Stephen King - Thinner

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Stephen King "Thinner"

Chapter One

246

'Thinner,' the old Gypsy man with the rotting nose whispers to William Halleck as Halleck and his wife, Heidi, come out

of the courthouse. Just that one word, sent on the wafting, cloying sweetness of his breath. 'Thinner.' And before Halleck can

jerk away, the old Gypsy reaches out and caresses his cheek with one twisted finger. His lips spread open like a wound,

howing a few tombstone stumps poking out of his gums. They are black and green. His tongue squirms between them and

then slides out to slick his grinning, bitter lips.

Thinner.

This memory came back to Billy Halleck, fittingly enough, as he stood on the scales at seven in the morning with a towel

wrapped around his middle. The good smells of bacon and eggs came up from downstairs. He had to crane forward slightly

to read the numbers on the scale. Well ... actually, he had to crane forward more than slightly. Actually he had to crane

forward quite a lot. He was a big man. Too big, as Dr Houston delighted in telling him.

n case no one ever told you, let me

pass you the information, Houston had told him after his last checkup. A man your age, income, and habits enters heart-

attack country a roughly age thirty-eight, Billy. You ought to take off some weight.

But this morning there was good news. He was down three pounds, from 249 to 246.

Well ... the scale had actually read 251 the last time he'd had the courage to stand on it and take a good look but he'd had

his pants on, and there had been some change in his pockets, not to mention his keyring and his Swiss army knife. And the

upstairs bathroom scale weighed heavy. He was morally sure of it.

As a kid growing up in New York he'd heard Gypsies had the gift of prophecy. Maybe this was the proof. He tried to

laugh and could only raise a small and not very successful smile; it was still too early to laugh about Gypsies. Time would

pass and things would come into perspective; he was old enough to know that. But for now he still felt sick to his too-large

stomach at the thought of Gypsies, and hoped heartily he would never see another in his life. From now on he would pass on

the palm-reading at parties and stick to the Ouija board. If that.

'Billy?' From downstairs.

'Coming!'

He dressed, noting with an almost subliminal distress that in spite of the three-

ound drop the waist of his pants was

getting tight again. His waist size was forty-two now. He had quit smoking at exactly 12:01 on New Year's Day, but he had

paid. Oh, boy, had he paid. He went downstairs with his collar open and his tie lying around his neck. Linda, his fourteen-

year-old daughter, was just going out the door in a flirt of skirt and a flip of her pony-tail, tied this morning with a sexy

velvet ribbon. Her books were under one arm. Two gaudy cheerleader's pom-

oms, purple and white, rustled busily in her

other hand.

"Bye, Dad!'

'Have a good day, Lin.'

He sat down at the table, grabbed The Wall Street Journal.

'Lover,' Heidi said.

'My dear,' he said grandly, and turned the Journal facedown beside the lazy Susan.

She put breakfast in front of him: a steaming mound of scrambled eggs, an English muffin with raisins, five strips of

crisp country-style bacon. Good eats. She slipped into the seat opposite him in the breakfast nook and lit a Vantage 100.

January and February had been tense - too many 'discussions' that were only disguised arguments, too many nights they had

finished sleeping back to back.

But they had reached a modus vivendi: she had stopped dunning him about his weight and he had stopped yapping at her

about her pack-and-a-half-a-day butt habit. It had made for a decent-enough spring. And beyond their own private balance,

other good things had happened. Halleck had been promoted, for one. Greely, Penschley, and Kinder was now Greely,

Penschley, Kinder and Halleck. Heidi's mother had finally made good on her long-standing threat to move back to Virginia.

Linda had at last made J.V. cheerleaders and to Billy this was a great blessing; there had been times when he had been sure

Lin's histrionics would drive him into a nervous breakdown. Everything had been going just great.

Then the Gypsies had come to town.

'Thinner,' the old gypsy man had said, and what the hell was it with his nose? Syphilis? Cancer? Or something even

more terrible, like leprosy? And by the way, why can't you just quit it? Why can't you just let it alone?

'You can't get it off your mind, can you?' Heidi said suddenly - so suddenly that Halleck started in his seat. 'Billy, it was

not your fault. The judge said so.'

'I wasn't thinking about that.'

'Then what were you thinking about?'

'The Journal,' he said. 'It says housing starts are down again this quarter.'

Not his fault, right; the judge had said so. Judge Rossington. Cary, to his friends.

Friends like me, Halleck thought. Played many a round of golf with old Cary Rossington, Heidi, as you well know. At our

New Year's Eve party two years ago, the year I thought about giving up smoking and didn't do it, who grabbed your oh-so-

grabbable tit during the traditional happy-new-year kiss? Guess who? Why, my stars! It was good old Cary Rossington, as I

live and breathe!

Yes. Good old Cary Rossington, before whom Billy had argued more than a dozen municipal cases. Good old Cary

Rossington with whom Billy sometimes played poker down at the club. Good old Cary Rossington who hadn't disqualified

himself when his good old golfing-and-

oker buddy Billy Halleck (Cary would sometimes clap him on the back and yell,

'How they hangin', Big Bill?') came before him in court, not to argue some point of municipal law, but on a charge of

vehicular-manslaughter.

And when Cary Rossington did not disqualify himself, who said boo, children? Who in this whole fair town of Fairview

was the boo-sayer? Why, nobody, that's who! Nobody said boo! After all, what were they? Nothing but a bunch of filthy

Gypsies. The sooner they were out of Fairview and headed up the road in their old station wagons with the NRA stickers on

the back bumpers, the sooner we saw the rear ends of their home-carpentered trailers and camper caps, the better. The

sooner the -

- thinner.

