The Woman Who Loved Stephen King

The man at the entrance mistook Claire Creegan for one of the volunteers.

“Coat check needs help,” he said, waving toward a red velvet stanchion.

Claire apologized for his mistake and explained that she was with the event. He looked dubious even after scanning the QR code that allowed her into the foyer of what was once the summer home of a shipping magnate. Claire stood awestruck before a marble staircase, gold leaf walls, and hundreds of red poinsettias in the shape of a twenty-five-foot Christmas tree.

Some may embrace the ostentatious display of wealth and think nothing of hosting an event to redress the wrongs done to women generally, and women of color in particular, in the home of one of the robber barons that wronged them in the first place. But this was not the time for overthinking.

Tonight, Claire would meet Stephen.

The event was the brainchild of their CEO, Kelechi Ude, who took over the failing publishing house last spring. Kelechi was convinced no one was buying books because authors didn’t reflect their readers. Borrowing a page from the NY Time’s “Overlooked No More” series, he created a publicity event to showcase diverse authors.

“Hello, Claire.” Kelechi appeared clutching an amber drink, his face aglow. He wore a grey silk suit, lavender tie and matching pocket square. “You must see Anindita’s cover display.”

Claire followed Kelechi into a room swathed in red silk walls and matching upholstered chairs, a flocked Christmas tree with gold lights stood in one corner with a partially lit menorah in the other. Set up on easels were photographs of cover art. The author, Anindita Gupta, photographed in sepia tones posed in traditional headdress juxtaposed to match old photos of American Indians.

“American Indian, Indian American,” Kelechi explained. “She’s sending up the stereotypes. Genius.”

Claire agreed it was clever and funny, which made her sad. She envied creative people and wished she had talent. At 59, one would think she would have accepted that her gifts, if you could call them that, were limited.  

Kelechi floated into the embrace of a crowd who didn’t see Claire. If Stephen were writing it, he’d nail her turmoil as she compared the tightly clustered, cocktail-clutching, smartly bedecked publishing professionals to her own attempt at mingling. Libation-less, gravity-induced frown below dark-rimmed glasses, she tucked gray-blonde hair behind an unbejeweled ear as she noticed that the oh-so-comfortable black loafer with the silver buckle on her left foot did not, in fact, match the brown loafer on her right. She wished she were the type of character to whom this minor faux pas would be amusing, who screamed Insouciance, who could pull off an ironic Whatever while lifting a flute of champagne from a passing tray and down it in one gulp. 

But who was she kidding? She was a single woman who visited cemeteries for fun. Her best friends hung out on Find-A-Grave.com. She scrubbed headstones of countless strangers with a homemade poultice to remove lichen and algae to uncover the lost and forgotten. She remembered Jill Grenadier in particular because they shared a birth year. Engraved below her name were boldfaced years: 1965 – 1985. No inscription, not even dates. To be reduced to such minimal facts seemed worse than having no gravestone at all.

She meandered toward the ballroom and stopped to admire a large portrait. A young girl of about twelve wearing a cerulean skirt, white peasant shirt and taupe vest held a young curly-haired boy in a rumpled night shirt on her lap. The girl cradled a small basket of cherries in her palm which the boy had plunged both hands into while staring impishly, as if daring someone to object. They were flush-cheeked and darling, but the girl’s fingers, cupped protectively over the boy’s shoulder, were red and raw.

She followed the crowd to a buffet that snaked along a wave of curved tables. Dead fish and limp spaghetti swam in a pool of butter with wilted parsley like a blonde swamp. She plucked a slab of French bread. The decibel level grew as drinks flowed, and she marveled that this was a work event.

Work. Claire’s unique ‘gifts’ were in the minutiae. She still had a job because she knew how to distribute metadata to retailers and search engines. Since that universe had shrunk from dozens to basically two, she wondered when her time would be up.

No one would remember that Claire got Stephen for the event. (He might not fit the ‘overlooked’ profile, but he’d guarantee a crowd.) Millie-Midcoast Maine, a Find-a-Grave friend, knew Stephen’s wife from the Bangor Public Library. Claire wouldn’t admit a fellow graver helped her since her colleagues viewed her hobby as a proxy for her. Weird.

Claire’s reveries were interrupted by the man himself. Stephen rolled in on a Home Depot-like cart by an overweight biker dude with a ponytail. The dude wheeled Stephen around the perimeter while Stephen smiled and waved in a parody of a monarch. If Claire didn’t know better, she’d think Stephen was drunk, but he’d been on the wagon for years. She wondered if his back was bothering him from that terrible accident.

The dude parked and wiped his forehead with a bandana in mock exhaustion. A group of similarly cool seventy-something men (shoulder-length hair, earrings, denim) appeared behind Stephen, part entourage, part dodgy bodyguards. Stephen stood and had several inches on them. He wore a long-sleeve t-shirt and black jeans, simple and unpretentious, exactly as she imagined. Nearby guests gave him the once over and returned to their chatter, showing how unimpressed they were, or worse, criticizing his greatness.

