It

now facing a rather difficult problem — how do you rebuild an urban area which is now at least fifty percent underwater?
I think that, after a long and ghoulishly vital existence, Derry may be dying . . . like a nightshade whose time to bloom has come and gone.
Called Bill Denbrough late this afternoon. No change in Audra.
An hour ago I put through another call, this one to Richie Tozier in California. His answering machine fielded the call, with Creedence Clearwater Revival music playing in the background. Those machines always fuck up my timing somehow. I left my name and number, hesitated, and added that I hoped he was able to wear his contact lenses again. I was about to hang up when Richie himself picked up the phone and said, ‘Mikey! How you be?’ His voice was pleased and warm . . . but there was an obvious bewilderment there as well. He was wearing the verbal expression of a man who has been caught utterly flat-footed.
‘Hello, Richie,’ I said. ‘I’m doing pretty well.’
‘Good. How much pain you having?’
‘Some. It’s going away. The itch is worse. I’ll be damn glad when they finally decide to unstrap my ribs. By the way, I liked the Creedence.’
Richie laughed. ‘Shit, that ain’t Creedence, that’s «Rock and Roll Girls,» from Fogarty’s new album. Centerfield, it’s called. You haven’t heard any of it?’
‘Huh-uh.’
‘You got to get it, it’s great. It’s just like . . . ‘ He trailed off for a moment and then said, ‘It’s just like the old days.’
‘I’ll pick it up,’ I said, and I probably will. I always liked John Fogarty. ‘Green River’ was my all-tune Creedence favorite, I guess. Get back home, he says. Just before the fade he says it.
‘What about Bill?’
‘He and Audra are keeping house for me while I’m in here.’
‘Good. That’s good.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You want to hear something fucking bizarre, ole Mikey?’
‘Sure,’ I said. I had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.
‘Well . . . I was sitting here in my study, listening to some of the new Cashbox hot prospects, going over some ad copy, reading memos . . . there’s about two mountains of stuff backed up, and I’m looking at roughly a month of twenty-five –hour days. So I had the answering machine turned on, but with the volume turned up so I could intercept the calls I wanted and just let the dimwits talk to the tape. And the reason I let you talk to the tape as long as I did — ‘
‘ — was because at first you didn’t have the slightest idea who I was.’
‘Jesus, that’s right! How did you know that?’
‘Because we’re forgetting again. All of us this time.’
‘Mikey, are you sure?’
‘What was Stan’s last name?’ I asked him.
There was silence on the other end of the line — a long silence. In it, faintly, I could hear a woman talking in Omaha . . . or maybe she was in Ruthven, Arizona, or Flint, Michigan. I heard her, as faint as a space-traveller leaving the solar system in the nosecone of a burned-out rocket, thank someone for the cookies.
Then Richie said, uncertainly: ‘I think it was Underwood, but that isn’t Jewish, it it?’
‘It was Uris.’
‘Uris!’ Richie cried, sounding both relieved and shaken. ‘Jesus, I hate it when I get something right on the tip of my tongue and can’t quite pick it off. Someone brings out a Trivial Pursuit game, I say «Excuse me but I think the diarrhea’s coming back so maybe I’ll just go home, okay?» But you remember, anyhow, Mikey. Like before.’
‘No. I looked it up in my address book.’
Another long silence. Then: ‘You didn’t remember?’
‘Nope.’
‘No shit?’
‘No shit.’
‘Then this tune it’s really over,’ he said, and the relief in his voice was unmistakable.
‘Yes, I think so.’
That long-distance silence fell again — all the miles between Maine and California. I believe we were both thinking the same thing: it was over, yes, and in six weeks or six months, we will have forgotten all about each other. It’s over, and all it’s cost us is our friendship and Stan and Eddie’s lives. I’ve almost forgotten them, you know it? Horrible as it may sound, I have almost forgotten Stan and Eddie. Was it asthma Eddie had, or chronic migraine? I’ll be damned if I can remember for sure, although I think it was migraine. I’ll ask Bill. He’ll know.
‘Well, you say hi to Bill and that pretty wife of his,’ Richie said with a cheeriness that sounded canned.
‘I will, Richie,’ I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead. He remembered Bill’s wife was in Derry . . . but not her name, or what had happened to her.
‘And if you’re ever in LA, you got the number. We’ll get together and mouth some chow.’
‘Sure.’ I felt hot tears behind my eyes. ‘And if you get back this way, the same thing goes.’
‘Mikey?’
‘Right here.’
‘I