Heidi snuffed her cigarette and said, 'Shit on your housing starts. I know you better.'

Billy supposed so. And he supposed she had been thinking about it, too. Her face was too pale. She looked her age -

thirty-five - and that was rare. They had married very, very young, and he still remembered the traveling salesman who had

come to the door selling vacuum cleaners one day after they had been married three years. He had looked at the twenty-two-

year-old Heidi Halleck and had asked politely, 'Is your mother home, hon?'

'Not hurting my appetite any,' he said, and that was certainly true. Angst or no angst, he had lain waste to the scrambled

eggs, and of the bacon there was now no sign. He drank half his orange juice and gave her a big old Billy Halleck grin. She

tried to smile back and it didn't quite happen. He imagined her wearing a sign: MY SMILER IS TEMPORARILY OUT OF

ORDER.

He reached across the table and took her hand. 'Heidi, it's all right. And even if it's not, it's all over.'

'I know it is. I know.'

'Is Linda -?'

'No. Not anymore. She says ... she says her girlfriends are being very supportive.'

For about a week after it had happened, their daughter had had a bad time of it. She had come home from school either in

tears or close to them. She had stopped eating. Her complexion had flared up. Halleck, determined not to overreact, had gone

in to see her homeroom teacher, the assistant principal, and Linda's beloved Miss Nearing, who taught phys ed and

cheerleading. He ascertained (ah, there was a good lawyerly word) that it was teasing, mostly as rough and unfunny as most

junior-high-school teasing is apt to be, and tasteless to be sure, considering the circumstances, but what could you expect of

an age group that thought dead-baby jokes were the height of wit?

He had gotten Linda to take a walk with him up the street. Lantern Drive was lined with tasteful set-back-from-the-road

homes, homes which began at roughly $75,000 and worked up into the $200,000 indoor-pool-and-sauna range by the time

you got to the country-club end of the street.

Linda had been wearing her old madras shorts, which were now torn along one seam ... and, Halleck observed, her legs

had now grown so long and coltish that the leg bands of her yellow cotton panties showed. He felt a pang of mingled regret

and terror. She was growing up. He supposed she knew the old madras shorts were too small, worn out in the bargain, but he

guessed she had put them on because they, made a link with a more comforting childhood, a childhood where daddies did

not have to go to court and stand trial (no matter how cut-and-dried that trial might be, with your old golf buddy and that

drunken grabber of your wife's tit, Cary Rossington, driving the gavel), a childhood where kids did not rush up to you on the

soccer field during period four while you were eating your lunch to ask you how many points your dad had gotten for

bagging the old lady.

You understand it was an accident, don't you, Linda?

She nods, not looking at him. Yes, Daddy.

She came out between two cars without looking either way. There was no time for me to stop. Absolutely no time.

Daddy, I don't want to hear about it.

I know you don't. And I don't want to talk about it. But you are hearing about it. At school.

She looks at him fearfully. Daddy! You didn't

Go to your school? Yeah. I did. But not until three-thirty yesterday afternoon. There were no kids there at all, at least

that I could see. No one's going to know.

She relaxes. A little.

I heard you've been getting some pretty rough handling from the other kids. I'm sorry about that.

It hasn't been so bad, she says, taking his hand. Her face - the fresh scatter of angry-looking pimples on her forehead -

tells a different story. The pimples say the handling has been rough indeed. Having a parent arrested is not a situation even

Judy Blume covers (although someday she probably will).

also hear you've been handling it pretty well, Billy Halleck says. Not making a big thing out of it. Because if they ever

see they're getting under your skin ...

Yeah, I know, she says glumly.

iss Nearing said she was especially proud of you, he says. It's a small lie. Miss Nearing hadn't said precisely that, but

she had certainly spoken well of Linda, and that meant almost as much to Halleck as it did to his daughter. And it does the

job. Her eyes brighten and she looks at Halleck for the first time.

She did?

She did, Halleck confirms. The lie comes easily and convincingly. Why not? He has told a lot of lies just lately.

She squeezes his hand and smiles at him gratefully.

They'll let it go pretty soon, Lin. They'll find some other bone to chew. Some girl will get pregnant or a teacher will have

a nervous breakdown or some boy will get busted for selling pot or cocaine. And you'll be off the hook. Get it?

She throws her arms around him suddenly and hugs him tight. He decides she isn't growing up so fast after all, and that

not all lies are bad. I love YOU, Daddy, she says.

I love you too, Lin.

He hugs her back and suddenly someone turns on a big stereo amplifier in the front of his brain and he hears the double-

thud again.. the first as the Ninety-Eight's front bumper strikes the old Gypsy woman with the bright red cloth kerchief over

her scraggly hair, the second as the big front wheels pass over her body.

Heidi screams.

And her hand leaves Halleck's lap.

Halleck hugs his daughter tighter, feeling goose flesh break all over his body.

'More eggs?' Heidi asked, breaking into his reverie.

'No. No, thanks.' He looked at his clean plate with some guilt: no matter how bad things got, they had never gotten bad

enough to cause him to lose either sleep or his appetite.

'Are you sure you're ... ?'

'Okay?' He smiled. 'I'm okay, you're okay, Linda's okay. As they say on the soap operas, the nightmare is over - can we

please get back to our lives?'

'That's a lovely idea.' This time she returned his smile with a real one of her own - she was suddenly under thirty again,

and radiant. 'Want the rest of the bacon? There's two slices left.'

