Mr. Gaunt sat in one of the plush chairs, watching Myra Evans with clinical detachment as her orgasm ripped through her. She was shaking like a woman experiencing a total neural breakdown, the picture of Elvis clutched tightly in her hands, eyes closed, bosom heaving, legs tightening, loosening, tightening, loosening. Her hair had lost its beauty-shop curl and lay against her head in a not-toocharming helmet. Her double chins ran with sweat much as Elvis's own had done as he gyrated ponderously across the stage during his last few concerts.
"Ooohh!" Myra cried, shaking like a bowl of jelly on a plate.
"Ooooh! Oooooooh my God! Ooooooooooooh my Gahhhhhhhhd!
OOOOHHHHH-" Mr. Gaunt idly tweezed the crease of his dark slacks between his thumb and forefinger, shook it out to its former razor sharpness, then leaned forward and snatched the picture from Myra's hands.
Her eyes, full of dismay, flew open at once. She grabbed for the picture, but it was already out of her reach. She started to get up.
"Sit down," Mr. Gaunt said.
Myra remained where she was, as if she had been turned to stone during the act of rising.
"If you ever want to see this picture again, Myra, sit... down."
She sat, staring at him in dumb agony. Large patches of sweat were creeping out from under her arms and along the sides of her br**sts.
"Please," she said. The word came out in a croak so dusty that it was like a puff of wind in the desert. She held her hands out.
"Name me a price," Gaunt invited.
She thought. Her eyes rolled in her sweaty face. Her Adam's apple went up and down.
"Forty dollars!" she cried.
He laughed and shook his head.
"Fifty!"
"Ridiculous. You must not want this picture very badly, Myra."
"I do!" Tears began to seep from the corners of her eyes. They ran down her cheeks, mixing with the sweat there. "I doooooo!"
"All right," he said. "You want it. I accept the fact that you want it. But do you need it, Myra? Do you really need it?"
"Sixty! That's all I've got! That's every red cent!"
"Myra, do I look like a child to you?"
No-"
"I think I must. I'm an old man-older than you would believe, I've aged very well, if I do say so myself-but I really think I must look like a child to you, a child who will believe a woman who lives in a brand-new duplex less than three blocks from Castle View has only sixty dollars to her name."
"You don't understand! My husband-" Mr. Gaunt rose, still holding the picture. The smiling man who had stood aside to grant her admittance was no longer in this room.
"You didn't have an appointment, Myra, did you? No. I saw you out of the goodness of my heart. But now I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."
"Seventy! Seventy dollars!"
"You insult my intelligence. Please go."
Myra fell on her knees before him. She was weeping in hoarse, panicky sobs. She clutched his calves as she grovelled before him. "Please! Please, Mr. Gaunt! I have to have that picture! I have to! It does... you wouldn't believe what it does!"
Mr. Gaunt looked at the picture of Elvis and a momentary look of distaste crossed his face. "I don't think I'd want to know," he said.
"It looked extremely... sweaty."
"But if it was more than seventy dollars, I'd have to write a check. Chuck would know. He'd want to know what I spent it for. And if I told him, he'd... he'd..."
"That," Mr. Gaunt said, "is not my problem. I am a shopkeeper, not a marriage counsellor." He was looking down at her, speaking to the top of her sweaty head. "I'm sure that someone else-Mrs. Rusk, for instance will be able to afford this rather unique likeness of the late Mr. Presley."
At the mention of Cora, Myra's head snapped up. Her eyes were sunken, glittering points in deep brown sockets. Her teeth were revealed in a snarl. She looked, in that instant, quite insane.
"You'd sell it to her?" she hissed.
"I believe in free trade," Mr. Gaunt said. "It's what made this country great. I really wish you'd let go of me, Myra. Your hands are positively running with sweat. I'm going to have to have these pants dry-cleaned, and even then I'm not sure-"
"Eighty! Eighty dollars!"
"I'll sell it to you for exactly twice that," Mr. Gaunt said.
"One hundred and sixty dollars." He grinned, revealing his large, crooked teeth. "And Myra-your personal check is good with me."
She uttered a howl of despair. "I can't! Chuck will kill me!"
"Maybe," Mr. Gaunt said, "but you would be dying for a hunkahunka burning love, would you not?"
