It

by Stephen King

  No, I don't want to get out, she said a little louder.

  What--those cigarettes giving you emphysema? If you can't talk, I'll get you a fucking megaphone. This is your last chance, Beverly. You speak up so I can hear you: do you want to get out of this car or do you want to come back with me?

  Want to come back with you, she said, and clasped her hands on her skirt like a little girl. She wouldn't look at him. Tears slipped down her cheeks.

  All right, he said. Fine. But first you say this for me, Bev. You say, "I forgot about smoking in front of you, Tom."

  Now she looked at him, her eyes wounded, pleading, inarticulate. You can make me do this, her eyes said, but please don't. Don't, I love you, can't it be over?

  No--it could not. Because that was not the bottom of her wanting, and both of them knew it.

  Say it.

  I forgot about smoking in front of you, Tom.

  Good. Now say "I'm sorry. "

  I'm sorry, she repeated dully.

  The cigarette lay smoking on the pavement like a cut piece of fuse. People leaving the theater glanced over at them, the man standing by the open passenger door of a late-model, fade-into-the-woodwork Vega, the woman sitting inside, her hands clasped primly in her lap, her head down, the domelight outlining the soft fall of her hair in gold.

  He crushed the cigarette out. He smeared it against the blacktop.

  Now say: "I'll never do it again without your permission."

  I'll never ...

  Her voice began to hitch.

  . . . never . . . n-n-n--

  Say it, Bev.

  ... never d-do it again. Without your p-permission.

  So he had slammed the door and gone back around to the driver's seat. He got behind the wheel and drove them back to his downtown apartment. Neither of them said a word. Half the relationship had been set in the parking lot; the second half was set forty minutes later, in Tom's bed.

  She didn't want to make love, she said. He saw a different truth in her eyes and the strutty cock of her legs, however, and when he got her blouse off her nipples had been rock hard. She moaned when he brushed them, and cried out softly when he suckled first one and then the other, kneading them restlessly as he did so. She grabbed his hand and thrust it between her legs.

  I thought you didn't want to, he said, and she had turned her face away ... but she did not let go of his hand, and the rocking motion of her hips actually speeded up.

  He pushed her back on the bed ... and now he was gentle, not ripping her underwear but removing it with a careful consideration that was almost prissy.

  Sliding into her was like sliding into some exquisite oil.

  He moved with her, using her but letting her use him as well, and she came the first time almost at once, crying out and digging her nails into his back. Then they rocked together in long, slow strokes and somewhere in there he thought she came again. Tom would get close, and then he would think of White Sox batting averages or who was trying to undercut him for the Chesley account at work and he would be okay again. Then she began to speed up, her rhythm finally dissolving into an excited bucking. He looked at her face, the raccoon ringlets of mascara, the smeared lipstick, and he felt himself suddenly shooting deliriously toward the edge.

  She jerked her hips up harder and harder--there had been no beergut between them in those days and their bellies clapped hands in a quickening beat.

  Near the end she screamed and then bit his shoulder with her small, even teeth.

  How many times did you come? he asked her after they had showered.

  She turned her face away, and when she spoke her voice was so low he almost couldn't hear her. That isn't something you're supposed to ask.

  No? Who told you that? Mister Rogers?

  He took her face in one hand, thumb pressing deep into one cheek, fingers pressing into the other, palm cupping her chin in between.

  You talk to Tom, he said. You hear me, Bev? Talk to Papa.

  Three, she said reluctantly.

  Good, he said. You can have a cigarette.

  She looked at him distrustfully, her red hair spread over the pillows, wearing nothing but a pair of hip-hugger panties. Just looking at her that way got his motor turning over again. He nodded.

  Go on, he said. That's all right.

  They had been married in a civil ceremony three months later. Two of his friends had come; the only friend of hers to attend had been Kay McCall, whom Tom called "that titsy women's-lib bitch."

