by Stephen King
Plink.
That did it. Patty Uris at last found her voice. Staring into her husband's dead and sparkling eyes, she began to scream.
2
Richard Tozier Takes a Powder
Rich felt like he was doing pretty good until the vomiting started.
He had listened to everything Mike Hanlon told him, said all the right things, answered Mike's questions, even asked a few of his own. He was vaguely aware that he was doing one of his Voices--not a strange and outrageous one, like those he sometimes did on the radio (Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant was his own personal favorite, at least for the time being, and positive listener response on Kinky was almost as high as for his listeners' all-time favorite, Colonel Buford Kissdrivel), but a warm, rich, confident Voice. An I'm-All-Right Voice. It sounded great, but it was a lie. Just like all the other Voices were lies.
"How much do you remember, Rich?" Mike asked him.
"Very little," Rich said, and then paused. "Enough, I suppose."
"Will you come?"
"I'll come," Rich said, and hung up.
He sat in his study for a moment, leaning back in the chair behind his desk, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. A couple of kids were down on the left, horsing around on their surfboards, not really riding them. There wasn't much surf to ride.
The clock on the desk--an expensive L.E.D. quartz that had been a gift from a record company rep--said that it was 5:09 P.M. on May 28th, 1985. It would, of course, be three hours later where Mike was calling from. Dark already. He felt a prickle of gooseflesh at that and he began to move, to do things. First, of course, he put on a record--not hunting, just grabbing blindly among the thousands racked on the shelves. Rock and roll was almost as much a part of his life as the Voices, and it was hard for him to do anything without music playing--and the louder the better. The record he grabbed turned out to be a Motown retrospective. Marvin Gaye, one of the newer members of what Rich sometimes called The All-Dead Band, came on singing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."
"Oooh-hoo, I bet you're wond'rin' how I knew...."
"Not bad," Rich said. He even smiled a little. This was bad, and it had admittedly knocked him for a loop, but he felt that he was going to be able to handle it. No sweat.
He began getting ready to go back home. And at some point during the next hour it occurred to him that it was as if he had died and had yet been allowed to make all of his own final business dispositions ... not to mention his own funeral arrangements. And he felt as if he was doing pretty good. He tried the travel agent he used, thinking she would probably be on the freeway and headed home by now but taking a shot on the off-chance. For a wonder, he caught her in. He told her what he needed and she asked him for fifteen minutes.
"I owe you one, Carol," he said. They had progressed from Mr. Tozier and Ms. Feeny to Rich and Carol over the last three years--pretty chummy, considering they had never met face to face.
"All right, pay off," she said. "Can you do Kinky Briefcase for me?"
Without even pausing--if you had to pause to find your Voice, there was usually no Voice there to be found--Rich said: "Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant, here--I had a fellow come in the other day who wanted to know what the worst thing was about getting AIDS." His voice had dropped slightly; at the same time its rhythm had speeded up and become jaunty--it was clearly an American voice and yet it somehow conjured up images of a wealthy British colonial chappie who was as charming, in his muddled way, as he was addled. Rich hadn't the slightest idea who Kinky Briefcase really was, but he was sure he always wore white suits, read Esquire, and drank things which came in tall glasses and smelled like coconut-scented shampoo. "I told him right away--trying to explain to your mother how you picked it up from a Haitian girl. Until next time, this is Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant, saying 'You need my card if you can't get hard.' "
Carol Feeny screamed with laughter. "That's perfect! Perfect! My boyfriend says he doesn't believe you can just do those voices, he says it's got to be a voice-filter gadget or something--"
"Just talent, my dear," Rich said. Kinky Briefcase was gone. W. C. Fields, top hat, red nose, golf-bags and all, was here. "I'm so stuffed with talent I have to plug up all my bodily orifices to keep it from just running out like ... well, just running out."
She went off into another screamy gale of laughter, and Rich closed his eyes. He could feel the beginnings of a headache.
"Be a dear and see what you can do, would you?" he asked, still being W. C. Fields, and hung up on her laughter.
Now he had to go back to being himself, and that was hard--it got harder to do that every year. It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.
