The Stand:BOOK I(70)

"I'd better not go in there if I want to save what appetite I have," she said apologetically.

Larry suspected he could find some cured meat inside-salami, pepperoni, something like that-but after running across "John Bearsford Tipton" four blocks back, he didn't want to leave her alone for even the short time it would take to go in and check. So they found a bench half a block west, and ate dehydrated fruit and dehydrated strips of bacon. They finished with cheese spread on Ritz crackers and passed a thermos of iced coffee back and forth.

"This time I was really hungry," she said proudly.

He smiled back, feeling better. Just to be on the move, to be taking some positive action-that was good. He had told her she would feel better when they got out of New York. At the time it had just been something to say. Now, consulting the rise in his own spirits., he guessed it was true. Being in New York was like being in a graveyard where the dead were not yet quiet. The sooner they got out, the better it would be. She would perhaps revert to the way she had been that first day in the park. They would go to Maine on the secondary roads and set up housekeeping in one of those rich-bitch summer houses. North now, and south in September or October. Boothbay Harbor in the summer, Key Biscayne in the winter. It had a nice ring. Occupied with his thoughts, he didn't see her grimace of pain as he stood up and shouldered the rifle he had insisted on bringing.

They were moving west now, their shadows behind them-at first as squat as frogs, beginning to lengthen out as the afternoon progressed. They passed the Avenue of the Americas, Seventh Avenue, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth. The streets were crammed and silent, frozen rivers of automobiles in every color, predominated by the yellow of the taxicabs. Many of the cars had become hearses, their decaying drivers still leaning behind the wheels, their passengers slumped as if, weary of the traffic jam, they had fallen asleep. Larry started to think that maybe they'd want to pick up a couple of motorcycles once they got out of the city. That would give them both mobility and a fighting chance to skirt the worst of the clots of dead vehicles which must litter the highways everywhere.

Always assuming she can run a bike, he thought. And the way things were going, it would turn out she couldn't. Life with Rita was turning out to be a real pain in the butt, at least in some of its aspects. But if push came down to shove, he supposed she could ride pillion behind him.

At the intersection of Thirty-ninth and Seventh, they saw a young man wearing cutoff denim shorts and nothing else lying atop a Ding-Dong Taxi.

"Is he dead?" Rita asked, and at the sound of her voice the young man sat up, looked around, saw them, and waved. They waved back. The young man lay placidly back down.

It was just after two o'clock when they crossed Eleventh Avenue. Larry heard a muffled cry of pain behind him and realized Rita was no longer walking on his left.

She was down on one knee, holding her foot. With something like horror, Larry noticed for the first time that she was wearing expensive open-toed sandals, probably in the eighty-dollar range, just the thing for a four-block stroll along Fifth Avenue while window-shopping, but for a long walk-a hike, really-like the one they hart been making …

The ankle-straps had chafed through her skin. Blood was trickling down her ankles.

"Larry, I'm s-"

He jerked her abruptly to her feet. "What were you thinking about?" he shouted into her face. He felt a moment's shame at the miserable way she recoiled, but also a mean sort of pleasure. "Did you think you could cab back to your apartment if your feet got tired?"

"I never thought-"

"Well, Christ!" He ran his hands through his hair. "I guess you didn't. You're bleeding, Rita. How long has it been hurting?"

Her voice was so low and husky that he had trouble hearing her even in the preternatural silence. "Since …  well, since about Fifth and Forty-ninth, I guess."

"Your feet have been hurting you for twenty fucking blocks and you didn't say anything? "

"I thought …  it might …  go away …  not hurt anymore …  I didn't want to …  we were making such good time …  getting out of the city …  I just thought … "

"You didn't think at all," he said angrily. "How much good time are we going to make with you like this? Your fucking feet look like you got fucking crucified."

"Don't swear at me, Larry," she said, beginning to sob. "Please don't …  it makes me feel so bad when you …  please don't swear at me."

