Rose Madder by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

were somewhere along the way, and what they thought they were doing, and why.
10
    R osie felt a profound sense of relief as the bus lumbered out of the Portside terminal (on time), turned left, re-crossed the Trunkatawny, and then got on I-78 heading west. As they passed the last of the three downtown exits, she saw the triangular glass-sided building that was the new police headquarters. It occurred to her that her husband might be behind one of those big windows right now, that he might even be looking out at this big, shiny bus beetling along the Interstate. She closed her eyes and counted to one hundred. When she opened them again, the building was gone. Gone forever, she hoped.
    She had taken a seat three quarters of the way back in the bus, and the diesel engine hummed steadily not far behind her. She closed her eyes again and rested the side of her face on the window. She would not sleep, she was too keyed-up to sleep, but she could rest. She had an idea she was going to need all the rest she could get. She was still amazed at how suddenly this had happened—an event more like a heart attack or a stroke than a change of life. Change? That was putting it mildly. She hadn’t just changed it, she had uprooted it, like a woman tearing an African violet out of its pot. Change of life, indeed. No, she would never sleep. Sleep was out of the question.
    And so thinking, she slipped not into sleep, but into that umbilical cord which connects sleeping and waking. Hereshe moved slowly back and forth like a bubble, faintly aware of the diesel engine’s steady hum, the sound of the tires on the pavement, of a kid four or five rows up asking his mother when they were going to get to Aunt Norma’s. But she was also aware that she had come untethered from herself, and that her mind had opened like a flower (a rose, of course), opened as it does only when one is in neither one place nor the other.
    I’m really Rosie . . .
    Carole King’s voice, singing Maurice Sendak’s words. They came floating up the corridor she was in from some distant chamber, echoing, accompanied by the glassy, ghostly notes of a piano.
    . . . and I’m Rosie Real . . .
    I’m going to sleep after all, she thought. I think I really am. Imagine that!
    You better believe me . . . I’m a great big deal . . .
    She was no longer in the gray corridor but in some dark open space. Her nose, her entire head, was filled with smells of summer so sweet and so strong that they were almost overwhelming. Chief among them was the smell of honeysuckle, drifts of it. She could hear crickets, and when she looked up she saw the polished bone face of the moon, riding high overhead. Its white glow was everywhere, turning the mist rising from the tangled grasses around her bare legs to smoke.
    I’m really Rosie . . . and I’m Rosie Real . . .
    She raised her hands with the fingers splayed and the thumbs almost touching; she framed the moon like a picture and as the night wind stroked her bare arms she felt her heart first swell with happiness and then contract with fright. She sensed a dozing savagery in this place, as if there might be animals with big teeth loose in the perfumed undergrowth.
    Rose. Come over here, sweetheart. I want to talk to you up close.
    She turned her head and saw his fist rushing out of the dark. Icy strokes of moonlight gleamed on the raised letters of his Police Academy ring. She saw the stressful grimace of his lips, pulled back in something like a smile—
    â€”and jerked awake in her seat, gasping, her forehead damp with sweat. She must have been breathing hard for some time, because her window was humid with her condensedbreath, almost completely fogged in. She swiped a clear path on the glass with the side of her hand and looked out. The city was almost gone now; they were passing an exurban litter of gas stations and fast-food franchises, but