He was trying to pick out a pair of good loafers and had about decided to stick with sneakers when the phone rang again. It was Carol Feeny, back in record time. He felt an instant urge to fall into the Buford Kissdrivel Voice and fought it off. She had been able to get him a first-class seat on the American Airlines red-eye nonstop from LAX to Boston. He would leave L.A. at 9:03 P.M. and arrive at Logan about five o'clock tomorrow morning. Delta would fly him out of Boston at 7:30 A.M. and into Bangor, Maine, at 8:20. She had gotten him a full-sized sedan from Avis, and it was only twenty-six miles from the Avis counter at Bangor International Airport to the Derry town line.
Only twenty-six miles? Rich thought. Is that all, Carol? Well, maybe it is--in miles, anyway. But you don't have the slightest idea how far it really is to Derry, and I don't, either. But oh God, oh dear God, I am going to find out.
"I didn't try for a room because you didn't tell me how long you'd be there," she said. "Do you--"
"No--let me take care of that," Rich said, and then Buford Kissdrivel took over. "You've been a peach, my deah. A Jawja peach, a cawse."
He hung up gently on her--always leave em laughing--and then dialed 207-555-1212 for State of Maine Directory Assistance. He wanted a number for the Derry Town House. God, there was a name from the past. He hadn't thought of the Derry Town House in--what?--ten years? twenty? twenty-five years, even? Crazy as it seemed, he guessed it had been at least twenty-five years, and if Mike hadn't called, he supposed he might never have thought of it again in his life. And yet there had been a time in his life when he had walked past that great red brick pile every day--and on more than one occasion he had run past it, with Henry Bowers and Belch Huggins and that other big boy, Victor Somebody-or-Other, in hot pursuit, all of them yelling little pleasantries like We're gonna getcha, fuckface! Gonna getcha, you little smartass! Gonna getcha, you foureyed faggot! Had they ever gotten him?
Before Rich could remember, an operator was asking him what city, please.
"In Derry, operator--"
Derry! God! Even the word felt strange and forgotten in his mouth; saying it was like kissing an antique.
"--do you have a number for the Derry Town House?"
"One moment, sir."
No way. It'll be gone. Razed in an urban-renewal program. Changed into an Elks' Hall or a Bowl-a-Drome or an Electric Dreamscape Video Arcade. Or maybe burned down one night when the odds finally ran out on some drunk shoe salesman smoking in bed. All gone, Richie--just like the glasses Henry Bowers always used to rag you about. What's that Springsteen song say? Glory days... gone in the wink of a young girl's eye. What young girl? Why, Bev, of course. Bev ...
Changed the Town House might be, but gone it apparently was not, because a blank, robotic voice now came on the line and said: "The ... number ... is ... 9 ... 4 ... I...8...2...8...2. Repeat: ... the... number ... is ...
But Rich had gotten it the first time. It was a pleasure to hang up on that droning voice--it was too easy to imagine some great globular Directory Assistance monster buried somewhere in the earth, sweating rivets and holding thousands of telephones in thousands of jointed chromium tentacles--the Ma Bell version of Spidey's nemesis, Dr. Octopus. Each year the world Rich lived in felt more and more like a huge electronic haunted house in which digital ghosts and frig
htened human beings lived in uneasy coexistence.
Still standing. To paraphrase Paul Simon, still standing after all these years.
He dialed the hotel he had last seen through the horn-rimmed spectacles of his childhood. Dialing that number, 1-207-941-8282, was fatally easy. He held the telephone to his ear, looking out his study's wide picture window. The surfers were gone; a couple was walking slowly up the beach, hand in hand, where they had been. The couple could have been a poster on the wall of the travel agency where Carol Feeny worked, that was how perfect they were. Except, that was, for the fact they were both wearing glasses.
Gonna getcha, fuckface! Gonna break your glasses!
Criss, his mind sent up abruptly. His last name was Criss. Victor Criss.
Oh Christ, that was nothing he wanted to know, not at this late date, but it didn't seem to matter in the slightest. Something was happening down there in the vaults, down there where Rich Tozier kept his own personal collection of Golden Oldies. Doors were opening.
Only they're not records down there, are they? Down there you're not Rich "Records" Tozier, hot-shot KLAD deejay and the Man of a Thousand Voices, are you? And those things that are opening ... they aren't exactly doors, are they?
He tried to shake these thoughts off.
Thing to remember is that I'm okay. I'm okay, you're okay, Rich Tozier's okay. Could use a cigarette, is all.
