"You dry?" Al asked before letting him in. Al looked horrible.
"Bone dry. You look like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera."
"Come on in."
They played two-handed whist all afternoon. They didn't drink.
A week passed. He and Wendy didn't speak much. But he knew she was watching, not believing. He drank coffee black and endless cans of Coca-Cola. One night he drank a whole six-pack of Coke and then ran into the bathroom and vomited it up. The level of the bottles in the liquor cabinet did not go down. After his classes he went over to Al Shockley's-she hated Al Shockley worse than she had ever hated anyone-and when he came home she would swear she smelled scotch or gin on his breath, but he would talk lucidly to her before supper, drink coffee, play with Danny after supper, sharing a Coke with him, read him a bedtime story, then sit and correct themes with cup after cup of black coffee by his hand, and she would have to admit to herself that she had been wrong.
Weeks passed and the unspoken word retreated further from the back of her lips. Jack sensed its retirement but knew it would never retire completely. Things began to get a little easier. Then George Hatfield. He had lost his temper again, this time stone sober.
"Sir, your party still doesn't-"
"Hello?" Al's voice, out of breath.
"Go ahead," the operator said dourly.
"Al, this is Jack Torrance."
"Jacky-boy!" Genuine pleasure. "How are you?"
"Good. I just called to say thanks. I got the job. It's perfect. If I can't finish that goddam play snowed in all winter, I'll never finish it."
"You'll finish."
"How are things?" Jack asked hesitantly.
"Dry," Al responded. "You?"
"As a bone."
"Miss it much?"
"Every day."
Al laughed. "I know that scene. But I don't know how you stayed dry after that Hatfield thing, Jack. That was above and beyond."
"I really bitched things up for myself," he said evenly.
"Oh, hell. I'll have the Board around by spring. Effinger's already saying they might have been too hasty. And if that play comes to something-"
"Yes. Listen, my boy's out in the car, Al. He looks like he might be getting restless-"
"Sure. Understand. You have a good winter up there, Jack. Glad to help."
"Thanks again, Al." He hung up, closed his eyes in the hot booth, and again saw the crashing bike, the bobbing flashlight. There had been a squib in the paper the next day, no more than a space-filler really, but the owner had not been named. Why it had been out there in the night would always be a mystery to them, and perhaps that was as it should be.
He went back out to the car and gave Danny his slightly melted Baby Ruth.
"Daddy?"
"What, doc?"
Danny hesitated, looking at his father's abstracted face.
"When I was waiting for you to come back from that hotel, I had a bad dream. Do you remember? When I fell asleep?"
"Um-hm."
But it was no good. Daddy's mind was someplace else, not with him. Thinking about the Bad Thing again.
(I dreamed that you hurt me, Daddy)
"What was the dream, doc?"
"Nothing," Danny said as they pulled out into the parking lot. He put the maps back into the glove compartment.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Jack gave his son a faint, troubled glance; and then his mind turned to his play.
Chapter 6. Night Thoughts
Love was over, and her man was sleeping beside her.
Her man.
She smiled a little in the darkness, his seed still trickling with slow warmth from between her slightly parted thighs, and her smile was both rueful and pleased, because the phrase her man summoned up a hundred feelings. Each feeling examined alone was a bewilderment. Together, in this darkness floating to sleep, they were like a distant blues tune heard in an almost deserted night club, melancholy but pleasing.
Lovin' you baby, is just like rollin' off a log,
But if I can't be your woman, I sure ain't goin' to be your dog.