Free Rose Madder by Stephen King

please. Not the front but the back.”
    As she did so, she remembered the way Slowik had signed the business card, making his signature as large as he possibly could. Now she understood why.
    â€œOkay,” the voice said. “I’m going to buzz you inside.”
    â€œThanks,” Rosie said. She used the Kleenex to wipe at her cheeks but it did no good; she was crying harder than ever, and she couldn’t seem to stop.
7
    T hat evening, as Norman Daniels lay on the sofa in his living room, looking up at the ceiling and already thinking of how he might begin the job of finding the bitch (a break, he thought, I need a break to start with, just a little one would probably be enough), his wife was being taken to meet Anna Stevenson. By then Rosie felt a strange but welcome calm—the sort of calm one might feel in a recognized dream. She half-believed she was dreaming.
    She had been given a late breakfast (or perhaps it had been an early lunch) and then taken to one of the downstairs bedrooms, where she had slept like a stone for six hours. Then, before being shown into Anna’s study, she had been fed again—roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas. She had eaten guiltily but hugely, unable to shake the idea that it was non-caloric dreamfood she was stuffing herself with. She finished with a goblet of Jell-O in which bits of canned fruit floated like bugs in amber. She was aware that the other women at the table were looking at her, but their curiosity seemed friendly. They talked, but Rosie could not follow their conversations. Somebody mentioned the Indigo Girls, and she at least knew who they were—she had seen them once on Austin City Limits while waiting for Norman to come home from work.
    While they ate their Jell-O desserts, one of the women put on a Little Richard record and two other women danced the jitterbug, popping their hips and twirling. There was laughter and applause. Rosie looked at the dancers with a numb absence of interest, wondering if they were welfare lesbians. Later, when the table was cleared, Rosie tried to help but they wouldn’t let her.
    â€œCome on,” one of the women said. Rosie thought her name was Consuelo. She had a wide, disfiguring scar under her left eye and down her left cheek. “Anna wants to meet you.”
    â€œWho’s Anna?”
    â€œAnna Stevenson,” Consuelo said as she led Rosie down a short hall which opened off the kitchen. “Boss-lady.”
    â€œWhat’s she like?”
    â€œYou’ll see.” Consuelo opened the door of a room which had probably once been the pantry, but made no move to go in.
    The room was dominated by the most fabulously cluttered desk Rosie had ever seen. The woman who sat behind it was a bit stout but undeniably handsome. With her short but carefully dressed white hair, she reminded Rosie of Beatrice Arthur, who had played Maude on the old TV sitcom. The severe white blouse/black jumper combination accentuated the resemblance even further, and Rosie approached the desk timidly. She was more than half convinced that, now that she had been fed and allowed a few hours’ sleep, she would be turned out onto the street again. She told herself not to argue or plead if that happened; it was their place, after all, and she was already two meals to the good. She wouldn’t have to stake out a piece of bus station floor, either, at least not yet—she still had money enough for several nights in a cheap hotel or motel. Things could be worse. A lot worse.
    She knew that was true, but the woman’s crisp demeanor and direct blue eyes—eyes that must have seen hundreds of Rosies come and go over the years—still intimidated her.
    â€œSit down,” Anna invited, and when Rosie was seated in the room’s only other chair (she had to remove a stack of papers from the seat and put them on the floor beside her—the nearest shelf was full), Anna introduced herself and then asked