He had quit four years ago but he could use one now, all right.
They're not records but dead bodies. You buried them deep but now there's some kind of crazy earthquake going on and the ground is spitting them up to the surface. You're not Rich "Records" Tozier down there; down there you're just Richie "FourEyes" Tozier and you're with your buddies and you're so scared it feels like your balls are turning into Welch's grape jelly. Those aren't doors, and they're not opening. Those are crypts, Richie. They're cracking open and the vampires you thought were dead are all flying out again.
A cigarette, just one. Even a Carlton would do, for Christ's sweet sake.
Gonna getcha, foureyes! Gonna make you EAT that fuckin bookbag!
"Town House," a male voice with a Yankee tang said; it had travelled all the way across New England, the Midwest, and under the casinos of Las Vegas to reach his ear.
Rich asked the voice if he could reserve a suite of rooms at the Town House, beginning tomorrow. The voice told him he could, and then asked him for how long.
"I can't say. I've got--" He paused briefly, minutely.
What did he have, exactly? In his mind's eye he saw a boy with a tartan bookbag running from the tough guys; he saw a boy who wore glasses, a thin boy with a pale face that had somehow seemed to scream Hit me! Go on and hit me! in some mysterious way to every passing bully. Here's my lips! Mash them back against my teeth! Here's my nose! Bloody it for sure and break it if you can! Box an ear so it swells up like a cauliflower! Split an eyebrow! Here's my chin, go for the knockout button! Here are my eyes, so blue and so magnified behind these hateful, hateful glasses, these horn-rimmed specs one bow of which is held on with adhesive tape. Break the specs! Drive a shard of glass into one of these eyes and close it forever! What the hell!
He closed his eyes and said: "I've got business in Derry, you see. I don't know how long the transaction will take. How about three days, with an option to renew?"
"An option to renew?" the desk-clerk asked doubtfully, and Rich waited patiently for the fellow to work it over in his mind. "Oh, I get you! That's very good!"
"Thank you, and I... ah ... hope you can vote for us in Novembah," John F. Kennedy said. "Jackie wants to ... ah ... do ovuh the ... ah ... Oval Office, and I've got a job all lined up for my ... ah ... brothah Bobby."
"Mr. Tozier?"
"Yes."
"Okay ... somebody else got on the line there for a few seconds."
Just an old pol from the D.O.P., Rich thought. That's Dead Old Party, in case you should wonder. Don't worry about it. A shudder worked through him, and he told himself again, almost desperately: You're okay, Rich.
"I heard it, too," Rich said. "Must have been a line cross-over. How we looking on that room?"
"Oh, there's no problem with that," the clerk said. "We do business here in Derry, but it really never booms."
"Is that so?"
"Oh, ayuh," the clerk agreed, and Rich shuddered again. He had forgotten that, too--that simple northern New England-ism for yes. Oh, ayuh.
Gonna getcha, creep! the ghostly voice of Henry Bowers screamed, and he felt more crypts cracking open inside of him; the stench he smelled was not decayed bodies but decayed memories, and that was somehow worse.
He gave the Town House clerk his American Express number and hung up. Then he called Steve Covall, the KLAD program director.
"What's up, Rich?" Steve asked. The last Arbitron ratings had shown KLAD at the top of the cannibalistic Los Angeles FM-rock market, and ever since then Steve had been in an excellent mood--thank God for small favors.
"Well, you might be sorry you asked," he told Steve. "I'm taking a powder."
"Taking--" He could hear the frown in Steve's voice. "I don't think I get you, Rich."
"I have to put on my boogie shoes. I'm going away."
"What do you mean, going away? According to the log I have right here in front of me, you're on the air tomorrow from two in the afternoon until six P.M., just like always. In fact, you're interviewing Clarence Clemons in the studio at four. You know Clarence Clemons, Rich? As in 'Come on and blow, Big Man'?"
"Clemons can talk to Mike O'Hara as well as he can to me."
"Clarence doesn't want to talk to Mike, Rich. Clarence doesn't want to talk to Bobby Russell. He doesn't want to talk to me. Clarence is a big fan of Buford Kissdrivel and Wyatt the Homicidal Bag-Boy. He wants to talk to you, my friend. And I have no interest in having a pissed-off two-hundred-and-fifty-pound saxophone player who was once almost drafted by a pro football team running amok in my studio."
