Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

She entered the room and sat facing me from a wooden rocker. On her bare feet were tan clogs. “What is it, anyhow?”

“Do you like it?” I really was curious.

She lifted her shoulders. “Doesn’t it all sound sort of the same?”

“No.”

“What’s that instrument playing now?”

“A guitar.”

“A guitar? That’s a guitar? Come on. It’s a… urn, a whatsit. Some kind of horn. A sax. Right?”

“Yes. It’s a baritone saxophone.”

“So why did you say it was a guitar?” Then she smiled, seeing the joke.

I shrugged, smiling back.

“Shit, Miles, it’s cold in here.”

“That’s because it’s damp.”

“Yeah? Hey Miles, did you steal out of Zumgo’s? Pastor Bertilsson’s telling everyone you did.”

“Then I must have.”

“I don’t get it.” She looked around the room, shaking her head, her jaws working on a piece of gum. “Hey, you know this room looks really neat this way. It’s just like it used to be. When I was a little kid and Great-Gramma was still alive.”

“I know.”

“It’s neat,” she said, still examining the room. “Didn’t there used to be more pictures? Like of you and Dad?” When I nodded, she asked, “So where are they?”

“I didn’t need them.”

The gum snapped. “Boy, Miles, I don’t know about you. You’re really superstrange. Sometimes you remind me of Zack, and sometimes you just talk crazy. How did you know where everything went in here?”

“I had to work at it.”

“It’s sort of like a museum, isn’t it? I mean, I almost expect to see Great-Gramma!”

“She probably wouldn’t like the music.”

She giggled. “Hey, did you really steal from Zurago’s?”

“Does Zack steal?”

“Sure.” She made her seawater eyes very wide. “All the time. He says you have to liberate things. And he says if you can take things without being caught, then you have a right to them.”

“Where does he steal from?”

“Places where he works. You know. Stuff from people’s houses, if he’s working for them. Stuff from the gas station, if he’s working there. You mean, you’re a college professor and all and you steal things?”

“If you say so.”

“I can see why Zack likes you. That would really turn him on. Some big Establishment guy ripping off stores. He thinks he might be able to trust you.”

“I really think you’re too good for Zack,” I said.

“You’re wrong, Miles. You don’t know Zack. You don’t know what he’s into.” She leaned forward, putting each hand on the opposite shoulder. The gesture was surprisingly womanly.

“What’s the meeting in Arden about? The one Red and your father went to.”

“Who cares? Listen, Miles, are you going to church tomorrow?”

“Of course not. I have my reputation to think of.”

“Then try not to get stinko again tonight, huh? We gotta plan. We’re gonna take you somewhere.”

July 18

Well, what my boy thought was that there was some kind of coverup. That was the word he used to me, Galen Havre, like it or not. Coverup. ‘Course it wasn’t, we know that now, but look at what we had then — nothing! After those two murders, there’s poor Paul Kant holed up in his mother’s house, there’s Miles batching it in his grandmother’s house and riding around in police cars and who knows what all, turning that house into something Duane didn’t want it to be, and people just thought something had to be done. And we all thought you were hiding something from us. And you were!

Anyhow, one of Red’s friends had the car idea, and Red told him, let’s wait until we know for sure what’s going on, and let’s have a general meeting to talk about it. All the men. They’d get together, see? To sort of piece out the rumors.

So they met in the back of the Angler’s. Red says they had thirty-forty men at the meeting. They all looked up to Red, on account of his finding Jenny Strand.

Now, who’s heard what? says Red. Let’s get it all out. Let’s get it where we can see it and not just gossip about it. Now, a few of the men had heard that the police were sitting on something. Let me see. Did one of the deputies tell his girlfriend? Something like that. I’m not saying it was that, mind. So one of the men says, who knows about anybody hiding away — not acting normal and neighborly.

And someone says, Roman Michalski hasn’t been to work this week.

Sick? they ask.

No, nobody heard of him being sick. He’s just holed up. Him and his wife.

Now, if we’re talking about people being holed up, I could have told them about Miles. You bet. He just set there after he got all the furniture just the way he wanted it, the way his Gramma had it. He was real white, sitting there in that damp old house, drinking himself to sleep every night, and playing those goofy records all day. He looked like he was in a trance or something all the time. A big man like that, and he looked like he’d jump out of his skin if you said boo. And his language! Oh, he knew he wasn’t going to get away with anything.

When I found out he’d had a girl in his bed I told Red right away.

Anyhow, like you know, Monday night some of the men paid a call on Roman Michalski.

After showering on Sunday morning I went upstairs and hugged my bathrobe about me while I examined my clothes. Mrs. Sunderson had wordlessly washed my muddy jeans and shirt and folded them on top of the bureau. The jeans had a quarter-sized hole at one cuff; looking at it awakened uneasy memories of my scramble through the woods; I was grateful that I had gone back to the clearing and found no more than a dying picnic fire. I fingered the hole in the jeans then withdrew my hand. I remembered a portion of Polar Bears’ advice to me, and wandered indecisively to the closet where I’d put the one suit I had brought with me. It was seven-thirty; I had just time enough to dress and make the service. It had to be done correctly — I had to be dressed correctly, I could display no nervousness, my attitude must shout innocence. Just thinking about it while looking at the suit in the closet made me nervous. You’re like Paul Kant if you don’t go, stated a clear voice in my mind.

I took the suit from the hanger and began to dress. For a reason probably closely related to vanity, in New York I had packed, along with clothing appropriate to the farm, my most expensive things — eighty-dollar shoes, a lightweight pinstripe from Brooks, several of the custom-made shirts Joan, being nicely ironic, had once had made for me for Christmas. I certainly had not foreseen wearing them to Gethsemane Lutheran church.

After I had knotted a thick, glossy tie and put on the jacket I looked at myself in the bedroom mirror. I resembled a Wall Street lawyer far more than a failed academic or murder suspect. I looked innocent, big and bland and prosperous and washed in milk. A baby for the work of the Lord, a man who would absent-mindedly mutter a prayer while sinking a difficult putt.

On the way out of the house I slipped the copy of She into my jacket pocket: a sliver of Alison for company.

I pulled the Nash into the last space in the gravel parking lot before the church and got out into the hot sun and began to walk over the crunching white stones to the church steps. As they did every Sunday, the men were standing on the wide high steps and on the concrete walk, smoking. I could remember them standing there, smoking and talking, when I was a child; but those men had been the fathers and uncles of these, and they had dressed in sober, poorly cut suits of serge and gabardine. Like the previous generation, these men had the badges of their profession, the heavy hands with stiff enormous thumbs and the white foreheads above sunburnt faces, but Duane’s was the only suit among them. The rest wore sport shirts and casual slacks. Walking toward them, I felt absurdly overdressed and urban.