'No,' he said, thinking of the way his pants nipped at his soft waist (what waist, ha-ha? a small and unfunny Don Rickles

spoke up in his mind - the last time you had a waist was around 1978, you hockey puck), the way he had to suck in his gut to

hook the catch. Then he thought of the scale and said, 'I'll have one of them. I've lost three pounds.'

She had gone to the stove in spite of his original no sometimes she knows me so well it gets to be depressing, he thought.

Now she glanced back. 'You are still thinking about it, then.'

'I'm not,' he said, exasperated. 'Can't a man lose three pounds in peace? You keep saying you'd like me a little . . .'

thinner

'. . . a little less beefy.' Now she had gotten him thinking about the Gypsy again. Dammit! The Gypsy's eaten nose and the

scaly feel of that one finger sliding along his cheek in the moment before he had reacted and jerked away the way you would

jerk away from a spider or from a clittering bundle of beetles fuming in a knot under a rotted log.

She brought him the bacon and kissed his temple. 'I'm sorry. You go right ahead and lose some weight. But if you don't,

remember what Mr Rogers says -'

‘- I like you just the way you are,' they finished in unison.

He prodded at the overturned Journal by the lazy Susan, but that was just too depressing. He got up, went outside, and

found the New York Times in the flowerbed. The kid always threw it in the flowerbed, never had his numbers right at the

end of the week, could never remember Bill's last name. Billy had wondered on more than one occasion if it was possible for

a twelve-year-old kid to become a victim of Alzheimer's disease.

He took the paper back inside, opened it to the sports, and ate the bacon. He was deep in the box scores when Heidi

brought him another half of English muffin, golden with melting butter.

Halleck ate it almost without being aware he was doing so.

Chapter Two

245

In the city, a damage suit that had dragged on for over three years - a suit he had expected to drag on in one shape or

another for the next three or four years - came to an unexpected and gratifying end at midmorning, with the plaintiff agreeing

during a court recess to settle for an amount that was nothing short of stupefying. Halleck lost no time getting said plaintiff, a

paint manufacturer from Schenectady, and his client to sign a letter of good intent in the judge's chambers. The plaintiffs

lawyer had looked on with palpable dismay and disbelief while his client, president of the Good Luck Paint Company,

scratched his name on six copies of the letter and as the court clerk notarized copy after copy, his bald head gleaming

mellowly. Billy sat quietly, hands folded in his lap, feeling as if he had won the New York lottery. By lunch hour it was all

over but the shouting.

Billy took himself and the client to O'Lunney's, ordered Chivas in a water glass for the client and a martini for himself,

and then called Heidi at home.

'Mohonk,' he said when she picked up the phone. It was a rambling upstate New York resort where they had spent their

honeymoon - a gift from Heidi's parents - a long, long time ago. Both of them had fallen in love with the place, and they had

spent two vacations there since.

'What?'

"Mohonk,' he repeated. 'If you don't want to go, I'll ask Jillian from the office.'

'No, you won't! Billy, what is this?'

'Do you want to go or not?'

'Of Course I do! This weekend?'

'Tomorrow, if you can get Mrs Bean to come in and check on Linda and make sure the wash gets done and that there

aren't any orgies going on in front of the TV in the family room. And if -'

But Heidi's squeal temporarily drowned him out. 'Your case, Billy! The paint fumes and the nervous breakdown and the

psychotic episode and -'

'Canley is going to settle. In fact, Canley has settled. After about fourteen years of boardroom bullshit and long legal

opinions meaning exactly nothing, your husband has finally won one for the good guys. Clearly, decisively, and without a

doubt. Canley's settled, and I'm on top of the world.'

'Billy! God!' She squealed again, this time so loud the phone distorted. Billy held it away from his ear, grinning. 'How

much is your guy getting?'

Billy named the figure and this time he had to hold the phone away from his ear for almost five seconds.

'Will Linda mind us taking five days off, do you think?'

'When she can stay up until one watching HBO latenight and have Georgia Deever over and both of them can talk about

oys while they gorge themselves on my chocolates? Are you kidding? Will it be cold up there this time of year, Billy? Do

you want me to pack your green cardigan? Do you want your parka or your denim jacket? Or both? Do you -?'

He told her to use her judgment and went back to his client. The client was already halfway through his huge glass of

Chivas and wanted to tell Polish jokes. The client looked as if he had been hit with a hammer. Halleck drank his martini and

listened to standard witticisms about Polish carpenters and Polish restaurants with half an ear, his mind clicking cheerily

away on other matters. The case could have far-reaching implications; it was too soon to say it was going to change the

course of his career, but it might. It very well might. Not bad for the sort of case big firms take on as charity work. It could

mean that –

-the first thud jolts Heidi forward and for a moment she squeezes him; he is faintly aware of pain in his groin. The jolt is

hard enough to make her seat belt lock. Blood flies up - three dime size drops - and splatters on the windshield like red rain.

She hasn't even had time to begin to scream; she will scream later. He hasn't had time to even begin to realize. The

beginning of realization comes with the second thud. And he

-swallowed the rest of his martini in a gulp. Tears came to his eyes.

'You okay?' the client, David Duganfield by name, asked.

'I'm so okay you wouldn't believe it,' Billy said, and reached across the table to his client. 'Congratulations, David.' He

would not think about the accident, he would not think about the Gypsy with the rotting nose. He was one of the good guys;

that fact was apparent in Duganfield's strong grip and his tired, slightly sappy smile.

'Thank you, man,' Duganfield said. 'Thank you so much.' He suddenly leaned over the table and clumsily embraced Billy

Halleck. Billy hugged him back. But as David Duganfield's arms went around his neck, one palm slipped up the angle of his

cheek and he thought again of the old Gypsy man's weird caress.