  All of these memories went through Tom's mind in a space of seconds, like a speeded-up piece of film, as he stood in the doorway watching her. She had gone on to the bottom drawer of what she sometimes called her "weekend bureau," and now she was tossing underwear into the suitcase--not the sort of stuff he liked, the slippery satins and smooth silks; this was cotton stuff, little-girl stuff, most of it faded and with little puffs of popped elastic on the waistbands. A cotton nightie that looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie. She poked in the back of this bottom drawer to see what else might be lurking in there.

  Tom Rogan, meanwhile, moved across the shag rug toward his wardrobe. His feet were bare and his passage noiseless as a puff of breeze. It was the cigarette. That was what had really gotten him mad. It had been a long time since she had forgotten that first lesson. There had been other lessons to learn since, a great many, and there had been hot days when she had worn long-sleeved blouses or even cardigan sweaters buttoned all the way to the neck. Gray days when she had worn sunglasses. But that first lesson had been so sudden and fundamental--

  He had forgotten the telephone call that had wakened him out of his deepening sleep. It was the cigarette. If she was smoking now, then she had forgotten Tom Rogan. Temporarily, of course, only temporarily, but even temporarily was too damned long. What might have caused her to forget didn't matter. Such things were not to happen in his house for any reason.

  There was a wide black strip of leather hanging from a hook inside the closet door. There was no buckle on it; he had removed that long ago. It was doubled over at one end where a buckle would have gone, and this doubled-over section formed a loop into which Tom Rogan now slipped his hand.

  Tom, you been bad! his mother had sometimes said--well, "sometimes" was maybe not such a good word; maybe "often" would have been a better one. You come here, Tommy! I got to give you a whuppin. His life as a child had been punctuated by whuppins. He had finally escaped to Wichita State College, but apparently there was no such thing as a complete escape, because he continued to hear her voice in dreams: Come here, Tommy. I got to give you a whuppin. Whuppin ...

  He had been the eldest of four. Three months after the youngest had been born, Ralph Rogan had died--well, "died" was maybe not such a good word; maybe "committed suicide" would have been a better way to put it, since he had poured a generous quantity of lye into a tumbler of gin and quaffed this devil's brew while sitting on the bathroom hopper. Mrs. Rogan had found work at the Ford plant. Tom, although only eleven, became the man of the family. And if he screwed up--if the baby shat her didies after the sitter went home and the mess was still in them when Mom got home ... if he forgot to cross Megan on the Broad Street corner after her nursery school got out and that nosy Mrs. Gant saw ... if he happened to be watching American Bandstand while Joey made a mess in the kitchen ... if any of those things or a thousand others happened ... then, after the smaller children were in bed, the spanking stick would come out and she would call the invocation: Come here, Tommy. I got to give you a whuppin.

  Better to be the whupper than the whupped.

  If he had learned nothing else on the great toll-road of life, he had learned that.

  So he flipped the loose end of the belt over once and pulled the loop snug. Then he closed his fist over it. It felt good. It made him feel like a grownup. The strip of leather hung from his clenched fist like a dead blacksnake. His headache was gone.

  She had found that one last thing in the back of the dra
wer: an old white cotton bra with gunshell cups. The thought that this early-morning call might have been from a lover surfaced briefly in his mind and then sank again. That was ridiculous. A woman going away to meet her lover did not pack her faded Ship 'n Shore blouses and her cotton K-Mart undies with the pops and snarls in the elastic. Also, she wouldn't dare.

  "Beverly," he said softly, and she turned at once, startled, her eyes wide, her long hair swinging.

  The belt hesitated ... dropped a little. He stared at her, feeling that little bloom of uneasiness again. Yes, she had looked this way before the big shows, and then he hadn't gotten in her way, understanding that she was so filled with a mixture of fear and competitive aggressiveness that it was as if her head was full of illuminating gas: a single spark and she would explode. She had seen the shows not as a chance to split off from Delia Fashions, to make a living--or even a fortune--on her own. If that had been all, she would have been fine. But if that were all, she also would not have been so ungodly talented. She had seen those shows as a kind of super-exam on which she would be graded by fierce teachers. What she saw on those occasions was some creature without a face. It had no face, but it did have a name--Authority.

