Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

two in the morning and his eyes wide-wide-wide as a terrible wind, one all the way down from Yellowknife, boomed outside—that was the other Scott; one went north, one went south, and oh dear, she had loved them both the same, everything the same.
    â€œStop it,” Lisey said fretfully. “I was in time, I was, so let it go. The lung-shot was all that crazy baby ever got.” Yet in her mind’s eye (where the past is always present), she saw the Ladysmith again start its swivel, and Lisey shoved herself out of the pool in an effort to physically drive the image away. It worked, but Blondie was back again as she stood in the changing room, toweling off after a quick rinsing shower, Gerd Allen Cole was back, is back, saying I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias, and 1988-Lisey is swinging the silver spade, but this time the smucking air in Lisey-time is too thick, she’s going to be just an instant too late, she will see all of the second flame-corsage instead of just a portion, and a black hole will also open on Scott’s left lapel as his sportcoat becomes his deathcoat—
    â€œ Quit it!” Lisey growled, and slung her towel in the basket. “Give it a rest! ”
    She marched back to the house nude, with her clothes under her arm—that’s what the high board fence all the way around the backyard was for.
2
    She was hungry after her swim—famished, actually—and although it was not quite five o’clock, she decided on a big skillet meal. What Darla, second-oldest of the Debusher girls, would have called comfort-food, and what Scott—with great relish—would have called eatin nasty. There was a pound of ground beef in the fridge and, lurking on a back shelf in thepantry, a wonderfully nasty selection: the Cheeseburger Pie version of Hamburger Helper. Lisey threw it together in a skillet with the ground beef. While it was simmering, she mixed herself a pitcher of lime Kool-Aid with double sugar. By five-twenty, the smells from the skillet had filled the kitchen, and all thoughts of Gerd Allen Cole had left her head, at least for the time being. She could think of nothing but food. She had two large helpings of the Hamburger Helper casserole, and two big glasses of Kool-Aid. When the second helping and the second glass were gone (all except for the white dregs of sugar in the bottom of the glass), she burped resoundingly and said: “I wish I had a goddam smucking cigarette.”
    It was true; she had rarely wanted one so badly. A Salem Light. Scott had been a smoker when they had met at the University of Maine, where he had been both a grad student and what he called The World’s Youngest Writer in Residence. She was a part-time student ( that didn’t last long) and a full-time waitress at Pat’s Café downtown, slinging pizzas and burgers. She’d picked up the smoking habit from Scott, who’d been strictly a Herbert Tareyton man. They’d given up the butts together, rallying each other along. That had been in ’87, the year before Gerd Allen Cole had resoundingly demonstrated that cigarettes weren’t the only problem a person could have with his lungs. In the years since, Lisey went for days without thinking of them, then would fall into horrible pits of craving. Yet in a way, thinking about cigarettes was an improvement. It beat thinking about
    (I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias, says Gerd Allen Cole with perfect fretful clarity and turns his wrist slightly )
    Blondie
    ( smoothly )
    and Nashville
    ( so that the smoking barrel of the Ladysmith points at the left side of Scott’s chest )
    and smuck, here she went, doing it again.
    There was store-bought poundcake for dessert, and Cool Whip—perhaps the apex of eatin nasty —to put on top of it, but Lisey was too full to consider it yet. And she was distressed to find these rotten old memoriesreturning even after she’d taken on a gutful