He touched me, Halleck thought, and even as he hugged his client, he shivered.

He tried to think about David Duganfield on the way home - Duganfield was a good thing to think about - but instead of

Duganfield he found himself thinking about Ginelli by the time he was on the Triborough Bridge.

He and Duganfield had spent most of the afternoon in O'Lunney's, but Billy's first impulse had been to take his client to

Three Brothers, the restaurant in which Richard Ginelli held an informal silent partnership. It had been years now since he

had actually been in the Brothers with Ginelli's reputation it would not have been wise - but it was the Brothers he always

thought of first, still. Billy had had some good meals and good times there, although Heidi had never cared much for the

place or for Ginelli. Ginelli frightened her, Billy thought.

He was passing the Gun Hill Road exit on the New York Thruway when his thoughts led back to the old Gypsy of that

was Heidi's doing - she had developed into a world-class nag when it came to Ginelli - but part of it had also been Ginelli's.

'You better stop coming around for a while,' he had told Billy.

'What? Why?' Billy had asked innocently, just as if he and Heidi had not argued over this very thing the night before.

'Because as far as the world is concerned, I am a gangster,' Ginelli had replied. 'Young lawyers who associate with

gangsters do not get ahead, William, and that's what it's really all about - keeping your nose clean and getting ahead.'

'That's what it's all about, huh?'

Ginelli had smiled strangely. 'Well . other things.'

'Such as?'

'William, I hope you never have to find out. And come around for espresso once in a while. We'll have some talk and

some laughs. Keep in touch, is what I'm saying.'

And so he had kept in touch, and had dropped in from time to time (although, he admitted to himself as he swung up the

Fairview exit ramp, the intervals had grown longer and longer), and when he had found himself faced with what might be a

charge of negligent vehicular manslaughter, it had been Ginelli he thought of first.

But good old tit-grabbing Cary Rossington took care of that, his mind whispered. So why are you thinking about Ginelli

now? Mohonk - that's what you ought to be thinking of.

nd David Duganfield, who proves that nice guys don't always

finish last. And taking off a few more pounds.

But as he turned into the driveway, what he found himself thinking about was something Ginelli had said: William, I

hope you never have to find out.

Find out what? Billy wondered, and then Heidi was flying out the front door to kiss him, and Billy forgot everything for a

while.

. there are a few

Chapter Three

Mohonk

It was their third night at Mohonk and they had just finished making love. it was the sixth time in three days, a giddy

change from their usual sedate twice-a-week pace. Billy lay beside her, liking the feel of her heat, liking the smell of her

perfume - Anais Anais - mixed with her clean sweat and the smell of their sex. For a moment the thought made a hideous

cross-connection and he was seeing the Gypsy woman in the moment before the Olds struck her. For a moment he heard a

bottle of Perrier shattering. Then the vision was gone.

He rolled toward his wife and hugged her tight.

She hugged him back one-armed and slipped her free hand up his thigh. 'You know,' she said, 'if I come my brains out

one more time, I'm not going to have any brains left.'

'It's a myth,' Billy said, grinning.

'That you can come your brains out?'

'Nah. That's the truth. The myth is that you lose those brain cells forever. The ones you come out always grow back.'

'Yeah, you say, you say.'

She snuggled more comfortably against him. Her hand wandered up from his thigh, touched his penis lightly and

lovingly, toyed with the thatch of his pubic hair (last year he'd been sadly astounded to see the first threads of gray down

there in what his father had called Adam's thicket), and then slid up the foothill of his lower belly.

She sat up suddenly on her elbows, startling him a little. He hadn't been asleep, but he had been drifting toward it.

'You really have lost weight!'

'Huh!'

'Billy Halleck, you're skinnier!'

He slapped his belly, which he sometimes called the House That Budweiser Built, and laughed. 'Not much. I still look

like the world's only seven-months-pregnant man.'

'You're still big, but not as big as you were. I know. I can tell. When did you weigh yourself last?'

He cast his mind back. It had been the morning Canley had settled. He had been down to 246. 'I told you I'd lost three

pounds, remember?'

'Well, you weigh yourself again first thing in the morning,' she said:

'No scales in the bathroom,' Halleck said comfortably.

'You're kidding.'

'Nope. Mohonk's a civilized place.'

'We'll find one.'

He was beginning to drift again. 'If you want, sure.'

'I want.'

She had been a good wife, he thought. At odd times over the last five years, since the steady weight gain had really

started to show, he had announced diets and/or physical-fitness programs. The diets had been marked by a lot of cheating. A

hot dog or two in the early afternoon to supplement the yogurt lunch, or maybe a hastily gobbled hamburger or two on a

Saturday afternoon, while Heidi was out at an auction or a yard sale. Once or twice he had even stooped to the hideous hot

sandwiches available at the little convenience store a mile down the road - the meat in these sandwiches usually looked like

toasted skin grafts once the microwave had had its way with them, and yet he could never remember throwing away a

ortion uneaten. He liked his beer, all right, that was a given, but even more than that, he liked to eat. Dover sole in one of

ew York's finer restaurants was great, but if he was sitting up and watching the Mets on TV, a bag of Doritos with some

clam dip on the side would do.

The physical-fitness programs would last maybe a week, and then his work schedule would interfere, or he would simply

lose interest. In the basement a set of weights sat brooding in a corner, gathering cobwebs and rust. They seemed to reproach

him every time he went down. He tried not to look at them.

So he would suck in his gut even more than usual and announce boldly to Heidi that he had lost twelve pounds and was

down to 236. And she would nod and tell him that she was very glad, of course she could see the difference, and all the time

she would know, because she saw the empty Doritos bag (or bags) in the trash. And since Connecticut had adopted a

returnable bottle-and-can law, the empties in the pantry had become a source of guilt almost as; great as the unused weights.