Claire watched Stephen shake hands and smile at each adoring fan or shameless celebrity-monger in turn. No judgment in his expression. All were welcomed with kindness.

The crowd swelled and Claire drifted further away as though on the tide. Tears pricked. A window was shutting. She felt foolish for hoping.

Her colleague Ian appeared in front of her, sweat beads at his temple, his red bow-tie askew.

“There’s an error in Jacinda’s name,” he said. “I thought you knew the K initial is crucial!” Her stomach dropped. “Her book got linked to the wrong author on Amazon.” He looked around, as though for an escape route. “You need to fix this. Now.”

He started toward a dark hallway then turned abruptly. Claire remained in the same spot, staring at him.

“Come on,” he said. “I have my laptop. You can send a correction.”

“But,” Claire said. “It takes forty-eight hours for Amazon to make a correction. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“Now,” he said and, without waiting for a response, walked quickly down the hallway.

Claire scanned the crowd, but Stephen was gone. She followed Ian to a small closet under the staircase where they perched on roller bags with his laptop straddled between them. He leaned close as she made the correction, the smell of aftershave and alcohol nauseating her. She’d missed the chance to meet her King because of the letter K. Some day she might laugh at the irony though she doubted it.

“You need to pay more attention,” Ian hissed.

Time suspended like a held breath and Claire’s eyes blurred. Rage burned from the top of her unkempt hair to the bottom of her unmatched feet. To steady herself, she focused on a tiny signet ring on Ian’s pinky with the initials I | S. Clarie’s would be C | C. Carbon Copy. This wasn’t meaningful, she reprimanded herself. They were just letters. Before she could speak, Ian slapped his laptop shut and slipped through the door, switching off the light.  

 Alone in the darkness, Claire closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything close to this anger. Flashes of bullies at various stages of her life raced through her mind but she refused to dwell on them. She inhaled and heard it’s a sign so loudly that she wondered for a moment if someone had spoken.

It was time to leave.

She walked toward the exit and saw Anindita and other authors posed for a photo by the poinsettia Christmas tree. Arms intertwined in a multi-cultural sisterhood, they beamed, beautiful and confident. Distracted, she walked into someone and apologized.

Stephen turned and smiled. He was taller than she’d expected and better looking than his author photos.

“Salem’s Lot is the scariest book I’ve ever read,” Claire blurted.

“Thank you.” He leaned down and hugged Claire. She was sure he hadn’t hugged anyone else.

Stephen started to move away, and a courage she didn’t know she had clawed to the surface.

“I saw a ghost once,” Claire said. What was she doing? She had never spoken of this to anyone. Stephen put up his hand in a ‘hold your horses’ gesture to someone hurrying him. “Have you?” she asked, hoping to glide past her awkward pronouncement.

“Tell me about yours,” Stephen said. His gaze fixed on her in the manner of only the most empathic, who understood when someone needed their complete and unwavering attention.

“I was a college student in Newport. You’ve probably heard the haunted house stories.”

Stephen smiled. She hoped no one was close enough to overhear.

“But it wasn’t one of the mansions. I was in the basement of my dorm, doing laundry. All the machines were taken, and I was waiting for one to open. A very old woman was suddenly behind me. She wore strange clothes, you know, dated. Long black skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse even though it was a warm night. She stared at me. I asked if she was waiting for a machine too, but she didn’t answer. I thought maybe she didn’t speak English.”

Claire reflected on the woman which frightened her far more in hindsight than in the moment. She was clearly sad, but she wasn’t threatening. It was the mystery of what tied her to that place and why she appeared to Claire that plagued her. As she grew nearer to her own grave, the urgency to understand intensified.

“I reached down to pick up my basket, but by the time I stood up she was gone. She couldn’t have walked to the door that fast. It was at least twenty feet away.”

Stephen nodded, his expression serious. She was relieved he wasn’t laughing at her.

“What do you think she was doing there? I mean,” Claire knew she didn’t have much more of Stephen’s time and wanted it to count. “What do you think happens when we die?”

There was impatient movement from the crowd. Claire spotted Ian’s eyes widening at who was holding up the show.

“I wish I knew, Claire.”

Goosebumps rippled at Stephen knowing her name until she realized he was reading her name tag.

“I don’t have the answers.”

Claire nodded, disappointed. What was she expecting? That the dead regularly visited him? He made stuff up for a living for heaven’s sake.

“But if it helps,” he said, leaning in as though they were confidants. “I believe you.” He grasped her hand between his and pressed. “Thank you for sharing your story.” Then, swallowed by the crowd, he disappeared.

Claire Creegan stood for a long time in the same place, not far from where she’d started the evening. She imagined how dated she must look, or, more likely, how invisible. No one would notice if she left this event or this world. Her parents were gone. Her friends were a social network for the dead. Her company would find someone else to index the books no one bought.

And yet.

Suddenly none of that mattered. A warmth enveloped her and the beautiful authors, the hard-working volunteers, the cocktail-clutching crowd. The house glowed with joy, and an inexplicable breeze blew her skirt around her immobile legs as though she were dancing.