19
Dan lay awake until six. Then he dressed and once more made the trek to the Red Apple. This time he did not hesitate, only instead of extracting two bottles of Bird from the cooler, he took three. What was it they used to say? Go big or go home. The clerk bagged the bottles without comment; he was used to early wine purchasers. Dan strolled to the town common, sat on one of the benches in Teenytown, and took one of the bottles out of the bag, looking down at it like Hamlet with Yorick’s skull. Through the green glass, what was inside looked like rat poison instead of wine.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Dan said, and loosened the cap.
This time it was his mother who spoke up. Wendy Torrance, who had smoked right to the bitter end. Because if suicide was the only option, you could at least choose your weapon.
Is this how it ends, Danny? Is this what it was all for?
He turned the cap widdershins. Then tightened it. Then back the other way. This time he took it off. The smell of the wine was sour, the smell of jukebox music and crappy bars and pointless arguments followed by fistfights in parking lots. In the end, life was as stupid as one of those fights. The world wasn’t a hospice with fresh air, the world was the Overlook Hotel, where the party never ended. Where the dead were alive forever. He raised the bottle to his lips.
Is this why we fought so hard to get out of that damned hotel, Danny? Why we fought to make a new life for ourselves? There was no reproach in her voice, only sadness.
Danny tightened the cap again. Then loosened it. Tightened it. Loosened it.
He thought: If I drink, the Overlook wins. Even though it burned to the ground when the boiler exploded, it wins. If I don’t drink, I go crazy.
He thought: All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
He was still tightening the cap and loosening it when Billy Freeman, who had awakened early with the vague, alarmed sense that something was wrong, found him.
“Are you going to drink that, Dan, or just keep jerking it off???”
“Drink it, I guess. I don’t know what else to do.”
So Billy told him.
20
Casey Kingsley wasn’t entirely surprised to see his new hire sitting outside his office when he arrived at quarter past eight that morning. Nor was he surprised to see the bottle Torrance was holding in his hands, first twisting the cap off, then putting it back on and turning it tight again—he’d had that special look from the start, the thousand-yard Kappy’s Discount Liquor Store stare.
Billy Freeman didn’t have as much shine as Dan himself, not even close, but a bit more than just a twinkle. On that first day he had called Kingsley from the equipment shed as soon as Dan headed across the street to the Municipal Building. There was a young fella looking for work, Billy said. He wasn’t apt to have much in the way of references, but Billy thought he was the right man to help out until Memorial Day. Kingsley, who’d had experiences—good ones—with Billy’s intuitions before, had agreed. I know we’ve got to have someone, he said.
Billy’s reply had been peculiar, but then Billy was peculiar. Once, two years ago, he had called an ambulance five minutes before that little kid had fallen off the swings and fractured his skull.
He needs us more than we need him, Billy had said.
And here he was, sitting hunched forward as if he were already riding his next bus or barstool, and Kingsley could smell the wine from twelve yards down the hallway. He had a gourmet’s nose for such scents, and could name each one. This was Thunderbird, as in the old saloon rhyme: What’s the word? Thunderbird! . . . What’s the price? Fifty twice! But when the young guy looked up at him, Kingsley saw the eyes were clear of everything but desperation.
“Billy sent me.”
Kingsley said nothing. He could see the kid gathering himself, struggling with it. It was in his eyes; it was in the way his mouth turned down at the corners; mostly it was the way he held the bottle, hating it and loving it and needing it all at the same time.
At last Dan brought out the words he had been running from all his life.
“I need help.”
He swiped an arm across his eyes. As he did, Kingsley bent down and grasped the bottle of wine. The kid held on for a moment . . . then let go.
“You’re sick and you’re tired,” Kingsley said. “I can see that much. But are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?”
Dan looked up at him, throat working. He struggled some more, then said, “You don’t know how much.”
“Maybe I do.” Kingsley produced a vast key ring from his vast trousers. He stuck one in the lock of the door with FRAZIER MUNICIPAL SERVICES painted on the frosted glass. “Come on in. Let’s talk about it.”