She saw him when he was sleeping; even worse, she saw him when he was peeing. You couldn't suck in your gut when

you were taking a piss. He had tried and it just wasn't possible. She knew he had lost three pounds, four at most. You could

fool your wife about another woman - at least for a while - but not about your weight. A woman who bore that weight from

time to time in the night knew what you weighed. But she smiled and said Of course you look better, dear. Part of it was

maybe not so admirable it kept him quiet about her cigarettes - but he was not fooled into believing that was all of it, or even

most of it. It was a way of letting him keep his self-respect.

'Billy?'

'What?' Jerked back from sleep a second time, he glanced over at her, a little amused, a little irritated.

'Do you feel quite well?'

'I feel fine. What's this "do-you-feel-quite-well" stuff?'

'Well ... sometimes ... they say an unplanned weight loss can be a sign of something.'

'I feel great. And if you don't let me go to sleep, I'll prove it by jumping your bones again.'

'Go ahead.'

He groaned. She laughed. Soon enough they slept. And in his dream, he and Heidi were coming back from the Shop 'n

Save, only he knew it was a dream this time, he knew what was going to happen and he wanted to tell her to stop what she

was doing, that he had to concentrate all his attention on his driving because pretty soon an old Gypsy woman was going to

dart out from between two parked cars - from between a yellow Subaru and a dark green Firebird, to be exact - and this old

woman was going to have a child's five-and-dime plastic barrettes in her graying grizzled hair and she was not going to be

looking anywhere but straight ahead. He wanted to tell Heidi that this was his chance to take it all back, to change it, to make

it right.

But he couldn't speak. The pleasure woke again at the touch of her fingers, playful at first, then more serious (his penis

stiffened as he slept and he turned his head slightly at the metallic clicking sound of his zipper going down notch by notch);

the pleasure mixed uneasily with a feeling of terrible inevitability. Now he saw the yellow Subaru ahead, parked behind the

green Firebird with the white racing stripe. And from between them a flash of pagan color brighter and more vital than any

paint job sprayed on in Detroit or the Toyota Village. He tried to scream Quit it, Heidi. It's her. - I'm going to kill her again i

you don't quit it! Please, God, no! Please, good Christ, no!

But the figure stepped out between the two cars. Halleck was trying to get his foot off the gas pedal and put it on the

brake, but it seemed to be stuck right where it was, held down with a dreadful, irrevocable firmness. The Krazy Glue o

inevitability, he thought wildly, trying to turn the wheel, but the wheel wouldn't turn, either. The wheel was locked and

blocked. So he tried to brace himself for the crash and then the Gypsy's head turned and it wasn't the old woman, oh no, huh-

uh, it was the Gypsy man with the rotted nose. Only now his eyes were gone. In the instant before the Olds struck him and

bore him under, Halleck saw the empty, staring sockets. The old Gypsy man's lips spread in an obscene grin - an ancient

crescent below the rotted horror of his nose.

Then: Thud/thud.

One hand flailing limply above the Olds's hood, heavily wrinkled, dressed in pagan rings of beaten metal. Three drops of

blood splattered the windshield. Halleck was vaguely aware that Heidi's hand had clenched agonizingly on his erection,

retaining the orgasm that shock had brought on, creating a sudden dreadful pleasure-

ain ... And he heard the Gypsy's

whisper from somewhere underneath him, drifting up through the carpeted floor of the expensive car, muffled but clear

enough: 'Thinner.'

He came awake with a jerk, turned toward the window, and almost screamed. The moon was a brilliant crescent above

the Adirondacks, and for a moment he thought it was the old. Gy

sy man, his head cocked slightly to the side, peering into

their window, his eyes two brilliant stars in the blackness of the sky over upstate New York, his grin lit somehow from

within, the light spilling out cold like the fight from a mason jar filled with August fireflies, cold like the swamp-fellas he

had sometimes seen as a boy in North Carolina - old, cold light, a moon in the shape of an ancient grin, one which

contemplates revenge.

Billy drew in a shaky breath, closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. The moon was just the moon again. He lay

down and was asleep three minutes later.

The new day was bright and clear, and Halleck finally gave in and agreed to climb the Labyrinth Trail with his wife.

Mohonk's grounds were laced with hiking trails, rated from easy to extremely difficult. Labyrinth was rated 'moderate,' and

on their honeymoon he and Heidi had climbed it twice. He remembered how much pleasure that had given him - working his

way up the steep defiles with Heidi right behind him, laughing and telling him to hurry up, slowpoke. He remembered

worming through one of the narrow, cavelike passages in the rock, and whispering ominously to his new wife, 'Do you feel

the ground shaking?' when they were in the narrowest part. It had been narrow, but she had still managed to give his butt a

pretty good swat.

Halleck would admit to himself (but never, never to Heidi) that it was those narrow passages through the rock that

worried him now. On their honeymoon he had been slim and trim, only a kid, still in good shape from summers spent on a

logging crew in western Massachusetts. Now he was sixteen years older and a lot heavier. And, as jolly old Dr Houston had

so kindly informed him, he was entering heart-attack country. The idea of having a heart attack halfway up the mountain was

uncomfortable but still fairly remote; what seemed more possible to him was getting stuck in one of those narrow stone

throats through which the trail snaked on its way to the top. He could remember that they'd had to crawl in at least four

places.

He didn't want to get stuck in one of those places.

Or ... how's this, gang? Ole Billy Halleck gets stuck in one of those dark crawly places and then has a heart attack!

