Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“Why not?”

“Ah, well, Mr. Teagarden, this check is drawn on a New York bank.”

“Obviously,” I said. “They use money in New York too.”

“But we only accept local checks.”

“How about credit cards? You don’t refuse credit cards, do you?”

“Ah, no, not usually,” he said.

I yanked a lengthy strip of cards from my wallet. “Which one do you want? Mastercharge? American Express? Diners’ Club? Mobil? Sears? Come on, you make the choice. Firestone?”

“Mr. Teagarden, this isn’t necessary. In this case—”

“In this case, what? These things are as good as money, aren’t they? Here’s another one. Bank Americard. Take your pick.”

The other customers by now had dropped the pretense of not listening, and a few were threatening to come forward to take a closer look. He decided to accept Mastercharge, which I could have predicted, and I waited while he took one of the portable stereos from stock and went through the usual business with the card. He was sweating by the time he had finished.

I spent some time looking through the record racks at Zumgo’s and the Coast To Coast Store, but could not find what I needed for the Alison environment. At a little stationery shop a block from Freebo’s I found a few of the books I remembered Alison had liked: She, The White Guard , Kerouac, St. Exupéry. These I purchased with cash, having conquered for good that other childish business.

I cut through sidestreets to get back to the Nash locked my purchases inside it, and then went back to Freebo’s.

“Can I make a phone call?” I asked him. He looked relieved, and pointed to a pay phone in the rear corner. I knew by his demeanor what his next words would be before he spoke them.

“Mr. Teagarden, you been a good customer here since you came in town, but some people came to see me late last night, and I wonder if…”

“If I might lay off? Take my business elsewhere?”

He was too embarrassed to nod.

“What did they say they’d do? Break your windows? Burn your place down?”

“No, nothing like that, Mr. Teagarden.”

“But you’d be happier if I quit coming in.”

“Maybe just for a week, just for a couple of days. It’s nothing personal, Mr. Teagarden. But, well, some of ‘em decided — well, it might be better to wait it out for a while.”

“I don’t want to make trouble for you,” I said.

He turned away, unable to face me any further. “The phone’s in the corner.”

I looked up Paul Kant’s number. His whispery voice greeted me hesitantly. “Stop hiding,” I said. “This is Miles. I’m in Arden, and I’m coming over to talk about what’s happening to us.”

“Don’t,” he pleaded.

“You don’t have to protect me. I just waited to prepare you. If you want people to draw conclusions from the sight of me banging on your front door, then let me bang away. But I want to find out what’s going on.”

“You’ll come even if I say not to.”

“That’s right.”

“In that case, don’t park near my house. And don’t come to the front door. Pull into the alley between Commercial Street and Madison, and then walk up through the alley so you can come around to the back. I’ll let you in the back door.”

And now, in a dark shabby living room, he was telling me that he was a notorious character. He looked the way you’d expect one of Freud’s case studies to look — frightened, his body a little shrunken and bent, his face prematurely aged. His white shirt had been worn too many days; his face was small and monkey-like. When we had been boys, Paul Kant had radiated intelligence and confidence, and I thought that he was the person my age in Arden whom I most respected. On summers when Alison was not at the farm, I had divided my time between raising hell with Polar Bears and talking with Paul. He had been a great reader. His mother was an invalid, and Paul had the grown-up, responsible, rather bookish demeanor of children who must care for their parents. Or parent, in his case — his father was dead. Another of my assumptions had been that Paul would get a good scholarship and shake the traces of Arden from him forever. But here he was, trapped in a shabby musty house and a body that looked ten years older than it was. If he radiated anything, it was bitterness and a fearful incompetence.

“Take a look out the window,” he said. “Try to do it without being seen.”

“You’re being watched?”

“Just look.” He stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another.

I peeked around the edge of a curtain.

Halfway down the block a big man who looked like he could have been one of the party which had shied stones at me was sitting on the fender of a red pickup, directing his eyes at Paul’s house.

“Is he there all the time?”

“It’s not always him. They do it in shifts. There; are five, maybe six of them.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Of course I know their names. I live here.”

“Can’t you do anything about it?”

“What do you suggest? Telephoning our benevolent Chief? They’re his friends. They know him better than I do.”

“What do they do when you go out?”

“I don’t go out very often.” His face worked, and ironic lines tugged deeply into his skin. “I suppose they follow me. They don’t care if I see them. They want me to see them.”

“Did you report that they wrecked your car?”

“Why should I? Hovre knows all about it.”

“Well, why , for Christ’s sake?” I burst out. “Why all this fire in your direction?” He shrugged, and smiled nervously.

But of course I thought I knew. It was what had occurred to me when Duane had first suggested that Paul Kant was better left alone: a man with Duane’s history of sexual suppression would be quick to react to any hint of sexual abnormality. And a town like Arden would maintain a strict nineteenth-century point of view about inversion.

“Let’s just say I’m a little different, Miles.”

“Christ,” I blustered, “nobody’s different any more. If you’re saying that you’re gay, it’s only in a backwater like Arden that you’d have problems because of it. You shouldn’t allow yourself to be terrorized. You should have been out of here years ago.”

I think for the first time I understood what a wan smile was. “I’m not a very brave man, Miles,” he said. “I could never live anywhere but Arden. I had to drop out of life to take care of my mother, and after she died she left me this house.” It smelled of dust and decay and damp — Paul had no smell at all. He was like something not there, or there in only one dimension. He said, “I’ve never really been… what you’re implying. I thought I was, I guess, and I guess other people thought I was. But the opportunities here are rather limited.” Again I got that pale, self-mocking half-smile that was only a lifting of the edges of the mouth. He was like something in a cage.

“So you just sat here and put up with Zumgo’s and what your neighbors whispered about you?”

“You’re not me, Miles. You don’t understand.”

I looked around at the dim room filled with old lady’s furniture. Lumpy uncomfortable chairs with anti-macassars. Cheap china figurines: shepherdesses and dogs, Mr. Pickwick and Mrs. Gamp. But there weren’t any books.

“No,” I said.

“You don’t even really want me to confide in you, do you? We haven’t seen each other since we grew up.” He stubbed out the cigarette and scratched his fingers in his tight black curly hair.

“Not unless you’re guilty,” I said, beginning to be affected by the air of despairing hopelessness which surrounded him.

I suppose the sound he uttered was a laugh.