I had fallen in love with his purity and the idea that if I was strong enough I could let James take me out of this darkness. I told him that it was a secret relationship only because I had wanted it that way. Donna knows. But the three of us are friends at school so I know she won't tell Bobby.
I told Dr. Jacoby how hard it had been for me lately with everything getting so close, and how I finally felt certain that James was my last chance for light.
I feel like a fake, I told him, even though I was Homecoming Queen. I had such a story behind my smile in the photos and at the football game as well. I still felt the hands and the mouths of the men I had been with hours before the photo was taken. I told him I had worn the same pan
ties just in case BOB came. I told him it felt like the school and the town and the world were mocking me by voting me Homecoming Queen... How could they not see how I was being swallowed up by pain? How dare they make me a spectacle like that and ask me to smile again and again and again!
At the game Bobby was the hero he wanted to be, but from the stands I could hardly make him out on the field. Everything seemed far away and muted, as if the blood rushing through my head hushed all the sounds except for my heartbeat and my breathing, which seemed labored, erratic.
I told him I had been having awful nightmares. All of them about the woods, the paths, the tree, footprints, the sounds of an owl... I felt death in these dreams and I also felt lust. Lust like I had known when it was fresh to me and it wasn't tired and worn-out and bettered only by violence.
I did have one dream, the worst, about water. In the dream I was standing at the water's edge and the sky was very very dark but reflected on the surface of the water was the sky filled with white clouds and a deep blue color. I remember thinking in the dream that if I dove in and swam far enough, I might come up in another world that was not filled with so much badness... so much hatred. When I did dive in, I remember swimming half the length of the lake... I think it was a lake-only to be pulled down by a hand as it grabbed my wrist and took me deeper and deeper and deeper. I told him I thought that hand was BOB's.
The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer Page 15