Heyyyy! Two for the price of one!

But he finally agreed to give it a try, if she would agree to go on by herself if he was simply not in good enough shape to

make it to the top. And if they could go down to New Paltz first so he could buy some sneakers. Heidi agreed willingly to

both stipulations.

In town, Halleck found that 'sneakers' had become declasse.

o one would even admit to remembering the word. He

bought a pair of dandy green-and-silver Nike walking-and-climbing shoes and was quietly delighted at how good they felt

on his feet. That led to the realization that he hadn't owned a pair of canvas shoes in ... Five years? Six? It seemed

impossible, but there it was.

Heidi admired them and told him again that he certainly did look as if he had lost weight. Outside the shoe store was a

penny weighing machine, one of those that advertises ‘YOUR WATE AND FATE.' Halleck hadn't seen one since he was a

kid.

'Hop up, hero,' Heidi said. 'I've got a penny.'

Halleck held back for a moment, obscurely nervous.

'Come on, hurry up. I want to see how much you've lost.'

'Heidi, those things don't weigh true, you know that.'

'A ballpark figure's all I want. Come on, Billy - don't be a poop.'

He reluctantly gave her the package containing his new shoes and stepped up on the scale. She put a penny in. There was

a clunk and then two curved silvery metal panels drew back. Behind the top one was his wate; behind the lower one, the

machine's idea of his fate. Halleck drew in a harsh, surprised breath.

'I knew it!' Heidi was saying beside him. There was a kind of doubtful wonder in her voice, as if she was not sure if she

should feel happiness or fear or wonder. 'I knew you were thinner!'

If she had heard his own harsh gasp, Halleck thought later, she no doubt thought it was because of the number at which

the scale had red-lined - even with all his clothes on, and his Swiss army knife in the pocket of his corduroy pants, even with

a hearty Mohonk breakfast in his belly, that line was centered neatly at 232. He had lost fourteen pounds since the day

Canley had settled out of court.

But it wasn't his wate that had made him gasp; it was his fate. The lower panel had not slid aside to reveal

FINANCIAL MATTERS WILL SOON IMPROVE or OLD FRIENDS WILL VISIT or DO NOT MAKE IMPORTANT

DECISION HASTILY.

It had revealed a single black word: 'THINNER.'

Chapter Four

227

They rode back to Fairview mostly in silence, Heidi driving until they were within fifteen miles of New York City and

the traffic got heavy. Then she pulled into a service plaza and let Billy take them the rest of the way home. No reason why he

should not be driving; the old woman had been killed, true enough, one arm almost torn from her body, her pelvis

ulverized, her skull shattered like a Ming vase hurled onto a marble floor, but Billy Halleck had not lost a single point from

his Connecticut driver's license. Good old tit-grabbing Cary Rossington had seen to that.

'Did you hear me, Billy?'

He glanced at her for only a second, then returned his eyes to the road. He was driving better these days, and although he

didn't use his horn any more than he used to, or shout and wave his arms any more than he used to, he was more aware of

other drivers' errors and his own than he ever had been before, and was less forgiving of both.

Killing an old woman did wonders for your concentration. It didn't do shit for your self-respect, and it produced some

really hideous dreams, but it certainly did juice up the old concentration levels.

'I was woolgathering. Sorry.'

'I just said thank you for a wonderful time.'

She smiled at him and touched his arm briefly. It had been a wonderful time - for Heidi, at least. Heidi had indubitably

Put It Behind Her - the Gypsy woman, the preliminary hearing at which the state's case had been dismissed, the old Gypsy

man with the rotted nose. For Heidi it was now just an unpleasantness in the past, like Billy's friendship with that wop

hoodlum from New York.

But something else was on her mind; a second quick side glance confirmed it. The smile had faded and she was looking

at him and tiny wrinkles around her eyes showed.

'You're welcome,' he said. 'You're always welcome, babe.'

'And when we get home'

'I'll jump your bones again!' he cried with bogus enthusiasm, and manufactured a leer. Actually, he didn't think he could

get it up if the Dallas Cowgirls paraded past him in lingerie designed by Frederick's of Hollywood. It had nothing to do with

how often they had made it up at Mohonk; it was that damned fortune. THINNER. Surely it had said no such thing - it had

been his imagination. But it hadn't seemed like his imagination, dammit; it had seemed as real as a New York Times

headline. And that very reality was the terrible part of it, because THINNER wasn't anybody's idea of a fortune. Even YOUR

FATE IS TO SOON LOSE WATE didn't really make it. Fortune writers were into things like long journeys and meeting old

friends.

Ergo, he had hallucinated it.

Yep, that's right.

Ergo, he was probably losing his marbles.

Oh, come on, now, is that fair?

Fair enough. When your imagination got out of control, it wasn't good news.

'You can jump me if you want to,' Heidi said, 'but what I really want is for you to jump on our bathroom scales'

'Come on, Heidi! I lost some weight, no big deal!'

'I'm very proud of you for losing some weight, Billy, but we've been together almost constantly for the last five days, and

I'll be darned if I know how you're losing it.'

He gave her a longer look this time, but she wouldn't look back at him; she only stared through the windshield, her arms

folded across her bosom.

'Heidi . . .'

'You're eating as much as you ever did. Maybe more. The mountain air must have really gotten your motor revving.'

'Why gild the lily?' he asked, slowing down to slam forty cents into the basket of the Rye tollbooth. His lips were pressed

together into a thin white line, his heart was beating too fast, and he was suddenly furious with her. 'What you mean is, I'm a

great big hog. Say it right out if you want, Heidi. What the hell. I can take it.'

