Billy Summers

by Stephen King

Billy has no clue how the weather is in Huntsville, probably pretty much like here but who knows. If he’d had the slightest fucking idea Don Jensen might call, he’d have checked.

Maybe now, with nothing to do but wait, he’ll remember.

He has realized for some time, probably since he started writing Benjy’s story, that he can no longer live this one without choking.

Once that’s done, he uses a suicide program to destroy everything on the MacBook Pro.

He puts his toast plate and the empty water glass in the sink.

He’s gotten away with one potential mistake. He can’t make another. The fates are unforgiving.

This time the flash of memory is the kids pig-piling on him when Derek beat him in that last Monopoly game. He banishes it. Now it’s just him and Allen. They are the only ones in the world. It comes down to this. Billy pulls in an easy breath, holds it, and takes the shot.

Most people just want to get away. He hears someone yell Active shooter! Someone else is shouting They bombed the courthouse! Another bawls Armed men!

Agreeing to be in this city so long was a mistake. Monopoly was a mistake. Having a backyard barbecue was a mistake. Knocking over those tin birds in the shooting gallery? Mistake. Having time to think and act like a normal person was the biggest mistake of all.

No violence, no explosions, just people doing zany things. Plus kissing at the end. Nine blocks.

He’s not sure he’s safe, but he thinks he is. Hopes. He goes downstairs and lets himself into the apartment. Not home, just a place to hide, but for the time being that’s good enough.

You’ll never make the jump to the bigtime like that, Andrea, Billy thinks. You have to push, girl.

He goes back downstairs and dons his Dalton Smith disguise, this time inflating the fake pregnancy belly almost to full and not neglecting the horn-rimmed glasses with the clear glass lenses, which have been waiting on the living room bookshelf with his copy of Thérèse Raquin.

A holy place for the aboriginal people who saw it first. Saw it, worshipped it, but never presumed to think they owned it. They understand that if there’s a God, it’s God’s rock.

He looks at the smiling girl with the red ribbons in her hair. He looks at the hearts rising from the flamingo’s head. He remembers Shan going to sleep next to him in the seventh inning of that playoff game. Her head on his arm. Billy puts the picture on the night table with his two phones and is soon asleep himself.

Billy remembers he’s a fugitive.

This picture is worth a thousand words. For him it wouldn’t have been a press conference, it would have been a walk of shame. Good luck getting re-elected with that photo to explain, Billy thinks.

Do you want to suck my cock, Summers? Do you? Because you look like a cocksucker to me.

Sir no sir, I do not want to suck your cock and he said Is my cock not good enough for you, Private Summers, you cocksucking poor excuse for a recruit?

You’re free. You can do whatever you want. Not physically free, God no.

He will finish the Iraq part of his story, the Funhouse serving as the natural climax.

guy seeking revenge on the men who killed his dog—Billy

Billy thinks, I’m fucked. No matter how this goes, I’m fucked.

He doubts if she’ll be able to remember and what she’ll want to know is why he didn’t call the police or take her to the nearest ER.

It’s a question he can’t answer. All he knows is that he’s in the mother of all messes.

Her clothes. Still on the floor, in a sodden heap. Billy gets off the couch and takes them into the bathroom.

He falls asleep instead and dreams there’s smoke in the kitchen. He can smell burned cookies. He needs to warn Cathy, tell her she needs to take them out of the oven before their mother’s boyfriend comes home, but he can’t speak. This is the past and he’s only a spectator.

He looks out and sees nothing but the deserted street. The rain is still coming down but the wind has let up a little.

When he wakes up the girl is standing over him, wearing the T-shirt he got her into when he put her to bed. And holding a knife.

“You’re lying. What do you think I am, a whore?” “No.”

So she does. And as she does, he can see the question in her eyes: if you didn’t rape me, why did I wake up in your bed instead of a hospital bed?

“I saw your picture on the news. You shot that man.” “I did. Joel Allen was a bad man, a hired killer.” Like me, Billy thinks, but there’s at least one difference.

Billy’s pretty sure she’ll drop a dime on him. Whether she believes he saved her life or not, she knows he’s a wanted killer, and she may also believe that she could be charged with aiding and abetting for not turning him in as soon as she gets a chance. But no, Billy thinks. She’s a shy girl, a scared girl, and a confused girl, but she’s not a dumb girl. She could claim he kidnapped her and they’d believe her.

And there is one tiny glimmer of hope: she told him to put on the sweatshirt. It probably means nothing, just something she said to make him feel like she was a little bit on his side, but maybe it does. Maybe it does.

Smiling, Billy begins to write. The prose seems flat at first, ragged, but then he starts to get the rhythm. Soon he’s not thinking of Alice at all.

“That’s sexist.” “Sleeping on the couch is sexist? Are you kidding me?” “Being a manly man is sexist. You’re too long for it. Your feet will hang out on the floor.”

He wonders if Alice knows what Stockholm Syndrome is. If she doesn’t, he’ll have to explain it.

That night he sits beside Alice on the couch. She looks good in her black pants and striped shirt. When he turns off the TV and says he wants to talk to her she looks frightened.

You’d be taking a risk. It could be dangerous.” He thinks of the gun in Don Jensen’s nightstand and says, “Probably not very.” “You can’t kill them. I don’t want that. Tell me you won’t kill them.” The idea hasn’t even crossed Billy’s mind.

Billy is snapped back from Fallujah by the sound of Alice running down the stairs. She bursts into the apartment, hair flying out behind her. “Someone’s coming! I was spritzing the plants and saw the car turn into the driveway!”

Billy considers, but comes up empty. Alice, meanwhile, breaks into a smile.

At quarter to five another key rattles in the lock and in comes the third little pig, a small and dapper porker in a black three-piece suit set off by a tie as red as the blood on Alice Maxwell’s thighs.

“Here’s what I’ve been thinking about,” Billy says. “That men don’t know what it’s like to be raped unless they’ve been raped themselves. You, Mr. Donovan, are about to have a reasonable facsimile of that experience.”

Alice didn’t get any lube, did she? Unless maybe you spit on your hand before you went in.”

Billy doesn’t draw it out as he thought he might. He doesn’t have the heart for it. Or the stomach. When he’s finished he takes pictures of Tripp and the other two with his phone.

Billy says, “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Other than meaningless bro-hugs from people like Nick and Giorgio, he hasn’t had a real hug in a long time.

The next day is nothing but driving, most of it on I-70. Alice, still recovering from physical and mental trauma, sleeps a lot.

He remembers how she looked when he carried her across Pearson Street through the pouring rain, her eyes dull marbles peeping out between slitted lids. This is not that girl. This is a better girl.

She gives that a distracted smile but it’s Billy she’s looking at, his opinion that matters.