He was in an ecstasy of rage now, and later he would not be able to understand why the sight of her bleeding feet had blown all his circuits that way. For the moment it didn't matter. He screamed into her face: "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! " The word echoed back from the high-rise apartment buildings, dim and meaningless.

She put her hands over her face and leaned forward, crying. It made him even angrier, and he supposed that part of it was that she really didn't want to see: she would just as soon put her hands over her face and let him lead her, why not, there had always been someone around to take good care of Our Heroine, Little Rita. Someone to drive the car, do the marketing, wash out the toilet bowl, do the taxes. So let's put on some of that gagging-sweet Debussy and put our well-manicured hands over our eyes and leave it all up to Larry. Take care of me, Larry, after seeing what happened to the monster-shouter, I've decided I don't want to see anymore. It's all rawther sordid for one of my breeding and background.

He yanked her hands away. She cringed and tried to put them over her eyes again.

"Look at me."

She shook her head.

"Goddammit, you look at me, Rita."

She finally did in a strange, flinching way, as if thinking he would now go to work on her with his fists as well as his tongue. The way a part of him felt now, that would be just fine.

"I want to tell you the facts of life because you don't seem to understand them. The fact is, we may have to walk another twenty or thirty miles. The fact is, if you get infected from those scrapes, you could get blood poisoning and die. The fact is, you've got to get your thumb out of your ass and start helping me."

He had been holding her by the upper arms, and he saw that his thumbs had almost disappeared into her flesh. His anger broke when he saw the red marks that appeared when he let her go. He stepped away, feeling uncertain again, knowing with sick certainty that he had overreacted. Larry Underwood strikes again. If he was so goddam smart, why hadn't he checked out her footgear before they started out?

Because that's her problem, part of him said with surly defensiveness.

No, that wasn't true. It had been his problem. Because she didn't know. If he was going to take her with him (and it was only today that he had begun to think how much simpler life would be if he hadn't), he was just going to have to be responsible for her.

Be damned if I will, the surly voice said.

His mother: You're a taker, Larry.

The oral hygienist from Fordham, crying out her window after him: I thought you were a nice guy! You ain't no nice guy!

There's something left out of you, Larry. You're a taker.

That's a lie! That is a goddamned LIE!

"Rita," he said, "I'm sorry."

She sat down on the pavement in her sleeveless blouse and her white deckpants, her hair looking gray and old. She bowed her head and held her hurt feet. She wouldn't look at him.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I …  look, I had no right to say those things." He did, but never mind. If you apologized, things got smoothed over. It was how the world worked.

"Go on, Larry," she said, "don't let me slow you down."

"I said I was sorry," he told her, his voice a trifle petulant. "We'll get you some new shoes and some white socks. We'll … "

"We'll nothing. Go on."

"Rita, I'm sorry-"

"If you say that one more time, I'll scream. You're a shit and your apology is not accepted. Now go on."

"I said I was-"

She threw back her head and shrieked. He took a step backward, looking around to see if anyone had heard her, to see if maybe a policeman was running over to see what kind of awful thing that young fellow was doing to the old lady who was sitting on the sidewalk with her shoes off. Culture lag, he thought distractedly, what fun it all is.

She stopped screaming and looked at him. She made a flicking gesture with her hand, as if he was a bothersome fly.

"You better stop," he said, "or I really will leave you."

She only looked at him. He couldn't meet her eyes and so dropped his gaze, hating her for making him do that.

"All right," he said, "have a good time getting raped and murdered."

He shouldered the rifle and started off again, now angling left toward the car-packed 495 entrance ramp, sloping down toward the tunnel's mouth. At the foot of the ramp he saw there had been one hell of a crash; a man driving a Mayflower moving van had tried to butt his way into the main traffic flow and cars were scattered around the van like bowling pins. A burned-out Pinto lay almost beneath the van's body. The van's driver hung halfway out of the cab window, head down, arms dangling. There was a fan of dried blood and puke sprayed out below him on the door.

Larry looked around, sure he would see her walking toward him or standing and accusing him with her eyes. But Rita was gone.