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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“Yeah, a little.”“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s sixty-seven thousand dollars a year for putting on Ace bandages, prescribingfor the flu and for hangovers, giving girls the pill—”“Don’t forget the crab-and-louse lotion,” Louis said, smiling again. One of the things that had surprisedhim on his first tour of the infirmary had been the supplies of Quell, which seemed to him enormous—more fitted to an army base infirmary than to one on a middle-sized university campus.Miss Charlton, the head nurse, had smiled cynically. “Off campus apartments in the area are prettytacky. You’ll see. “He supposed he would.“Have a good day,” she said and kissed him again, lingeringly. But when she pulled away, she wasmock-stem. “And for Christ’s sake remember that you’re an administrator, not an intern or a secondyearresident!”“Yes, Doctor,” Louis said humbly, and they both laughed again. For a moment he thought of asking:Was it Zelda,babe? is that what’s got under your skin? Is that the zone of low pressure? Zelda and how she died? Buthe wasn’t going to ask her that, not now. As a doctor he knew a lot of things, and while the fact thatdeath was just as natural as childbirth might be the greatest of them, the fact that you don’t monkey witha wound that has finally started to heal was far from the least of them.So instead of asking, he only kissed her again and went out.It was a good start, a good day. Maine was putting on a late-summer show, the sky was blue andcloudless, the temperature pegged at an utterly perfect seventy-two degrees. Rolling to the end of thedriveway and checking for traffic, Louis mused that so far he hadn’t seen so much as a trace of the fallfoliage that was supposed to be so spectacular. But he could wait.He pointed the Honda Civic they had picked up as a second car toward the university and let it roll.Rachel would call the vet this morning, they would get Church fixed, and that would put this wholenonsense of Pet Semataries (it was funny how that misspelling got into your head and began to seemright) and death fears behind them. There was no need to be thinking about death on a beautifulSeptember morning like this one.Louis turned on the radio and dialed until he found the Ramones belting out “Rockaway Beach.” Heturned it up and sang along—not well but with lusty enjoyment.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (47 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM