Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“The women told me,” he said. “I heard you were in town.”

“Well, I heard you were in town,” I said. “I thought you would have been off long ago.”

“Things didn’t happen that way, Miles.”

“Do you ever see Polar Bears any more?”

He gave an odd, bitter laugh. “As little as possible. Look, Miles, it might be better… it might be better if you didn’t try to see me. It’s for your own good Miles. Mine too, probably.”

“What the hell? Are you in trouble?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.” His voice was strained and very small.

“Do you need help? I can’t figure out what’s going on, Paul.”

“That’s two of us. Don’t make things worse, Miles. I’m saying that for your own good.”

“Christ, I don’t understand what all the mystery is about. Didn’t we used to be friends?” Even through the telephone I could detect an emotion I had begun to recognize as fear. I said, “If you need any help. Paul, I’ll try to help. All you have to do is ask. You should have been out of that burg years ago. It’s not the right place for you Paul. I’ll be coming into Arden later today. Could I drop in to see you at the store?”

“I’m not working at Zumgo’s any more.”

“That’s, good.” I don’t know why, but I thought of the Woodsman.

“I was fired.” His voice was flat and hopeless.

“Then we’re both out of a job. And I’d think it’s an honor to be fired from a mausoleum like Zumgo’s. I’m not going to force myself on you, Paul, I’ve gotten involved in something that will probably take up nearly all of my time, but I think I should see you. We were friends way back then.”

“I can’t stop you from doing what you’re determined to do.” he said “But if you’re going to come, it’d be better to come at night.”

“Why do you—”

I heard a click a second of the silence Zack had told my cousins daughter was laden with waves of energy from outer space, and then the noncommittal buzz of the dial tone.

While I was pushing the old wooden furniture around, trying to reconstruct the sitting room as it had been twenty years before, I heard from the second of my two old Arden friends. I set down the chair I had been moving across the room and answered the telephone.

A man asked, “Is this Miles Teagarden?”

“That’s me.”

“One moment, please.”

In a few seconds another telephone lifted. “Hello, Miles. This is Chief Hovre.”

“Polar Bears!”

He laughed. “Not many folks remember that any more. Mostly people call me Galen”. I had never heard his real name before. I preferred Polar Bears.

“Doesn’t anyone dare call you Polar Bears any more?”

“Oh, your cousin Du-ane might. I hear that you’ve been making a few waves around here since you came in.”

“Nothing serious.”

“No, nothing at all serious. Freebo says if you went in every day he wouldn’t have to be thinking of selling his bar. Are you workin’ on another book now, Miles?”

So Freebo had passed on my impromptu story about Maccabee’s book. “That’s right,” I said. “I came up here for the peace and quiet.”

“And walked smack into all our troubles. Miles, I was wondering if I could arrange to see you sometime soon.”

“How soon?”

“Like today?”

“What’s it about?”

“Just for a friendly talk, you could say. Were you going to make it in here today?”

I had the disturbing feeling that he had telepathically overheard my conversation with Paul Kant. “I thought you’d be pretty busy these days, Polar Bears.”

“Always time to spare for an old buddy, Miles. How about it? Could you drop in for a talk sometime this afternoon? We’re still around the back of the courthouse.”

“I guess I can make it.”

“Looking forward to it, Miles.”

“But I wonder what would happen if I said I couldn’t.”

“Why do you think something would happen, Miles?”

But why ? It sounded almost as though Polar Bears (Galen, if I must) had been monitoring my movements since I had come to the valley. Had one of Paul’s enemies seen me pocket Maccabee’s fraudulent book? If so, they would surely have stopped me before I left the store.

Still thinking of this, a little upset by the seriousness of Polar Bears’ tone, I went upstairs and into the work room and sat before the panel desk. It all felt unbelievably remote, as though another man had removed those diamond-faceted doorknobs and set the flat door upon the trestles. My pitiful notes, my pitiful drafts. I flipped open a folder and read a sentence. “Recurrent in Lawrence’s work is a moment of sexual choice which is the choosing of death (or of half-life) over fully engaged, personalizing life.” Had I actually written this sentence? Uttered stuff like this before students? I bent down and scraped a random lot of books off the floor. I tied them into a bundle with twine and went out of the house and up the path.

“I’ll never read these,” Alison Updahl told me. “You don’t have to give me anything.”

“I know. You don’t have to give me anything either.” She looked at me unhappily. “But at least this was my own idea.”

“Would you mind — would you mind if I gave them to Zack? He’s the big intellectual, not me.”

“Do anything you want with them,” I said. “You’re just saving me the trouble of throwing them away.” I started to turn away.

“Miles,” she said.

“It’s not that I wasn’t tempted,” I said. “I find you extremely tempting. But I’m too old for you, and I’m still your father’s guest. And I do think that you ought to get away from Zack. He’s screwy. He’ll never do anything but injure you.”

She said, “You don’t understand.” She looked terribly unhappy, standing just outside the door on the concrete steps and holding the little heap of books.

“No, I guess I don’t,” I said.

“There isn’t anyone else like him around here. Just like there isn’t anyone like you around here either.”

I wiped my hand over my face. I was sweating like a band drummer on a hot night. “I won’t be here long, Alison. Don’t make me into something I’m not.”

“Miles,” she said, and stopped, embarrassed. Her habit of assertion saw her through. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s too complicated to explain.” She did not reply, and when I looked into her blunt face I saw the expression of another person whose problems were too complex to be fit easily into verbal patterns. I wanted to take her hand, and nearly did. But I could not lay claim to the spurious authority of age which that would imply.

“Ah…” she said as I turned to go again.

“Yes?”

“It was partly my own idea. But you probably won’t believe me.”

“Alison, be careful,” I said, meaning it as much as I have ever meant anything in my life.

I went back to the old house through the sunlight. My hangover had receded to a not unpleasant sensation of light emptiness. By the time I reached the VW parked before the frame garage I realized that the sun was warming my face and shoulders. Twenty yards to my right the mare grazed in the torn uprooted field, pretending for the sake of a full belly that it was a cow like its neighbors. The walnut trees ahead of me were thick and burly, emblems of long health. I wished the same for Alison Updahl and myself. I could feel her back there on the concrete porch, watching me go. I wished that I could do something, something strong and direct, to help her. A hawk swung far above the hills across the valley. Down the drive and across the road stood the birdhouse mailbox on its metal stalk. Tula S. had probably left before the arrival of the mailman in his dusty Ford.