Six Stories by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

it, working from forehead to the base of his neck. He moves with the unconcerned speed of long experience, giving himself a moderate tan. With that done, he works some of the gel into his hair and then recombs it, getting rid of the part and sweeping it straight back from his forehead. It is the last touch, the smallest touch, and perhaps the most telling touch. There is no trace of the commuter who walked out of Penn Station an hour ago; the man in the mirror mounted on the back of the door to the small storage annex looks like a washed-up mercenary. There is a kind of silent, half-humbled pride in the tanned face, something people won’t look at too long. It hurts them if they do. Willie knows this is so; he has seen it. He doesn’t ask why it should be so. He has made himself a life pretty much without questions, and that’s the way he likes it.
    ‘All right,’ he says, closing the door to the storage room. ‘Lookin good, trooper.’
    He goes back to the closet for the red jacket, which is the reversible type, and the boxy case. He slips the jacket over his desk chair for the time being and puts the case on the desk. He unlatches it and swings the top up on sturdy hinges; now it looks a little like the cases the street salesmen use to display their cheap watches and costume jewelry. There are only a few items in Willie’s, one of them broken down into two pieces so it will fit. He takes out a pair of gloves (he will want them today, no doubt about that), and then a sign on a length of stout cord. The cord has been knotted through holes in the cardboard at either side, so Willie can hang the sign over his neck. He closes the case again, not bothering to latch it, and puts the sign on top of it - the desk is so cluttery, it’s the only good surface he has to work on.
    Humming (we chased our pleasure here, dug our treasures there), he opens the wide drawer above the kneehole, paws past the pencils and Chapsticks and paper clips and memo pads, and finally finds his stapler. He then unrolls the ball of tinsel, places it carefully around the rectangle of his sign, snips off the extra, and staples the shiny stuff firmly into place. He holds it up for a moment, first assessing the effect, then admiring it.
    ‘Perfect!’ he says. ‘Wonderful! Sharon, you’re a geni - ‘
    The telephone rings and he stiffens, turning to look at it with eyes which are suddenly very small and hard and totally alert. One ring. Two. Three. On the fourth, the machine kicks in, answering in his voice - the version of it that goes with this office, anyway.
    ‘Hi, you’ve reached Midtown Heating and Cooling,’ Willie Teale says. ‘No one can take your call right now, so leave a message at the beep.’
    Bee-eep
    He listens tensely, standing over his just-decorated sign with is hands balled into fists.
    ‘Hi, this is Ed, from the Nynex Yellow Pages,’ the voice from the machine says, and Willie lets out breath he hasn’t known he was holding His hands begin to loosen. ‘Please have your company rep call me at 555-1000 for information on how you can increase your ad space in both versions of the Yellow Pages, and at the same time save big money on your yearly bill. Thanks.’

Click
    Willie looks at the answering machine a moment longer, almost as if he expects it to speak again - to threaten him, perhaps, or to accuse him of some crime - but nothing happens.
    ‘Squared away,’ he murmurs, putting the decorated sign back into the case. This time when he closes it, he latches it. Across the front is a bumper sticker, its message flanked by small American flags. I WAS PROUD TO SERVE, it reads. And below that: SEMPER FI.
    ‘Squared away, baby, you better believe it.’
    He leaves the office, closing the door with MIDTOWN HEATING AND COOLING printed on the frosted-glass panel behind him, and turning all three of the locks.
    9:40 A.M.
    Halfway down the hall, he sees Ralph Williamson, one of the tubby accountants from Garowicz Financial