The phone rang twice.
Nettle didn't answer it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
Friday, the eleventh of October, was a banner day at Castle Rock's newest shop, particularly as morning gave way to afternoon and people began to cash their paychecks. Money in the hand was an incentive to shop; so was the good word of mouth sent around by those who had stopped in on Wednesday. There were a number of people, of course, who believed the judgments of people crude enough to visit a new store on the very first day it was open could not be trusted, but they were a minority, and the small silver bell over the front door of Needful Things jingled prettily all day long.
More stock had been either unpacked or delivered since Wednesday.
It was hard for those interested in such things to believe there had been a delivery-no one had seen a truck-but it really didn't matter much, one way or the other. There was a lot more merchandise in Needful Things on Friday; that was the important thing.
Dolls, for instance. And beautifully crafted wooden jigsaw puzzles, some of them double-sided. There was a unique chess set: the pieces were chunks of rock [email protected] carved into African animals by some primitive but fabulously talented hand-loping giraffes for knights, rhinos with their heads combatively lowered for castles, jackals for pawns, lion kings, sinuous leopard queens. There was a necklace of black pearls which was clearly expensive-how expensive nobody quite dared to ask (at least not that day)-but their beauty made them almost painful to look at, and several visitors to Needful Things went home feeling melancholy and oddly distraught, with the image of that pearl necklace dancing in the darkness just behind their eyes, black on black. Nor were all of these women.
There was a pair of dancing jester-puppets. There was a music box, old and ornately carved-Mr. Gaunt said he was sure it played something unusual when it was opened, but he couldn't remember just what, and it was locked shut. He reckoned a buyer would have to find someone to make a key for it; there were still a few oldtimers around, he said, who had such skill-a. He was asked a few times if the music box could be returned if the buyer did get the lid to open and discovered that the tune was not to his or her taste.
Mr. Gaunt smiled and pointed to a new sign on the wall. It read: I DO NOT ISSUE REFUNDS OR MAKE EXCHANGES CAVEAT EMPTOR!
"What does that mean?" Lucille Dunham asked. Lucille was a waitress at Nan's who had stopped in with her friend Rose Ellen Myers on her coffee break.
"It means that if you buy a pig in a poke, you keep the pig and he keeps your poke," Rose Ellen said. She saw that Mr. Gaunt had overheard her (and she could have sworn she'd seen him on the other side of the shop only a moment before), and she blushed bright red.
Mr. Gaunt, however, only laughed. "That's right," he told her.
"That's exactly what it means!"
An old long-barreled revolver in one case with a card in front of it which read NED BUNTLINE SPECIAL; a boy puppet with wooden red hair, freckles, and a fixed friendly grin (HOWDY DOODY PROTOTYPE, read the card); boxes of stationery, very nice but not remarkable; a selection of antique post-cards; pen-andpencil sets; linen handkerchiefs; stuffed animals. There was, it seemed, an item for every taste and-even though there was not a single price-tag in the entire store for every budget.
Mr. Gaunt did a fine business that day. Most of the items he sold were nice but in no way unique. He did, however, make a number of "special" deals, and all of these sales took place during those lulls when there was only a single customer in the store.
"When things get slow, I get restless," he told Sally Ratcliffe, Brian Rusk's speech teacher, with his friendly grin, "and when I get restless, I sometimes get reckless. Bad for the seller but awfully good for the buyer."
Miss Ratcliffe was a devout member of Rev. Rose's Baptist flock, had met her fiance Lester Pratt there, and in addition to her No Casino Nite button, she wore one which said I'M ONE OF THE SAVED! HOW 'BOUT You? The splinter labelled PETRIFIED WOOD FROM THE HOLY LAND caught her attention at once, and she did not object when Mr. Gaunt took it from its case and dropped it into her hand. She bought it for seventeen dollars and a promise to play a harmless little prank on Frank jewett, the principal at Castle Rock Middle School. She left the shop five minutes after she had entered, looking dreamy and abstracted.
Mr. Gaunt had offered to wrap her purchase for her, but Miss Ratcliffe refused, saying she wanted to hold it. Looking at her as she went out the door, you would have been hard-put to tell if her feet were on the floor or drifting just above it.
2
The silver bell jingled.
Cora Rusk came in, determined to buy the picture of The King, and was extremely upset when Mr. Gaunt told her it had been sold.
