Read Online Rose Madder by Stephen King - Free Book Online

Durham Avenue and not finding it. Her feet hurt. Her lower back throbbed. She began to get a headache. And there were certainly no Peter Slowiks in this neighborhood; the faces which did not ignore her completely regarded her with mistrust, suspicion, or outright disdain.
    Not long after getting off the bus she passed a dirty, secretive-looking bar called The Wee Nip. The shades were down, the beer signs were dark, and a grate had been pulled across the door. When she came back to the same bar some twenty minutes later (not realizing she was re-covering ground she’d already walked until she saw it; the houses all looked the same), the shades were still down but the beer signs were on and the grate had been rolled back. A man in chino workclothes leaned in the doorway with a half-empty beer-stein in his hand. She looked at her watch and saw it was not quite six-thirty in the morning.
    Rosie lowered her head until she could see the man only from the corner of one eye, held the strap of her purse a little tighter, and walked a little faster. She guessed the man in the doorway would know where Durham Avenue was, but she had no intention of asking him for directions. He had the look of a guy who liked to talk to people—women, especially—up close.
    â€œHey baby hey baby,” he said as she passed The Wee Nip. His voice was absolutely uninflected, almost the voice of a robot. And although she didn’t want to look at him, she couldn’t help shooting a single terrified glance back at him over her shoulder. He had a receding hairline, pale skin on which a number of blemishes stood out like partially healed burns, and a dark red walrus moustache that made her thinkof David Crosby. There were little dots of beer-foam in it. “Hey baby wanna get it on you don’t look too bad priddy good in fact nice tits whaddaya say wanna get it on do some low ridin wanna get it on wanna do the dog whaddaya say?”
    She turned away from him and forced herself to walk at a steady pace, her head now bent, like a Muslim woman on her way to market; forced herself not to acknowledge him further in any way. If she did that, he might come after her.
    â€œHey baby let’s put all four on the floor whaddaya say? Let’s get down let’s do the dog let’s get it on get it on get it on.”
    She turned the corner and let out a long breath that pulsed like a living thing with the frantic, frightened beat of her heart. Until that moment she hadn’t missed her old town or neighborhood in the slightest, but now her fear of the man in the bar doorway and her disorientation— why did all the houses have to look so much the same, why? —combined in a feeling that was close to homesickness. She had never felt so horribly alone, or so convinced that things were going to turn out badly. It occurred to her that perhaps she would never escape this nightmare, that perhaps this was just a preview of what the rest of her life was going to be like. She even began to speculate that there was no Durham Avenue; that Mr. Slowik in Travelers Aid, who had seemed so nice, was actually a sadistic sicko who delighted in turning people who were already lost even further around.
    At quarter past eight by her watch—long after the sun had come up on what promised to be an unseasonably hot day—she approached a fat woman in a housedress who was at the foot of her driveway, loading empty garbage cans onto a dolly with slow, stylized movements.
    Rosie took off her sunglasses. “Beg pardon?”
    The woman wheeled around at once. Her head was lowered and she wore the truculent expression of a lady who has frequently been called fatty-fatty-two-by-four from across the street or perhaps from passing cars. “Whatchoo want?”
    â€œI’m looking for 251 Durham Avenue,” Rosie said. “It’s a place called Daughters and Sisters. I had directions, but I guess—”
    â€œWhat, the welfare