ob had every right to look glum. He was a Vietnam vet who had lost a leg in the Tet offensive. He had opened I-E Studios in late 1970 with his disability money and a lot of help from his in-laws. The studio had gasped and struggled along since then, mostly catching crumbs from that wellstocked media table at which the larger Boston studios banqueted. Vic and Roger had been taken with him because he reminded them of themselves, in a way - struggling to make a 90 of it, to get up to that fabled comer and turn it. And, of course, Boston was good because it was an easier commute than New York.

In the last sixteen months, Image-Eye had taken off. Rob had been able to use the fact that his studio was doing the Sharp spots to land other business, and for the first time things had looked solid. In May, just before the cereal had hit the fan, he sent Vic and Roger a postcard showing a Boston T-bus going away. On the back were four lovely ladies, bent over to show their fannies, which were encased in designer jeans. Written on the back of the card, tabloid style, was this meassage: IMAGE-EYE LANDS CONTRACT TO DO BUTTS FOR BOSTON BUSES; BILLS BIG BUCKS. Funny then. Not such a hoot now. Since the Zingers fiasco, two clients (including Cannes-Look jeans) had canceled their arrangements with I-E, and if Ad Worx lost the Sharp account, Rob would lose other accounts in addition to Sharp. It had left him feeling angry and scared. . . emotions Vic understood perfectly.

They had been sitting and smoking in silence for almost five minutes when Roger said in a low voice, 'It just makes me want to puke, Vic. I see that guy sitting on his desk and looking out at me like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, taking a big bite of that cereal with the runny dye in it and saying, "Nope, nothing wrong here," and I get sick to my stomach. Physically sick to my stomach. I'm glad the projectionist had to go. If I watched them one more time, I'd have to do it with an airsick bag in my lap.'

He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray set into the arm of his chair. He did look ill; his face had a yellowish sheen that Vic didn't like at all. Call it shellshock, combat fatigue, whatever you wanted, but what you meant was scared shitless, backed into a rathole. It was looking into the dark and seeing something that was going to cat you up.

'I kept telling myself,' Roger said, reaching for another cigarette, 'that I'd see something. You know? Something. I couldn't believe it was as bad as it seemed. But the cumulative effect of those spots ... it's like watching Jimmy

Carter saying, "I'll never lie to you".' He took a drag from the new cigarette, grimaced, and stuffed it into the ashtray. 'No wonder George Carlin and Steve Martin and fucking Saturday Night Live had a field day. That guy just looks so sanctimonious to me now . . .' His voice had developed a sudden watery tremble. He shut his mouth with a snap.

'I've got an idea,' Vic said quietly.

'Yeah, you said something on the plane.' Roger looked at him, but without much hope. 'If you got one, let's hear it.'

'I think the Sharp Cereal Professor has to make one more spot,' Vic said. 'I think we have to convince old man Sharp of that. Not the kid. The old man.'

'What's the old prof gonna sell this time?' Roger asked, twisting open another button on his shirt. 'Rat poison or Agent Orange?'

'Come on, Roger. No one got poisoned.'

'Might as well have,' Roger said, and laughed shrilly. 'Sometimes I wonder if you understand what advertising really is. It's holding a wolf by the tail. Well, we lost our grip on this particular wolf and he's just about to come back on us and eat us whole.'

'Roger

'This is the country where it's front-page news when some consumer group weighed the McDonald's Quarter Pounder and found out it weighed a little shy of a quarter pound. Some obscure California magazine publishes a report that a rear-end collision can cause a gas-tank explosion in Pintos, and the Ford Motor Company shakes in its shoes -'

'Don't get on that,' Vic said, laughing a little. 'My wife's got a Pinto. I got problems enough.'

'All I'm saying is that getting the Sharp Cereal Professor to do another spot seems about as shrewd to me as having Richard Nixon do an encore State of the Union address. He's compromised, Vic, he's totally blown!' He paused, looking at Vic. Vic looked back at him gravely. 'What do you want him to say?'

