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of that Christing ear-mite medicine"? And what do you think he says to me? "You're effing right, Annie, comin right the eff up"?'
      She looked at him, her face now like a sky which might spawn tornadoes at any instant. He lay back, frightened. The soup-bowl was tilting in her hands. One, then two drops fell on the coverlet.
       'And then do I go down the street to the bank and say to Mrs Bollinger, "Here's one big bastard of a check and you better give me fifty effing dollars just as effing quick as you can"? Do you think that when they put me up there on the stand in Den — '
       A stream of muddy-colored beef soup fell on the coverlet. She looked at it, then at him, and her face twisted. 'There! Look what you made me do!'
      'I'm sorry.'
       'Sure! You! Are!' she screamed, and threw the bowl into the corner, where it shattered. Soup splashed up the wall. He gasped.
      She turned off then. She just sat there for what might have been thirty seconds. During that time Paul Sheldon's heart did not seem to beat at all.
      She roused a little at a time, and suddenly she tittered.
      'I have such a temper,' she said.
      'I'm sorry,' he said out of a dry throat.
    'You should be.' Her face went slack again and she looked moodily at the wall. He thought she was going to blank out again, but instead she fetched a sigh and lifted her bulk from the bed.
       'You don't have any need to use such words in the Misery books, because they didn't use such words at all back then. They weren't even invented. Animal times demand animal words, I suppose, but that was a better time. You ought to stick to your Misery stories, Paul. I say that sincerely. As your number-one fan.'
        She went to the door and looked back at him. 'I'll I put that manuscript-book back in your bag and finish Misery's Child. I may go back to the other one later, when I'm done.'
       'Don't do that if it makes you mad,' he said. He tried to smile. 'I'd rather not have you mad. I sort of depend on you, you know.'
    She did not return his smile 'Yes,' she said. 'You do. You do, don't you, Paul?'
    She left.

    10

    The tide went out. The pilings were back. He began to wait for the clock to chime. Two chimes. The chimes came. He lay propped up on the pillows, watching the door. She came in. She was wearing an apron over her cardigan and one of her skirts. In one hand she held a floor-bucket.
      'I suppose you want' your cockadoodie medication,' she said.
      'Yes, please.' He tried to smile at her ingratiatingly and felt that shame again — he felt grotesque to himself, a stranger.
        'I have it,' she said, 'but first I have to clean up the mess in the comer. The mess you made. You'll have to wait until I do that.'
        He lay in the bed with his legs making shapes like broken branches under the coverlet and cold sweat running down his face in little slow creeks, he lay and watched as she crossed to the corner and set the bucket down and then picked up the pieces of the bowl and took them out and came back and knelt by the bucket and fished in it and brought out a soapy rag and wrung it out and began to wash the dried soup from the wall. He lay and watched and at last he began to shiver and the shivering made the pain worse but he could not help it. Once she turned around and saw him shivering and soaking the bedclothes in sweat, and she favored him with such a sly knowing smile that he could easily have killed her.
      'It's dried on,' she said, turning her face back into tie corner. 'I'm afraid this is going to take awhile, Paul.'
        She scrubbed. The stain slowly disappeared from the plaster but she went on dipping the cloth, wringing it out, scrubbing, and then repeating the whole process. He could not see her face, but the idea — the certainty — that she had gone blank and might go on scrubbing the wall for hours tormented him.
       At last — just before the clock chimed once, marking two-thirty — she got up and