'I didn't mean anything like that!' she cried. 'Why do you want to hurt me, Billy? Why do you want to do that after we had

such a good time?'

He didn't have to glance over this time to know she was near tears. Her wavering voice told him that. He was sorry, but

being sorry didn't kill the anger. And the fear that was just under it.

'I don't want to hurt you,' he said, gripping the Olds's steering wheel so hard his knuckles showed white. 'I never do. But

losing weight is a good thing, Heidi, so why do you want to keep hitting on me about it?'

'It is not always a good thing!' she shouted, startling him making the car swerve slightly. 'It is not always a good thing

and you know it!'

Now she was crying, crying and rooting through her purse in search of a Kleenex in that half-annoying, half-endearing

way she had. He handed her his handkerchief and she used it to wipe her eyes.

'You can say what you want, you can be mean, you can cross-examine me if you want, Billy, you can even spoil the time

we just had. But I love you and I'm going to say what I have to say. When people start to lose weight even though they're not

on a diet, it can mean they're sick. It's one of the seven warning signs of cancer.' She thrust his handkerchief back at him. His

fingers touched hers as he took it. Her hand was very cold.

Well, the word was out. Cancer. Rhymes with dancer and You just shit your pants, sir. God knew the word had bobbed

up in his own mind more than once since getting on the penny scale in front of the shoe store. It had bobbed up like some

evil clown's dirty balloon and he had turned away from it. He had turned away from it the way you turned away from the bag

ladies who sat rocking back and forth in their strange, sooty little nooks outside the Grand Central Station ... or the way you

turned away from the capering Gypsy children who had come with the rest of the Gy

sy band. The Gypsy children sang in

voices that somehow managed to be both monotonous and strangely sweet at the same time. The Gypsy children walked on

their hands with tambourines outstretched, held somehow by their bare dirty toes. The Gypsy children juggled. The Gypsy

children put the local Frisbee jocks to shame by spinning two, sometimes three of the plastic disks at the same time - on

fingers, on thumbs, sometimes on noses. They laughed while they did all those things, and they all seemed to have skin

diseases or crossed eyes or harelips. When you suddenly found such a weird combination of agility and ugliness thrust in

front of you, what else was there to do but turn away? Bag ladies, Gypsy children, and cancer. Even the skittery run of his

thoughts frightened him.

Still, it was maybe better to have the word out.

'I've felt fine,' he repeated, for maybe the sixth time since the night Heidi had asked him if he felt quite well. And,

dammit, it was true! 'Also, I've been exercising.'

That was also true ... of the last five days, anyway. They had made it up the Labyrinth Trail together, and although he'd

had to exhale all the way and suck in his gut to get through a couple of the tightest places, he'd never come even close to

getting stuck. In fact, it had been Heidi, puffing and out of breath, who'd needed to ask for a rest twice. Billy had

diplomatically not mentioned her cigarette jones.

'I'm sure you've felt fine,' she said, 'and that's great. But a checkup would be great, too. You haven't had one in over

eighteen months, and I bet Dr Houston misses you -'

'I think he's a little dope freak,' Halleck muttered.

'A little what?'

'Nothing.'

'But I'm telling you, Billy, you can't lose almost twenty pounds in two weeks just by exercising.'

'I am not sick!'

'Then just humor me.'

They rode the rest of the way to Fairview in silence. Halleck wanted to pull her to him and tell her sure, okay, he would

do what she wanted. Except a thought had come to him. An utterly absurd thought. Absurd but nevertheless chilling.

Maybe there's a new style in old Gypsy curses, friends and neighbors - how about that possibility? They used to change

you into a werewolf or send a demon to pull Off your head in the middle of the night, something like that, but everything

changes, doesn't it? What if that old man touched me and gave me cancer? She's right, it's one of the tattletales - losing

twenty pounds just like that is like when the miners' canary drops dead in his cage. Lung cancer.

leukemia ... melanoma ...

It was crazy, but the craziness didn't keep the thought away: What if he touched me and gave me cancer?

Linda greeted them with extravagant kisses and, to their mutual amazement, produced a very creditable lasagna from the

oven and served it on paper plates bearing the face of that lasagna-lover extraordinaire, Garfield the cat. She asked them

how their second honeymoon had been ('A phrase that belongs right up there with second childhood,' Halleck observed dryly

to Heidi that evening, after the dishes had been done and Linda had gone flying off with two of her girlfriends to continue a

Dungeons and Dragons game that had been going on for nearly a year), and before they could do more than begin to tell her

about the trip, she had cried, 'Oh, that reminds me!' and spent the rest of the meal regaling them with Tales of Wonder and

Horror from Fairview Junior High - a continuing story which held more fascination for her than it did for either Halleck or

his wife, although both tried to listen with attention. They had been gone for almost a week, after all.

As she rushed out, she kissed Halleck's cheek loudly and cried, "Bye, skinny!'

Halleck watched her mount her bike and pedal down the front walk, ponytail flying, and then turned to Heidi. He was

dumbfounded.

'Now,' she said, 'will you please listen to me?'

'You told her. You called ahead and told her to say that. Female conspiracy.'

'No.'

He scanned her face and then nodded tiredly. 'No, I guess not.'

Heidi nagged him upstairs, where he finally ended up in the bathroom, naked except for the towel around his waist. He

was struck by a strong sense of deja vu - the temporal dislocation was so complete that he felt a mild physical nausea. It was

an almost exact replay of the day he had stood on this same scale with a towel from this same powder-

lue set wrapped

around his waist. All that was lacking was the good smell of frying bacon coming up from downstairs. Everything else was

exactly the same.

