Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER THIRTY

Twelve-twelve-twelve, the clock flashed, and whatever time it really was, it was time.

One more thing before you start. You’ve got yourself nerved up to thesticking point, and that’s good, but keep your focus. If you start off bydropping the damn glass on the floor, you really will be fucked.

“Stay out, dog!” she called shrilly, with no idea that the dog had retreated to the stand of woods beyond the head of the driveway some minutes before. She hesitated a moment longer, considering another prayer, and then decided she had done all the praying she intended to do. Now she would depend on her voices… and on herself.

She reached for the glass with her right hand, moving without her former tentative care. Part of her-probably the part which had so liked and admired Ruth Neary-understood that this final job was not about care and caution but about bringing down the hammer and bringing it down hard.

Now I must be Samurai Lady, she thought, and smiled.

She closed her fingers upon the glass she had worked so hard to get in the first place, looked at it curiously for a moment looked at it as a gardener might look at some unexpected specimen she had found growing in among her beans or peas-then gripped it. She stitted her eyes almost completely shut to protect them from flying splinters, then brought the glass down hard on the shelf, in the manner of one who cracks the shell of a hardboiled egg. The sound the glass made was absurdly familiar, absurdly normal, a sound no different from that made by the hundreds of glasses which had either slipped through her fingers during the washing-up or been knocked onto the floor by her elbow or straying hand in all the years since she had graduated from her plastic Dandy Duck cup at the age of five. Same old ker-smash; there was no special resonance to indicate the fact that she had just begun the unique job of risking her life in order to save it.

She did feel a single random chunk of glass strike low on her forehead, just above the eyebrow, but that was the only one to hit her face. Another piece-a big one, by the sound-spun off the shelf and shattered on the floor. Jessie’s lips were pressed together in a tight white line, anticipating what would surely be the major source of pain, at least to begin with: her fingers. They had been gripping the glass tightly when it shattered. But there was no pain, only a sense of faint pressure and even fainter heat. Compared with the cramps which had been ripping at her for the last couple of hours, it was nothing.

The glass must have broken lucky, and why not? Isn’t it time I hada little luck?

Then she raised her hand and saw the glass hadn’t broken lucky after all. Dark red blisters of blood were welling up at the tips of her thumb and three of her four fingers; only her pinky had escaped being cut. Shards of glass stuck out of her thumb, second, and third fingers like weird quills. The creeping numbness in her extremities-and perhaps the keen edges on the pieces of glass which had cut her-had kept her from feeling the lacerations much, but they were there. As she watched, fat drops of blood began to patter down on the pink quilted surface of the mattress, staining it a far darker color.

Those narrow darts of glass, sticking out of her middle two fingers like pins from a pincushion, made her feel like throwing up even though there was nothing at all in her stomach.

Some Samurai Lady you turned out to be, one of the UFO voices sneered.

But they’re my fingers! she cried at it. Don’t you see? They’re myfingers!

She felt panic flutter, forced it back, and returned her attention to the chunk of water-glass she was still holding. It was a curved upper section, probably a quarter of the whole, and on one side it had broken in two smooth arcs. They came to an almost perfect point which glittered cruelly in the afternoon sun. A lucky break, that… maybe. If she could keep her courage up. To her this curving prong of glass looked like a fantastic fairy-tale weapon tiny scimitar, something to be carried by a warlike pixie on its way to do battle beneath a toadstool.

Your mind is wandering, dear, Punkin said. Can you afford that?

The answer, of course, was no.

Jessie laid the quarter-section of drinking glass back down on the shelf, placing it carefully so she would be able to reach it without serious contortions. It lay on its smooth curved belly, the scimitar-shaped prong jutting out. A tiny spark of reflected sun glittered hotly at the tip. She thought it might do very well for the next job, if she was careful not to bear down too hard. If she did that, she would probably push the glass off the shelf or snap off the accidental blade-shape.

“Just be careful,” she said. “You won’t need to bear down if you’re careful, Jessie. just pretend

But the rest of that thought

(you’re carving roast beef)

didn’t seem very productive, so she blocked it before more than its leading edge could get through. She lifted her right arm, extending it until the handcuff chain was almost taut and her wrist hovered above the gleaming hook of glass. She wanted very much to sweep away the rest of the glass littering the shelf-she sensed it waiting for her up there like a minefield-but she didn’t dare. Not after her experience with the jar of Nivea cream. If she accidentally knocked the blade-shaped piece of glass off the shelf, or broke it, she would need to sift through the leftovers for an acceptable substitute. Such precautions seemed almost surreal to her, but she did not for a single moment try to tell herself they were unnecessary. If she was going to get out of this, she was going to have to bleed a lot more than she was bleeding now.

Do it just the way you saw it, Jessie, that’s all…and don’t chickenout.

“No chickening out,” Jessie agreed in her harsh dust-in-the-cracks voice. She spread her hand and then shook her wrist, hoping to get rid of the glass poking out of her fingers. She mostly succeeded; only the sliver in her thumb, buried deeply in the tender flesh beneath the nail, refused to go. She decided to leave it and get on with the rest of her business.

What you’re planning to do is absolutely crazy, a nervous voice told her. No UFO here; this was a voice Jessie knew well. It was the voice of her mother. Not that I’m surprised, you understand; it’s atypical Jessie Mahout overreaction, and if I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it athousand times. Think about it, Jessie-why cut yourself up and maybebleed to death? Someone will come and rescue you; anything else is simplyunthinkable, Dying in one’s summer house? Dying in handcuffs? Utterly ridiculous, take my word for it. So rise above your usual whiny nature,Jessie-just this one time. Don’t cut yourself on that glass. Don’t you doit!

That was her mother, all right; the mimicry was so good it was eerie. She wanted you to believe you were hearing love and common sense masquerading as anger, and while the woman had not been entirely incapable of love, Jessie thought the real Sally Mahout was the woman who had one day marched into Jessie’s room and thrown a pair of high heels at her without a single word of explanation, either then or later.

Besides, everything that voice had said was a lie. A scared lie.

“No,” she said, “I won’t take your word for it. No one’s coming… except maybe the guy from last night. No chickening out.” With that, Jessie lowered her right wrist toward the gleaming blade of glass.