"It took me a long time to figure out how to write a comic book," he says. "It wasn’t until my third issue that I really learned to pare my scripts to 23 double column pages." He holds up a velobound script. He’s been able, with his own money, to publish his own book, and hired Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette to draw for him. I can sort of see one of their very E.C.-ish illustrations on the cover.
The class seems much more interested in him than in writing comic books. I’m taking a lot of notes, even though people are asking King lots of non-comic book questions. Pretty soon, a party breaks out. People are dancing, drinking, cheering, climbing out the window. I’ve come up with an idea for a comic book and I start to write it down at an old roll-top desk. King and a bunch of students come up to me, and King braces himself on the desk’s side, grinning mischievously. I can tell that he and the students are planning on turning the desk over on me.
"Wait," I say to him, "You know when you’ve got it? Where the whole story just comes out all at once and all you have to do is write it down."
King nods, his grin fading a bit.
"Well, I’m not quite there," I say. "But I’m close. I promise to join the party in just a minute, but I have to finish writing this down."
King acknowledges what I say with seriousness. "Okay."
There’s a yell from outside, and we’re all at the window looking out. Four stories below, some of King’s students have made it down the side of the building and are running around the large yard wreaking havoc; the man who’s yelled is pushing and lightly hitting a sleeping baboon.
"Hey, don’t do that!" I yell. "Don’t wake him up!" I look around at everyone else. "That thing could kill him."
We all start yelling, but he takes this as cheers of encouragement and starts pushing and kicking the baboon harder. The ape starts to stir. If only one person yelled while the others shut up, he might be able to hear what we’re saying, but everyone gets more excited and yells more.
The baboon wakes up and instantly pounces on the man and begins tearing at him. He starts screaming.
"Where’s some fruit?" I’m looking around the classroom, sure that there was a fruitbasket on one of the desks at the beginning of class. "Maybe we can distract it with some fresh fruit."
I find the a bowl of fruit; sliced melons, desert colored pears and run them over to King, who is standing at the small balcony outside the window. The man is screaming, and we can see lots of blood flying off him. King throws the whole bowl of fruit, which is a bad choice. All the fruit tumbles out of the bowl in different directions with no momentum. The baboon doesn’t even look up.
I step forward to say something and the balcony breaks under our own weight. I manage to grab the sides of the window and King grabs me. He is not a light man, and I want to tell him to climb in because I can’t hold us both. But he starts laughing, and I start laughing, too. Who would’ve thought? Me and Stephen King, holding on to the same window ledge, dangling over a blood-crazed baboon?
*****
I’m lost somewhere in the hills near Glendale. I see an old couple come out of a supermarket and try to figure out how to carry all their groceries home. I offer to carry their groceries if they can help me figure out where I’m going. They agree. The couple is Korean. The man wears a fisherman’s hat, the woman doesn’t say much. We walk down the sunny sidewalk. The man tells me that they’ve lived in the same neighborhood for years and every year it gets harder to get the groceries back home. We’re walking downhill, when the man stops and tells me that if I continue downhill and then turn left at the highway, I should come to my street and be home. I thank him and put down the groceries by the side of a picket fence. I wave at them as I walk away. They nod and begin picking up their groceries.
*****
Friends and I are making our way through the backyards and walkways of a quiet port city at night. The fog has come in and the streetlights are all soft and haloed. I’m talking with my friend about something when I look over and stop. A fleet of warships are coming in to port, their rounded towers and periscopic steeples also looking beautiful and gentle in the fog. My friend and I stare at the ships for a moment in awe. We turn to call our friends over, but by the time they get back the ships are behind buildings and out of sight. Our friends chide us for lying to them, and we all start moving again, climbing over fences into silent backyards, and hanging from the branches of trees.
At some point, my friends go off, talking among themselves. I see movement out of the corner of my eye and look over. A single enormous warship moves silently through the buildings, and I feel guilty that I’ve seen this beautiful spectacle twice while most of my friends haven’t even seen it once. But I don’t call to anyone this time, I lean out over the guardrail and look as the ship moves gracefully through the black silent water.