'That he's sorry.��

Roger blinked at him glassily for a moment. Then he threw back his head and cackled. 'That he's sorry. Sorry? Oh, dear, that's wonderful. Was that your great idea?

'Hold on, Rog. You're not even giving me a chance. That's not like you.'

'No,' Roger said. 'I guess it's not. Tell me what you mean. But I can't believe you're -'

'Serious? I'm serious, all right. You took the courses. What's the basis of all successful advertising? Why bother to advertise at all?'

'The basis of all successful advertising is that people want to believe. That people sell themselves.

'Yeah. When the Maytag Repairman says he's the loneliest guy in town, people want to believe that there really is such a guy someplace, not doing anything but listening to the radio and maybe jacking off once in awhile. People want to believe that their Maytags will never need repairs. When Joe DiMaggio comes on and says Mr. Coffee saves coffee, saves money, people want to believe that. If..

'But isn't that why we've got our asses in a crack? They wanted to believe the Sharp Cereal Professor and he let them down. Just like they wanted to believe in Nixon, and he -~

'Nixon, Nixon, Nixon!' Vic said, surprised by his own angry vehemence. 'You're getting blinded by that particular comparison, I've heard you make it two hundred times since this thing blew, and it doesn't fit!'

Roger was looking at him, stunned.

'Nixon was a crook, he knew he was a crook, and he said he wasn't a crook. The Sharp Cereal Professor said there was nothing wrong with Red Razberry Zingers and there was something wrong, but he didn't know it.' Vic leaned forward and pushed his finger gently against Roger's arm, emphasizing. 'There was no breach of faith. He has to say that, Rog. He has to get up in front of the American people and tell them there was no breach of faith. What there was, there was a mistake made by a company which manufactures food dye. The mistake was not made by the Sharp Company. He has to say that. And most important of all, he has to say he's sorry that mistake happened and that, although no one was hurt, he's sorry people were frightened.'

Roger nodded, then shrugged. 'Yes, I see the thrust of it. But neither the old man or the kid will go for it, Vic. They want to bury the b -'

'Yes, yes, yes!' Vic cried, actually making Roger flinch. He jumped to his feet and began to walk jerkily up and down the screening room's short aisle. 'Sure they do, and they're right, he's dead and he has to be buried, the Sharp Cereal Professor has to be buried, Zingers has already been buried. But the thing we've got to make them see is that it can't be a midnight burial. That's the exact point! Their impulse is to go at this thing like a Mafia button man ... or a scared relative burying a cholera victim.'

He leaned over Roger, so close that their noses were almost touching.

'Our job is to make them understand that the Cereal Professor will never rest easy unless he's interred in broad daylight. And I'd like to make the whole country mourners at his burial.'

'You're cr �C�� Roger began then closed his mouth with a snap.

At long last Vic saw that scared, vague expression go out of his partner's eyes. A sudden sharpening happened in Roger's face, and the scared expression was replaced by a slightly mad one. Roger began to grin. Vic was so relieved to see that grin that he forgot about Donna and what had happened with her for the first time since he had gotten Kemp's note. The job took over completely, and it was only later that he would wonder, slightly dumbfounded, how long it had been since he had felt that pure, trippy, wonderful feeling of being fully involved with something he was good at.

'On the surface, we just want him to repeat the things Sharp has been saying since it happened,' Vic went on. 'But when the Cereal Professor himself says them

'It comes full circle,' Roger murmured. He lit another cigarette.

'Sure, right. We can maybe pitch it to the old man as the final scene in the Red Razberry Zingers farce. Coming clean. Getting it behind us ~'

'Taking the bitter medicine. Sure, that'd appeal to the old goat. Public penance ... scourging himself with whips. . .'