  All of that wide-eyed nerviness was on her face now. But not just there; it was all around her, an aura that seemed almost visible, a high-tension charge which made her suddenly both more alluring and more dangerous than she had seemed to him in years. He was afraid because she was here, all here, the essential she as apart from the she Tom Rogan wanted her to be, the she he had made.

  Beverly looked shocked and frightened. She also looked almost madly exhilarated. Her cheeks glowed with hectic color, yet there were stark white patches below her lower lids which looked almost like a second pair of eyes. Her forehead glowed with a creamy resonance.

  And the cigarette was still jutting out of her mouth, now at a slight up-angle, as if she thought she was goddam Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The cigarette! Just looking at it caused dull fury to wash over him again in a green wave. Faintly, far back in his mind, he remembered her saying something to him one night out of the dark, speaking in a dull and listless voice: Someday you're going to kill me, Tom. Do you know that? Someday you're just going to go too far and that will be the end. You'll snap.

  He had answered: You do it my way, Bev, and that day will never come.

  Now, before the rage blotted out everything, he wondered if that day hadn't come after all.

  The cigarette. Never mind the call, the packing, the weird look on her face. They would deal with the cigarette. Then he would fuck her. Then they could discuss the rest. By then it might even seem important.

  "Tom," she said. "Tom, I have to--"

  "You're smoking," he said. His voice seemed to come from a distance, as if over a pretty good radio. "Looks like you forgot, babe. Where you been hiding them?"

  "Look, I'll put it out," she said, and went to the bathroom door. She flipped the cigarette--even from here he could see the teethmarks driven deep into the filter--into the bowl of the john. Fsssss. She came back out. "Tom, that was an old friend. An old old friend. I have to--"

  "Shut up, that's what you have to do!" he shouted at her. "Just shut up!" But the fear he wanted to see--the fear of him--was not on her face. There was fear, but it had come out of the telephone, and fear was not supposed to come to Beverly from that direction. It was almost as if she didn't see the belt, didn't see him, and Tom felt a trickle of unease. Was he here? It was a stupid question, but was he?

  This question was so terrible and so elemental that for a moment he felt in danger of coming completely unwrapped from the root of himself and just floating off like a tumble-weed in a high breeze. Then he caught hold of himself. He was here, all right, and that was quite enough fucking psycho-babble for one night. He was here, he was Tom Rogan, Tom by-God Rogan, and if this dippy cunt didn't straighten up and fly right in the next thirty seconds or so, she was going to look like she got pushed out of a fast-moving boxcar by a mean railroad dick.

  "Got to give you a whuppin," he said. "Sorry about that, babe."

  He had seen that mixture of fear and aggressiveness before, yes. Now for the first time ever it flashed out at him.

  "Put that thing down," she said. "I have to get out to O'Hare as fast as I can."

  Are you here, Tom? Are you?

  He pushed the thought away. The strip of leather which had once been a belt swung slowly before him like a pendulum. His eyes flickered and then held fast to her face.

  "Listen to me, Tom. There's been some trouble back in my home town. Very bad trouble. I had a friend in those days. I guess he would have been my boyfriend, except we weren't quite old enough for that. He was only an eleven-year-old kid with a bad stutter back then. He's a novelist now. You even read one of his books, I think ... The Black Rapids?"

  She searched his face but his face gave no sign. There was only the belt penduluming back and forth, back and forth. He stood with his head lowered and his stocky legs slightly apart. Then she ran her hand restlessly through her hair--distractedly--as if she had many important things to think of and hadn't seen the belt at all, and that haunting, awful question resurfaced in his head again: Are you there? Are you sure?

  "That book laid around here for weeks and I never made the connection. Maybe I should have, but we're all older and I haven' even thought about Derry in a long, long time. Anyway, Bill had a brother, George, and George was killed before I really knew Bill. He was murdered. And then, the next summer--"

  But Tom had listened to enough craziness from within and from without. He moved in on her fast, cocking his right arm back over his shoulder like a man about to throw a javelin. The belt hissed a path through the air. Beverly saw it coming and tried to duck away, but her right shoulder struck the bathroom doorway and there was a meaty whap! as the belt struck her left forearm, leaving a red weal.