No. No, it wasn't. One other thing was remarkably different.

That other day he had craned over in order to read the bad news on the dial. He had to do that because his bay window

was in the way.

The bay window was there, but it was smaller. There could be no question about it, because now he could look straight

down and still read the numbers.

The digital readout said 229.

'That settles it,' Heidi said flatly. 'I'm making you an appointment with Dr Houston.'

'This scale weighs light,' Halleck said weakly. 'It always has. That's why I like it.'

She looked at him coldly. 'Enough bullshit is enough bullshit, my friend. You've spent the last five years bitching about

how it weighs heavy, and we both know it.' In the harsh white bathroom light he could see how honestly anxious she was.

The skin was drawn shinily tight across her cheekbones.

'Stay right there,' she said at last, and left the bathroom.

'Heidi?'

'Don't move!' she called back as she went downstairs.

She returned a minute later with an unopened bag of sugar. 'Net wt., 10 lbs.,' the bag announced. She plonked it on the

scale. The scale considered for a moment and then printed a big red digital readout: 012.

'That's what I thought,' Heidi said grimly. 'I weigh myself, too, Billy. It doesn't weigh light, and it never has.

It weighs heavy, just like you always said. It wasn't just bitching, and we both knew it. Someone who's overweight likes

an inaccurate scale. It makes the actual facts easier to dismiss. If'

'Heidi -'

'If this scale says you weigh two-twenty-nine, that means you're really down to two-twenty-seven. Now, let me

'Heidi -'

'Let me make you an appointment.'

He paused, looking down at his bare feet, and then shook his head.

'Billy!'

'I'll make it myself,' he said.

'When?'

'Wednesday. I'll make it Wednesday. Houston goes out to the country club every Wednesday afternoon and plays nine

holes.' Sometimes he plays with the inimitable titgrabbing, wife-kissing Cary Rossington. 'I'll speak to him in person.'

'Why don't you call him tonight? Right now?'

'Heidi,' he said, 'no more.' And something in his face must have convinced her not to push it any further, because she

didn't mention it again that night.

Chapter Five

221

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

Billy purposely kept off the scale upstairs. He ate heartily at meals even though, for one of the few times in his adult life,

he was not terribly hungry. He stopped hiding his munchies behind the packages of Lipton Cup o' Soup in the pantry. He ate

pepperoni slices and Muenster cheese on Ritz crackers during the Yankees-Red Sox doubleheader on Sunday. A bag of

caramel corn at work Monday morning, and a bag of Cheez-Doodles on Monday afternoon - one of them or possibly the

combination brought on a rather embarrassing farting spell that lasted from four o'clock until about nine that night. Linda

marched out of the TV room halfway through the news, announcing that she would be back if someone passed out gas

masks. Billy grinned guiltily, but didn't move. His experience with farts had taught him that leaving the room to pass that

sort of gas did very little good. It was as if the rotten things were attached to you with invisible rubber bands. They followed

you around.

But later, watching And Justice for All on Home Box Office, he and Heidi ate up most of a Sara Lee cheesecake.

During his commute home on Tuesday, he pulled off the Connecticut Turnpike at Norwalk and picked up a couple of

Whoppers with cheese at the Burger King there. He began eating them the way he always ate when he was driving, just

working his way through them, mashing them up, swallowing them down bite by bite ...

He came to his senses outside of Westport.

For a moment his mind seemed to separate from his physical self - it was not thinking, not reflection; it was

eparation.

He was reminded of the physical sense of nausea he had felt on the bathroom scale the night he and Heidi had returned from

Mohonk, and it occurred to him that he had entered a completely new realm of mentation. He felt almost as if he had gained

a kind of astral presence - a cognitive hitchhiker who was studying him closely.' And what was that hitchhiker seeing?

Something more ludicrous than horrible, most likely. Here was a man of almost thirty-seven with Bally shoes on his feet and

Bausch & Lomb soft contact lenses on his eyes, a man in a three-piece suit that had cost six hundred dollars. A thirtysix-

year-old overweight American male, Caucasian, sitting behind the wheel of a 1981 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, scarfing a huge

hamburger while mayonnaise and shredded bits of lettuce dripped onto his charcoal-gray vest. You could laugh until you

cried. Or screamed.

He threw the remains of the second Whopper out the window and then looked at the mixed slime of juices and sauce on

his hand with a desperate kind of horror. And then he did the only sane thing possible under the circumstances: he laughed.

And promised himself: No more. The binge would end.

That night, as he sat in front of the fireplace reading The Wall Street Journal, Linda came in to bestow a good-night kiss

on him, drew back a little, and said: 'You're starting to look like Sylvester Stallone, Daddy.'

'Oh, Christ,' Halleck said, rolling his eyes, and then they both laughed.

Billy Halleck discovered that a crude sort of ritual had attached itself to his procedure for weighing himself. When had it

happened? He didn't know. As a kid he had simply jumped on once in a while, taken a cursory glance at his weight, and then

jumped off again. But at some point during the period when he had drifted up from 190 to a weight that was, as impossible

as it seemed, an eighth of a ton, that ritual had begun.

Ritual, hell, he told himself. Habit. That's all it is, just a habit.

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StephenKing"Thinner"ChapterOne246'Thinner,'theoldGypsymanwiththerottingnosewhisperstoWilliamHalleckasHalleckandhiswife,Heidi,comeoutofthecourthouse.Justthatoneword,sentonthewafting,cloyingsweetnessofhisbreath.'Thinner.'AndbeforeHalleckcanjerkaway,theoldGypsyreachesoutandcaresseshischeekwithonetwiste...

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