She took another quick glance around, but the only thing moving in the whole hot daylight world was a single crow, perhaps the one which had called before. It flapped down to the top of a telephone pole directly across from the driveway and seemed to watch her.
Myra took the bayonet out, gripped it tightly in both hands, stooped, and rammed it up to the hilt in the whitewall on the driver's-side front. Her face was pulled back in a wincing snarl, anticipating a loud bang, but there was only a sudden breathless hooooosh!-the sound a big man might make after a sucker-punch to the gut. The T-Bird settled appreciably to the left. Myra yanked the bayonet, tearing the hole wider, grateful Chuck liked to keep his toys sharp.
When she had cut a ragged rubber smile in the rapidly deflating tire, she went around to the one on the passenger-side front and did it again. She was still anxious to get back to her picture, but she found she was glad she had come, just the same. This was sort of exciting.
The thought of Henry's face when he saw what had happened to his precious Thunderbird was actually making her horny. God knew why, but she thought that when she finally got back on board the Lisa Marie, she might have a new trick or two to show The King.
She moved on to the rear tires. The bayonet did not cut quite so easily now, but she made up for it with her own enthusiasm, sawing energetically through the sidewalls of the tires.
When the job was done, when all four tires were not just punctured but gutted, Myra stepped back to survey her work. She was breathing rapidly, and she armed sweat off her forehead in a quick, mannish gesture. Henry Beaufort's Thunderbird now sat a good six inches lower on the driveway than it had when she arrived. It rested on its wheeirims with the expensive radials spread out around them in wrinkled rubber puddles. And then, although she had not been asked to do so, Myra decided to add the extra touch that means so much. She raked the tip of the bayonet down the side of the car, splitting the deeply polished surface with a long, jagged scratch.
The bayonet made a small, wailing screech against the metal and Myra looked at the house, suddenly sure that Henry Beaufort must have heard, that the shade in the bedroom window was suddenly going to flap up and he would be looking out at her.
It didn't happen, but she knew it was time to leave. She had overstayed her welcome here, and besides-back in her own bedroom, The King awaited. Myra hurried down the driveway, reseating the bayonet in its scabbard and then dropping the tail of Chuck's shirt over it again.
One car passed her before she got back to The Mellow Tiger, but it was going the other way-assuming the driver wasn't ogling her in his rearview mirror, he would have seen only her back.
She slid into her own car, yanked the rubber band out of her hair, allowing her locks to fall around her face in their usual limp fashion, and drove back to town. She did this one-handed. Her other hand had business to take care of below her waist. She let herself into her house and bounded up the stairs by twos. The picture was on the bed, where she had left it. Myra kicked off her shoes, pushed her jeans down, grabbed the picture, and jumped into bed with it. The cracks in the glass were gone; The King had been restored to youth and beauty.
The same could be said for Myra Evans... at least temporarily.
7
Over the door, the silver bell sang its 'ingly little tune.
"Hello, Mrs. Potter!" Leland Gaunt said cheerily. He made a tick-mark on the sheet by the cash register. "I'd about decided you weren't going to come by."
"I almost didn't," Lenore Potter said. She looked upset, distracted. Her silver hair, usually coiffed to perfection, had been tacked up in an indifferent bun. An inch of her slip was showing beneath the hem of her expensive gray twill skirt, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. The eyes themselves were restless, shooting from place to place with baleful, angry suspicion.
"It was the Howdy Doody puppet you wanted to look at, wasn't it?
I believe you told me you have quite a collection of children's memorab-"
"I really don't believe I can look at such gentle things today, you know," Lenore said. She was the wife of the richest lawyer in Castle Rock, and she spoke in clipped, lawyerly tones. "I'm in an extremely poor frame of mind. I'm having a magenta day. Not just red, but magenta!"
Mr. Gaunt stepped around the main display case and came toward her, his face instantly filled with concern and sympathy. "My dear lady, what's happened? You look dreadful!"
"Of course I look dreadful!" she snapped. "The normal flow of my psychic aura has been disrupted-badly disrupted! Instead of blue, the color of calm and serenity, my entire calava has gone bright magenta!
And it's all the fault of that bitch across the street!
That high-box bitch!"
Mr. Gaunt made peculiar soothing gestures which never quite touched any part of Lenore Potter's body. "What bitch is that, Mrs.