Cora wanted to know who had bought it. "I'm sorry," Mr. Gaunt said, "but the lady was from out of state. There was an Oklahoma plate on the car she was driving."
"Well, I'll be butched!" Cora cried in tones of anger and real distress. She hadn't realized just how badly she wanted that picture until Mr. Gaunt informed her that it was gone.
Henry Gendron and his wife, Yvette, were in the shop at that time, and Mr. Gaunt asked Cora to wait a minute while he saw to them. He believed he had something else, he told her, which she would find of equal or perhaps even greater interest. After he had sold the Gendrons a stuffed teddy bear-a present for their daughter-and seen them out, he asked Cora if she could wait a moment longer while he looked for something in the back room. Cora waited, but not with any real interest or expectation. A deep gray depression had settled over her.
She had seen hundreds of pictures of The King, maybe thousands, and owned half a dozen herself, but this one had seemed... special, somehow. She hated the woman from Oklahoma.
Then Mr. Gaunt came back with a small lizard-skin spectacles case. He opened it and showed Cora a pair of aviator glasses with lenses of a deep smoky gray. Her breath caught in her throat; her right hand rose to her quivering neck.
"Are those-" she began, and could say no more.
"The King's sunglasses," Mr. Gaunt agreed gravely. "One of sixty pairs. But I'm told these were his favorites."
Cora bought the sunglasses for nineteen dollars and fifty cents.
"I'd like a little information, as well." Mr. Gaunt looked at Cora with twinkling eyes. "Let's call it a surcharge, shall we?"
"Information?" Cora asked doubtfully. "What sort of information?"
"Look out the window, Cora."
Cora did as she was asked, but her hands never left the sunglasses. Across the street, Castle Rock's Unit I was parked in front of The Clip joint. Alan Pangborn stood on the sidewalk, talking to Bill Fullerton.
"Do you see that fellow?" Gaunt asked.
"Who? Bill Ful-"
"No, you dummy," Gaunt said. "The other one."
"Sheriff Pangborn?"
"Right."
"Yes, I see him." Cora felt dull and dazed. Gaunt's voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. She could not stop thinking about her purchase the wonderful sunglasses. She wanted to get home and try them on right away... but of course she couldn't leave until she was allowed to leave, because the dealing wasn't done until Mr. Gaunt said the dealing was done.
"He looks like what folks in my line of work call a tough sell," Mr. Gaunt said. "What do you think about him, Cora?"
"He's smart," Cora said. "He'll never be the Sheriff old George Bannerman was-that's what my husband says-but he's smart as a whip."
"Is he?" Mr. Gaunt's voice had taken on that nagging, tired edge again. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and they never left Alan Pangborn. "Well, do you want to know a secret, Cora? I don't much care for smart people, and I hate a tough sell. In fact, I loathe a tough sell. I don't trust people who always want to turn things over and look for cracks before they buy them, do you?"
Cora said nothing. She only stood with The King's sunglasses case in her left hand and stared blankly out the window.
"If I wanted someone to keep an eye on smart old Sheriff Pangborn, Cora, who would be a good choice?"
"Polly Chalmers," Cora said in her drugged voice. "She's awful sweet on him."
Gaunt shook his head at once. His eyes never left the Sheriff as Alan walked to his cruiser, glanced briefly across the street at Needful Things, then got in and drove away. "Won't do."
"Sheila Brigham?" Cora asked doubtfully. "She's the dispatcher down at the Sheriff's Office."
"A good idea, but she won't do, either. Another tough sell.
There are a few in every town, Cora-unfortunate, but true."
Cora thought it over in her dim, distant way. "Eddie Warburton?"
she asked at last. "He's the head custodian at the Municipal Building."
Gaunt's face lit up. "The janitor!" he said. "Yes! Excellent!
Fifth Business! Really excellent!" He leaned over the counter and planted a kiss on Cora's cheek.
She drew away, grimacing and rubbing frantically at the spot.
A brief gagging noise came from her throat, but Gaunt appeared not to notice. His face was wreathed in a large, shining smile.
Cora left (still rubbing her cheek with the heel of her hand) as Stephanie Bonsaint and Cyndi Rose Martin of the Ash Street Bridge Club came in. Cora almost bowled Steffie Bonsaint over in her hurry; she felt a deep desire to get home as fast as she could. To get home and actually try those glasses on. But before she did, she wanted to wash her face and rid herself of that loathsome kiss. She could feel it burning in her skin like a low fever. Over the door, the silver bell tinkled.