"I don't think he has a history of running amok," Rich said. "I mean, we're talking Clarence Clemons here, not Keith Moon."
There was silence on the line. Rich waited patiently.
"You're not serious, are you?" Steve finally asked. He sounded plaintive. "I mean, unless your mother just died or you've got to have a brain tumor out or something, this is called crapping out."
"I have to go, Steve."
"Is your mother sick? Did she God-forbid die?"
"She died ten years ago."
"Have you got a brain tumor?"
"Not even a rectal polyp."
"This is not funny, Rich."
"No."
"You're being a fucking busher, and I don't like it."
"I don't like it either, but I have to go."
"Where? Why? What is this? Talk to me, Rich!"
"Someone called me. Someone I used to know a long time ago. In another place. Back then something happened. I made a promise. We all promised that we would go back if the something started happening again. And I guess it has."
"What something are we talking about, Rich?"
"I'd just as soon not say." Also, you'll think I'm crazy if I tell you the truth: I don't remember.
"When did you make this famous promise?"
"A long time ago. In the summer of 1958."
There was another long pause, and he knew Steve Covall was trying to decide if Rich "Records" Tozier, aka Buford Kissdrivel, aka Wyatt the Homicidal Bag-Boy, etc., etc., was having him on or was having some kind of mental breakdown.
"You would have been just a kid," Steve said flatly.
"Eleven. Going on twelve."
Another long pause. Rich waited patiently.
"All right," Steve said. "I'll shift the rotation--put Mike in for you. I can call Chuck Foster to pull a few shifts, I guess, if I can find what Chinese restaurant he's currently holed up in. I'll do it because we go back a long way together. But I'm never going to forget you bushed out on me, Rich."
"Oh, get down off it
," Rich said, but the headache was getting worse. He knew what he was doing; did Steve really think he didn't? "I need a few days off, is all. You're acting like I took a shit on our FCC charter."
"A few days off for what? The reunion of your Cub Scout pack in Shithouse Falls, North Dakota, or Pussyhump City, West Virginia?"
"Actually I think Shithouse Falls is in Arkansas, bo," Buford Kissdrivel said in his big hollow-barrel Voice, but Steve was not to be diverted.
"Because you made a promise when you were eleven? Kids don't make serious promises when they're eleven, for Christ's sake! And it's not even that, Rich, and you know it. This is not an insurance company; this is not a law office. This is show-business, be it ever so humble, and you fucking well know it. If you had given me a week's notice, I wouldn't be holding this phone in one hand and a bottle of Mylanta in the other. You are putting my balls to the wall, and you know it, so don't you insult my intelligence!"
Steve was nearly screaming now, and Rich closed his eyes. I'm never going to forget it, Steve had said, and Rich supposed he never would. But Steve had also said kids didn't make serious promises when they were eleven, and that wasn't true at all. Rich couldn't remember what the promise had been--wasn't sure he wanted to remember--but it had been plenty serious.
"Steve, I have to."
"Yeah. And I told you I could handle it. So go ahead. Go ahead, you busher."
"Steve, this is rid--"
But Steve had already hung up. Rich put the phone down. He had barely started away from it when it began to ring again, and he knew without picking it up that it was Steve again, madder than ever. Talking to him at this point would do no good; things would just get uglier. He slid the switch on the side of the phone to the right, cutting it off in mid-ring.
He went upstairs, pulled two suitcases out of the closet, and filled them with a barely glanced-at conglomeration of clothes--jeans, shirts, underwear, socks. It would not occur to him until later that he had taken nothing but kid-clothes. He carried the suitcases back downstairs.
On the den wall was a black-and-white Ansel Adams photograph of Big Sur. Rich swung it back on hidden hinges, exposing a barrel safe. He opened it, pawed his way past the paperwork--the house here, poised cozily between the fault-line and the brush-fire zone, twenty acres of timberland in Idaho, a bunch of stocks. He had bought the stocks seemingly at random--when his broker saw Rich coming, he immediately clutched his head--but the stocks had all risen steadily over the years. He was sometimes surprised by the thought that he was almost--not quite, but almost--a rich man. All courtesy of rock-and-roll music ... and the Voices, of course.
