It

It was called Construction Site Studs. On the floor in front of the desk was a barber pole, its stripe revolving up and up into infinity. Its frayed cord wound across the floor to a baseboard plug like a tired snake. The sign in front of it read: A DYEING BREED ! $250.
When the bell over the door jingled, the man behind the desk marked his place with a matchbook cover and looked up. ‘Help you?’
‘Yes,’ Bill said, and opened his mouth to ask about the bike in the window. But before he could speak, his mind was suddenly filled with a single haunting sentence, words that drove away all other thought:
He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
What in the name of God?
(thrusts)
‘Looking for anything in particular?’ the proprietor asked. His voice was polite enough, but he was looking at Bill closely.
He’s looking at me, Bill thought, amused in spite of his distress, as if he’s got an idea I’vebeen smoking some of that stuff that gets the jazz musicians high.
‘Yes, I was ih-ih-interested ih-in — ‘
(his fists against the posts)
‘ — in that puh-puh-post — ‘
‘The barber pole , you mean?’ The proprietor’s eyes now showed Bill something which, even in his present confused state, he remembered and hated from his childhood: the anxiety of a man or woman who must listen to a stutterer, the urge to jump in quickly and finish the thought, thus shutting the poor bastard up. But I don’t stutter! I beat it! I DON’T FUCKINGSTUTTER! I —
(and still insists)
The words were so clear in his mind that it seemed someone else must be speaking in there, that he was like a man possessed by demons in Biblical times — a man invaded by some presence from Outside. And yet he recognized the voice and knew it was his own. He felt sweat pop out warmly on his face.
‘I could give you
(he sees the ghosts)
a deal on that post,’ the proprietor was saying. ‘Tell you the truth, I can’t move it at two-fifty. I’d give it to you for one-seventy-five, how’s that? It’s the only real antique in the place.’
(post)
‘POLE,’ Bill almost screamed, and the proprietor recoiled a little. ‘Not the pole I’m interested in.’
‘Are you okay, mister?’ the proprietor asked. His solicitous tone belied the expression of hard wariness in his eyes, and Bill saw his left hand leave the desk. He knew, with a flash of something that was really more inductive reasoning than intuition that there was an open drawer below Bill’s own sight-line, and that the proprietor had almost surely put his hand on a pistol of some type. He was maybe worried about robbery; more likely he was just worried. He was, after all, cle arly gay, and this was the town where the local juveniles had given Adrian Mellon a terminal bath.
(he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)
It drove out all thought; it was like being insane. Where had it come from?
(he thrusts)
Repeating and repeating.
With a sudden titanic effort, Bill attacked it. He did this by forcing his mind to translate the alien sentence into French. It was the same way he had beaten the stutter as a teenager. As the words marched across his field of thought, he changed them . . . and suddenly he felt the grip of the stutter loosen.
He realized that the proprietor had been saying something.
‘P-P-Pardon me?’
‘I said if you’re going to have a fit, take it out on the street. I don’t need shit like that in here.’
Bill drew in a deep breath.
‘Let’s start o-over,’ he said. ‘Pretend I just came i-in.’
‘Okay,’ the proprietor said, agreeably enough. ‘You just came in. Now what?’
‘The b-bike in the window,’ Bill said. ‘How much do you want for the bike?’
‘Take twenty bucks.’ He sounded easier now, but his left hand still hadn’t come back into view. ‘I think it was a Schwinn at one time, but it’s a mongrel now.’ His eye measured Bill. ‘Big bike. You could ride it yourself.’
Thinking of the kid’s green skateboard, Bill said, ‘I think my bike-riding days are o-o-over.’
The proprietor shrugged. His left hand finally came up again. ‘Got