'And instead of going out like a dignified guy that took a pratfall in a mudpuddle, everyone laughing at him, he goes out like Douglas MacArthur, saying old soldiers never die, they just fade away. That's the surface of the thing. But underneath, we're looking for a tone ... a feeling. . . .' He was crossing the border into Roger's country now. If he could only delineate the shape of what he meant, the idea that had come to him over coffee at Bentley's, Roger would take it from there.

'MacArthur,' Roger said softly. 'But that's it, isn't it? The tone is farewell. The feeling is regret. Give people the feeling that he's been unjustly treated, but it's too late now. And

He looked at Vic, almost startled.

'What?'

'Prime time,' Roger said.

'Huh?'

'The spots. We run em in prime time. These ads are for the parents, not the kids. Right?'

'Yeah, yeah.'

'If we ever get the damned things made.'

Vic grinned. 'We'll get them made.' And using one of Roger's terms for good ad copy: 'It's a tank, Roger. We'll drive it right to fuck over them if we have to. As long as we can get something concrete down before we go to Cleveland. . . .'

They sat and talked it over in the tiny screening room for another hour, and when they left to go back to the hotel, both of them sweaty and exhausted, it was full dark.

'Can we go home now, Mommy?' Tad asked apathetically.

'Pretty soon, honey.'

She looked at the key in the ignition switch. Three other keys on the ring: house key, garage key, and the key that opened the Pinto's hatchback. There was a piece of leather attached to the ring with a mushroom branded on it. She had bought the keyring in Swanson's, a Bridgton department store, back in April. Back in April when she had been so disillusioned and scared, never knowing what real fear was, real fear was trying to crank your kid's window shut while a rabid dog drooled on the backs of your hands.

She reached out. She touched the leather tab. She pulled her hand back again.

The truth was this: She was afraid to try.

It was quarter past seven. The day was still bright, although the Pinto's shadow trailed out long, almost to the garage door. Although she did not know it, her husband and his partner were still watching kinescopes of the Sharp Cereal Professor at Image-Eye in Cambridge. She didn't know why no one had answered the SOS she had been beeping out. In a book, someone would have come. It was the heroine's reward for having thought up such a clever idea. But no one had come.

Surely the sound had carried down to the ramshackle house at the foot of the hill. Maybe they were drunk down there. Or maybe the owners of the two cars in the driveway (dooryard, her mind corrected automatically, up here they call it a dooryard) had both gone off somewhere in a third car. She wished she could see that house from here, but it was out of sight beyond the descending flank of the hill.

Finally she had given the SOS up. She was afraid that if she kept tooting the horn it would drain the Pinto's battery, which had been in since they got the car. She still believed the Pinto would start when the engine was cool enough. It always had before.

But you're afraid to try, because if it doesn't start what then?

She was reaching for the ignition again when the dog stumbled back into view. It had been lying out of sight in front of the Pinto. Now it moved slowly toward the barn, it's head down and its tail drooping. It was staggering and weaving like a drunk near the bitter end of a long toot. Without looking back, Cujo slipped into the shadows of the building and disappeared.

She drew her hand away from the key again.

'Mommy? Aren't we going?'

'Let me think, hon,' she said.

She looked to her left, out the driver's side window. Eight running steps would take her to the back door of the Camber house. In high school she had been the star of her high school's girls' track team, and she still jogged regularly. She could beat the dog to the door and inside, she was sure of that. There would be a telephone. One call to Sheriff Bannerman's office and this horror would end. On the other hand, if she tried cranking the engine again, it might not start ... but it would bring the dog on the run. She knew hardly anything about rabies, but she seemed to remember reading at some time or other that rabid animals were almost supernaturally sensitive to sounds. Loud noises could drive them into a frenzy.

'Mommy?'

'Shhh, Tad. Shhh!'

Eight running steps. Dig it.

Even if Cujo was lurking and watching inside the garage just out of sight, she felt sure - she knew - she could win a footrace to the back door. The telephone, yes. And ... a man like Joe Camber surely kept a gun. Maybe a whole rack of them. What pleasure it would give her to blow that fucking dog 'S head to so much oatmeal and strawberry jam!