"A hundred," Myra whined, grabbing his calves again as he tried to step away from her. "Please, a hundred dollars."
"A hundred and forty," Gaunt countered. "It's as low as I can go. It is my final offer."
"All right," Myra panted. "All right, that's all right, I'll pay it-"
"And you'll have to throw in a blowjob, of course," Gaunt said, grinning down at her.
She looked up at him, her mouth a perfect "O". "What did you say?" she whispered.
"Blow me!" he shouted down at her. "Fellate me! Open that gorgeous metal-filled mouth of yours and gobble my crank!"
"Oh my God," Myra moaned.
"As you wish," Mr. Gaunt said, beginning to turn away.
She grabbed him before he could leave her. A moment later her shaking hands were scrabbling at his fly.
He let her scrabble for a few moments, his face amused, and then he slapped her hands away. "Forget it," he said. "Oral sex gives me amnesia."
"What-"
"Never mind, Myra." He tossed her the picture. She flailed her hands at it, caught it somehow, and clutched it to her bosom. "There is one other thing, however."
"What?" she hissed at him.
"Do you know the man who tends the bar on the other side of the Tin Bridge?"
She was beginning to shake her head, her eyes filling with alarm again, then realized who he must mean. "Henry Beaufort?"
"Yes. I believe he also owns the establishment, which is called The Mellow Tiger. A rather interesting name."
"Well, I don't know him, but I know who he is, I guess."
She had never been in The Mellow Tiger in her life, but she knew as well as anyone who owned and ran the place.
"Yes. Him. I want you to play a little trick on Mr. Beaufort."
"What... what kind of a trick?"
Gaunt reached down, grasped one of Myra's sweat-slimy hands, and helped her to her feet.
"That," he said, "is something we can talk about while you write your check, Myra." He smiled then, and all his charm flooded back into his face. His brown eyes sparkled and danced. "And by the way, would you like your picture gift-wrapped?"
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Alan slid into a booth in Nan's Luncheonette across from Polly and saw at once that the pain was still bad-bad enough for her to have taken a Percodan in the afternoon, which was rare. He knew it even before she opened her mouth-it was something in the eyes.
A sort of shine. He had come to know it... but not to like it.
He didn't think he would ever like it. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was addicted to the stuff yet. In Polly's case, he supposed that addiction was just another side-effect, something to be expected, noted, and then sublimated to the main problem-which was, simply put, the fact that she was living with pain he probably couldn't even comprehend.
His voice showed none of this as he asked, "How's it going, pretty lady?"
She smiled. "Well, it's been an interesting day. Verrrrry... inderesting, as that guy used to say on Laugh-In."
"You're not old enough to remember that."
"I am so. Alan, who's that?"
He turned in the direction of her gaze just in time to spot a woman with a rectangular package cradled in her arms drift past Nan's wide plate-glass window. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, and a man coming the other way had to jig rapidly out of her way to avol I I names and faces he kept in his head and came up with what Norris, who was deeply in love with police language, would undoubtedly have called "a partial."
"Evans. Mabel or Mavis or something like that. Her husband's Chuck Evans."
"She looks like she just smoked some very good Panamanian Red," Polly said. "I envy her."
Nan Roberts herself came over to wait on them. She was one of William Rose's Baptist Christian Soldiers, and today she wore a small yellow button above her left breast. It was the third one Alan had seen this afternoon, and he guessed he would see a great many more in the weeks ahead. It showed a slot machine inside a black circle with a red diagonal line drawn through it. There were no words on the button; it made the wearer's feelings about Casino Nite perfectly clear without them.
Nan was a middle-aged woman with a huge bosom and a sweetly pretty face that made you think of Mom and apple pie. The apple pie at Nan's was, as Alan and all his deputies knew, very good, too-especially with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on top. It was easy to take Nan at face value, but a good many business people-realtors, for the most part-had discovered that doing so was a bad idea. Behind the sweet face there was a clicking computer of a mind, and beneath the motherly swell of bosom there was a pile of account books where the heart should have been. Nan owned a very large chunk of Castle Rock, including at least five of the business buildings on Main Street, and now that Pop Merrill was in the ground, Alan suspected she was probably the wealthiest person in town.