It

that could have been scar-tissue. She had held his hand — both his hands — countless times, but she had never noticed these scars across his palms before. They were faint, yes, but she would have believed —
And the party! That party!
Not the one where they had met, although this second one formed a perfect book-end to that first one, because it had been the wrap party at the end of the Pit of the Black Demon shoot. It had been loud and drunk, every inch the Topanga Canyon ‘do. ‘ Perhaps a little less bitchy than some of the other LA parties she had been to, because the shoot had gone better
than they had any right to expect, and they all knew it. For Audra Phillips it had gone even better, because she had fallen in love with William Denbrough.
What was the name of the self-proclaimed palmist? She couldn’t remember now, only that she had been one of the makeup man’s two assistants. She remembered the girl whipping off her blouse at some point in the party (revealing a very filmy bra beneath) and tying it over her head like a gypsy’s scarf. High on pot and wine, she had read palms for the rest of the evening . . . or at least until she had passed out.
Audra could not remember now if the girl’s readings had been good or bad, wit ty or stupid: she had been pretty high herself that night. What she did remember was that at one point the girl had grabbed Bill’s palm and her own and had declared them perfectly matched. They were life-twins, she said. She could remember watching, more than a little jealous, as the girl traced the lines on his palm with her exquisitely lacquered fingernail — how stupid that was, in the weird LA film subculture where men patted women’s fannies as routinely as New York men pecked their cheeks! But there had been something intimate and lingering about that tracery.
There had been no little white scars on Bill’s palms then.
She had been watching the charade with a jealous lover’s eye, and she was sure of the memory. Sure of the fact.
She said so to Bill now.
He nodded. ‘You’re right. They weren’t there then. And although I can’t absolutely swear to it, I don’t think they were there last night, down at the Plow and Barrow. Ralph and I were hand-wrestling for beers again and I think I would have noticed.’
He grinned at her. The grin was dry, humorless, and scared.
‘I think they came back when Mike Hanlon called. That’s what I think.’
‘Bill, that isn’t possible.’ But she reached for her cigarettes.
Bill was looking at his hands. ‘Sta n did it,’ he said. ‘Cut our palms with a sliver of Coke bottle. I can remember it so clearly now.’ He looked up at Audra and behind his glasses his eyes were hurt and puzzled. ‘I remember how that piece of glass flashed in the sun. It was one of the new clear ones. Before that Coke bottles used to be green, you remember that?’ She shook her head but he didn’t see her. He was still studying his palms. ‘I can remember Stan doing his own hands last, pretending he was going to slash his wrists instead of just cut his palms a little. I guess it was just some goof, but I almost made a move on him . . . to stop him. Because for a second or two there he looked serious.’
‘Bill, don’t,’ she said in a low voice. This time she had to steady the lighter in her right hand by grasping its wrist in her left, like a policeman holding a gun on a shooting range. ‘Scars can’t come back. They either are or aren’t.’
‘You saw them before, huh? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘They’re very faint,’ Audra said, more sharply than she had intended,
‘We were all bleeding,’ he said. ‘We were standing in the water not far from where Eddie Kaspbrak and Ben Hanscom and I built the dam that time — ‘
‘You don’t mean the architect, do you?’
‘Is there one by that name?’
‘God, Bill, he built the new BBC communications center! They’re still arguing whether it’s a dream or an abortion!’
‘Well, I don’t know if it’s the same guy or not. It doesn’t seem likely, but I guess it could be. The Ben I knew was great at building stuff. We all stood there, and I was holding Bev Marsh’s left hand in my right and Richie Tozier’s right hand in my left. We stood out there in the water like something out of a Southern baptism after a tent meeting, and I remember I could see the Derry Standpipe on the horizon. It looked as white as you imagine the robes of
the archangels must be, and we promised, we swore, that if it wasn’t over, that if it ever started to happen again . . . we’d go back. And we’d do it again. And stop it. Forever.’
‘Stop what? she cried, suddenly furious with him. ‘Stop what’? What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t a-a-ask