The Shining

calls long-distance out of his own pocket, you know the shit has hit the fan.”
“Ullman has nothing to worry about, Al. Neither do you.”
“What exactly is the nothing we don’t have to worry about? Stu made it sound like a cross between blackmail and a National Enquirer feature on the Overlook. Talk to me, boy.”
“I wanted to poke him a little,” Jack said. “When I came up here to be interviewed, he had to drag out all my dirty laundry. Drinking problem. Lost your last job for racking over a student. Wonder if you’re the right man for this. Et cetera. The thing that bugged me was that he was bringing all this up because he loved the goddamn hotel so much. The beautiful Overlook. The traditional Overlook. The bloody sacred Overlook. Well, I found a scrapbook in the basement. Somebody had put together all the less savory aspects of Ullman’s cathedral, and it looked to me like a little black mass had been going on after hours.”
“I hope that’s metaphorical, Jack.” Al’s voice sounded frighteningly cold.
“It is. But I did find out-”
“I know the hotel’s history.”
Jack ran a hand through his hair. “So I called him up and poked him with it. I admit it wasn’t very bright, and I sure wouldn’t do it again. End of story.”
“Stu says you’re planning to do a little dirty-laundry-airing yourself.”
“Stu is an asshole!” he barked into the phone. “I told him I had an idea of writing about the Overlook, yes. I do. I think this place forms an index of the whole post-World War II American character. That sounds like an inflated claim, stated so baldly… I know it does… but it’s all here, Al! My God, it could be a great book. But it’s far in the future, I can promise you that, I’ve got more on my plate right now than I can eat, and-”
“Jack, that’s not good enough.”
He found himself gaping at the black receiver of the phone, unable to believe what he had surely heard. “What? Al, did you say-?”
“I said what I said. How long is far in the future, Jack? For you it may be two years, maybe five. For me it’s thirty or forty, because I expect to be associated with the Overlook for a long time. The thought of you doing some sort of a scum-job on my hotel and passing it off as a great piece of American writing, that makes me sick.”
Jack was speechless.
“I tried to help you, Jacky-boy. We went through the war together, and I thought I owed you some help. You remember the war?”
“I remember it,” he muttered, but the coals of resentment had begun to glow around his heart. First Ullman, then Wendy, now Al. What was this? National Let’s Pick Jack Torrance Apart Week? He clamped his lips more tightly together, reached for his cigarettes, and knocked them off onto the floor. Had he ever liked this cheap prick talking to him from his mahogany-lined den in Vermont? Had he really?
“Before you hit that Hatfield kid,” Al was saying, “I had talked the Board out of letting you go and even had them swung around to considering tenure. You blew that one for yourself. I got you this hotel thing, a nice quiet place for you to get yourself together, finish your play, and wait it out until Harry Effinger and I could convince the rest of those guys that they made a big mistake. Now it looks like you want to chew my arm off on your way to a bigger killing. Is that the way you say thanks to your friends, Jack?”
“No,” he whispered.
He didn’t dare say more. His head was throbbing with the hot, acid-etched words that wanted to get out. He tried desperately to think of Danny and Wendy, depending on him, Danny and Wendy sitting peacefully downstairs in front of the fire and working on the first of the second-grade reading primers, thinking everything was A-OK. If he lost this job, what then? Off to California in that tired old VW with the distintegrating fuel pump like a family of dustbowl Okies? He told himself he would get down on his knees and beg Al before he let that happen, but still the words struggled to pour out, and the hand holding the hot wires of his rage felt greased.
“What?” Al said sharply.
“No,” he said. “That is not the way I treat my friends. And you know it.”
“How do I know it? At the worst, you’re planning to smear my hotel by digging up bodies that were decently buried years ago. At the best, you call up my temperamental but extremely competent hotel manager and work him into a frenzy as part of some… some stupid kid’s game.”
“It was more than a game, Al. It’s easier for you. You don’t have to take some rich friend’s charity. You don’t need a friend in court because you are the court. The fact that you were one step from a brown-bag lush goes pretty much unmentioned, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does,” Al said. His voice had dropped a notch and he sounded tired of the whole thing. “But Jack, Jack… I can’t help that. I