It

A cigarette, just one. Even a Carlton would do, for Christ’s sweet sake.
Gonna getcha, four-eyes! 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 DOP, 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 demons 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.