Apt Pupil_Scribner Edition by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781982115456
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2018-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

13

It was July again.

Dussander, carefully dressed in one of his three suits (not his best), was standing at the bus stop and waiting for the last local of the day to take him home. It was 10:45 p.m. He had been to a film, a light and frothy comedy that he had enjoyed a great deal. He had been in a fine mood ever since the morning mail. There had been a postcard from the boy, a glossy color photo of Waikiki Beach with bone-white highrise hotels standing in the background. There was a brief message on the reverse.

Dear Mr. Denker,

Boy this sure is some place. I’ve been swimming every day. My dad caught a big fish and my mom is catching up on her reading (joke). Tomorrow we’re going to a volcano. I’ll try not to fall in! Hope you’re okay.

Stay healthy,

Todd

He was still smiling faintly at the significance of that last when a hand touched his elbow.

“Mister?”

“Yes?”

He turned, on his guard—even in Santo Donato, muggers were not unknown—and then winced at the aroma. It seemed to be a combination of beer, halitosis, dried sweat, and possibly Musterole. It was a bum in baggy pants. He—it—wore a flannel shirt and very old loafers that were currently being held together with dirty bands of adhesive tape. The face looming above this motley costume looked like the death of God.

“You got an extra dime, mister? I gotta get to L.A., me. Got a job offertunity. I need just a dime more for the express bus. I wudn’t ask if it wadn’t a big chance for me.”

Dussander had begun to frown, but now his smile reasserted itself.

“Is it really a bus ride you wish?”

The wino smiled sickly, not understanding.

“Suppose you ride the bus home with me,” Dussander proposed. “I can offer you a drink, a meal, a bath, and a bed. All I ask in return is a little conversation. I am an old man. I live alone. Company is sometimes very welcome.”

The drunk’s smile abruptly grew more healthy as the situation clarified itself. Here was a well-to-do old faggot with a taste for slumming.

“All by yourself! Bitch, innit?”

Dussander answered the broad, insinuating grin with a polite smile. “I only ask that you sit away from me on the bus. You smell rather strongly.”

“Maybe you don’t want me stinking up your place, then,” the drunk said with sudden, tipsy dignity.

“Come, the bus will be here in a minute. Get off one stop after I do and then walk back two blocks. I’ll wait for you on the corner. In the morning I will see what I can spare. Perhaps two dollars.”

“Maybe even five,” the drunk said brightly. His dignity, tipsy or otherwise, had been forgotten.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Dussander said impatiently. He could now hear the low diesel drone of the approaching bus. He pressed a quarter, the correct bus fare, into the bum’s grimy hand and strolled a few paces away without looking back.

The bum stood undecided as the headlights of the local swept over the rise.

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