Eight running steps.

Sure. Dig on it awhile.

And what if that door giving on the porch was locked? Worth the risk?

Her heart thudded heavily in her breast as she weighed the chances. If she had been alone, that would have been one thing. But suppose the door was locked? She could beat the dog to the door, but not to the door and then back to the car. Not if it came running, not if it charged her as it had done before. And what would Tad do? What if Tad saw his mother being savaged by a two-hundred-pound mad dog, being ripped and bitten, being pulled open

No. They were safe here.

Try the engine again!

She reached for the ignition, and part of her mind clamored that it would he safer to wait longer, until the engine was perfectly cool

Perfectly cool? They had been here three hours or more already.

She grasped the key and turned it.

The engine cranked briefly once, twice, three times - and then caught with a roar.

'Oh, thank God!' she cried.

'Mommy?' Tad asked shrilly. 'Are we going? Are we going?'

'We're going,' she said grimly, and threw the transmission into reverse. Cujo lunged out of the barn ... and then just stood there, watching. 'Fuck you dog!' she yelled at it triumphantly.

She touched the gas pedal. The Pinto rolled back perhaps two feet - and stalled.

'No!' she screamed as the red idiot lights came on again. Cujo had taken another two steps when the engine cut out, but now he only stood there silent, his head down. Watching me, the thought occurred again. His shadow trailed out behind him, as clear as a silhouette cut out of black crepe paper.

Donna fumbled for the ignition switch and turned it from ON to START. The motor began to rum over again, but this time it didn't catch. She could hear a harsh panting sound in her own ears and didn't realize for several seconds that she was making the sound herself - in some vauge way she had the idea that it must be the dog. She ground the starter, grimacing horribly, ;wearing at it, oblivious of Tad, using words she had hardly known she knew. And A the time Cujo stood there, trailing his shadow from his heels like some surreal funeral drape, watching.

At last he lay down in the driveway, as if deciding there was no chance for them to escape. She hated it more than she had when it had tried to force its way in through Tad's window.

'Mommy ... Mommy ... Mommy!'

From far away. Unimportant. What was important now was this goddamned sonofabitching little car. It was going to start. She was going to make it start by pure ... force... of will!

She had no idea how long, in real time, she sat hunched over the wheel with her hair hanging in her eyes, futilely grinding the starter. What at last broke through to her was not Tad's cries - they had trailed off to whimpers - but the sound of the engine. It would crank briskly for five seconds, then lag off, then crank briskly for another five, then lag off again. A longer lag each time, it seemed.

She was killing the battery.

She stopped.

She came out of it a little at a time, like a woman coming out of a faint. She remembered a bout of gastroenteritis she'd had in college - everything inside her had either come up by the elevator or dropped down the chute - and near the end of it she had grayed out in one of the dorm toilet stalls. Coming back had been like this, as if you were the same but some invisible painter was adding color to the world, bringing it first up to full and then to overfull. Colors shrieked at you. Everything looked plastic and phony, like a display in a department store window -SWING INTO SPRING, perhaps, or READY FOR THE FIRST KICKOFF.

Tad was cringing away from her, his eyes squeezed shut, the thumb of one hand in his mouth. The other hand was pressed against his hip pocket, where the Monster Words were. His respiration was shallow and rapid.

'Tad,' she said. 'Honey, don't worry.'

'Mommy, are you all right?' His voice was little more than a husky whisper.

'Yeah. So are you. At least we're safe. This old car will go. just wait and see.'

'I thought you were mad at me.'

She took him in her arms and hugged him tight. She could smell sweat in his hair and the lingering undertone of Johnson's No More Tears shampoo. She thought of that bottle sitting safely and sanely on the second shelf of the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. If only she could touch it! But all that was here was that faint, dying perfume.

'No, honey, not at you,' she said. 'Never at you.'

Tad hugged her back. 'He can't get us in here, can he?'

'No.'

'He can't ... he can't eat his way in, can he?'

'No.'