  "Gonna whup you," Tom repeated. His voice was sane, even regretful, but his teeth showed in a white and frozen smile. He wanted to see that look in her eyes, that look of fear and terror and shame, that look that said Yes you're right I deserved it, that look that said Yes you're there all right, I feel your presence. Then love could come back, and that was right and good, because he did love her. They could even have a discussion, if she wanted it, of exactly who had called and what all this was about. But that must come later. For now, school was in session. The old one-two. First the whuppin, then the fuckin.

  "Sorry, babe."

  "Tom, don't do th--"

  He swung the belt sidearm and saw it lick around her hip. There was a satisfying snap as it finished on her buttock. And ...

  And Jesus, she was grabbing at it! She was grabbing at the belt!

  For a moment Tom Rogan was so astounded by this unexpected act of insubordination that he almost lost his punisher, would have lost it except for the loop, which was tucked securely into his fist.

  He jerked it back.

  "Don't you ever try to grab something away from me," he said hoarsely. "You hear me? You ever do that again and you'll spend a month pissing raspberry juice."

  "Tom, stop it," she said, and her very tone infuriated him--she sounded like a playground monitor talking down to a tantrumy six-year-old. "I have to go. This is no joke. People are dead, and I made a promise a long time ago--"

  Tom heard little of this. He bellowed and ran at her with his head down, the belt swinging blindly. He hit her with it, driving her away from the doorway and along the bedroom wall. He cocked his arm back, hit her, cocked his arm back, hit her, cocked his arm back, hit her. Later that morning he would not be able to raise the arm above eye level until he had swallowed three codeine tablets, but for now he was aware of nothing but the fact that she was defying him. She had not only been smoking, she had tried to grab the belt away from him, and oh folks, oh friends and neighbors, she had asked for it, and he would testify before the throne of God Almighty that she was going to get it.

  He drove her along the
wall, swinging the belt, raining blows on her. Her hands were up to protect her face, but he had a clear shot at the rest of her. The belt made thick bullwhip cracks in the quiet room. But she did not scream, as she sometimes did, and she did not beg him to stop, as she usually did. Worst of all, she did not cry, as she always did. The only sounds were the belt and their breathing, his heavy and hoarse, hers quick and light.

  She broke for the bed and the vanity table on her side of it. Her shoulders were red from the belt's blows. Her hair streamed fire. He lumbered after her, slower but big, very big--he had played squash until he had popped an Achilles tendon two years ago, and since then his weight had gotten out of hand a little bit (or maybe "a lot" would have been a better way to put it), but the muscle was still there, firm cordage sheathed in the fat. Still, he was a little alarmed at how out of breath he was.

  She reached the vanity and he thought she would crouch there, or maybe try to crawl under it. Instead she groped ... turned ... and suddenly the air was full of flying missiles. She was throwing cosmetics at him. A bottle of Chantilly struck him squarely between the nipples, fell to his feet, shattered. He was suddenly enveloped in the gagging scent of flowers.

  "Quit it!" he roared. "Quit it, you bitch!"

  Instead of quitting it, her hands flew along the vanity's littered glass top, grabbing whatever they found, throwing it. He groped at his chest where the bottle of Chantilly had struck him, unable to believe she had hit him with something, even as other objects flew around him. The bottle's glass stopper had cut him. It was not much of a cut, little more than a triangular scratch, but was there a certain red-haired lady who was going to see the sun come up from a hospital bed? Oh yes, there was. A certain lady who--

  A jar of cream struck him above the right eyebrow with sudden, cracking force. He heard a dull thud seemingly inside his head. White light exploded over that eye's field of vision and he fell back a step, mouth dropping open. Now a tube of Nivea cream struck his belly with a small slapping sound and she was--was she? was it possible?--yes! She was yelling at him!

  "I'm going to the airport, you son of a bitch! Do you hear me? I have business and I'm going! You want to get out of my way because I'M GOING!"

  Blood ran into his right eye, stinging and hot. He knuckled it away.