'Friends don't t-t-trick each o-other,' he said, and leaned toward her on the bed. Their lips touched and he began to unbutton her blouse. One of her hands went to the back of his neck and held him closer while the other first unzipped her slacks and then pushed them down. For a moment his hand was on her stomach, warm; then her panties were gone in a whisper; then he nudged and she guided.
As he entered her, she arched her back gently toward the thrust of his sex and muttered, 'Be my friend . . . I love you, Bill.'
'I love you too,' he said, smiling against her bare shoulder. They began slowly and he felt sweat begin to flow out of his skin as she quickened beneath him. His consciousness began to drain downward, becoming focused more and more strongly on their connection. Her pores had opened, releasing a lovely musky odor.
Beverly felt her climax coming. She moved toward it, working for it, never doubting that it would come. Her body suddenly stuttered and seemed to leap upward, not orgasming but reaching a plateau far above any she had reached with Tom or the other two lovers she had had before Tom. She became aware that this wasn't going to be just a come; it was going to be a tactical nuke. She became a little afraid . . . but her body picked up the rhythm again. She felt Bill's long length stiffen against her, his whole body suddenly becoming as hard as the part of him inside herself, and at that same moment she climaxed - began to climax; pleasure so great it was nearly agony spilled out of unsuspected floodgates, and she bit down on his shoulder to stifle her cries.
'Oh my God,' Bill gasped, and although she was never sure later, she believed he was crying. He pulled back and she thought he was going to withdraw from her - she tried to prepare for that moment, which always brought a fleeting, inexplicable sense of loss and emptiness, something like a footprint - and then he thrust forward strongly again. Right away she had a second orgasm, something she hadn't known was possible for her, and the window of memory opened again and she saw birds, thousands of birds, descending onto every roofpeak and telephone line and RFD mailbox in Derry, spring birds against a white April sky, and there was pain mixed with pleasure - but mostly it was low, as a white spring sky seems low. Low physical pain mixed with low physical pleasure and sense of affirmation. She had bled . . . she had . . . had . . .
'All of you?' she cried suddenly, her eyes widening, stunned.
He did pull back and out of her this time, but in the sudden shock of the revelation, she barely felt him go.
'What? Beverly? A-Are you all r - '
'All of you? I made love to all of you?'
She saw shocked surprise on Bill's face, the drop of his jaw . . . and sudden understanding. But it was not her revelation; even in her own shock she saw that. It was his own.
'We - '
'Bill? What is it?'
'That was y-y-your way to get us out,' he said, and now his eyes blazed so brightly they frightened her. 'Beverly, duh-duh-don't you uh-understand? That was y-y-your way to get us out! We all . . . but we were . . . ' Suddenly he looked frightened, unsure.
'Do you remember the rest now?' she asked.
He shook his head slowly. 'Not the spuh-spuh-specifics. But . . . ' He looked at her, and she saw he was badly frightened. 'What it really c-c-came down to was we wuh-wuh-wished our way out. And I'm not s-sure . . . Beverly, I'm not sure that grownups can do that.'
She looked at him without speaking for a long moment, and sat on the edge of the bed and took her clothes off with no particular self-consciousness. Her body was smooth and lovely, the line of her backbone barely discernible in the dimness as she bent to take off the knee-high nylon stockings she had been wearing. Her hair was a sheaf coiled over one shoulder. He thought he would want her again before morning, and that feeling of guilt came again, tempered only by the guilty comfort of knowing that Audra was an ocean away. Put another nickle in the juke-box, he thought. This tune is called 'What She Don't Know Won't Hurt Her.' But it hurts somewhere. In the spaces between people, maybe.
Beverly got up and turned the bed down. 'Come to bed. We need sleep. Both of us.'
'A-A-All right.' Because that was right, that was a big ten-four. More than anything else he wanted to sleep . . . but not alone, not tonight. The latest shock was wearing off - too quickly, perhaps, but he felt so tired now, so used-up. Second-to-second reality had the quality of a dream, and in spite of the guilt he felt, he also felt that this was a safe place. It would be possible to lie here for a little while, to sleep in her arms. He wanted her warmth and her friendliness. Both were sexually charged, but that could hurt neither of them now.
He stripped off his socks and shirt and got in next to her. She pressed against him, her breasts warm, her long legs cool. Bill held her, aware of the differences - her body was longer than Audra's, and fuller at the breast and the hip. But it was a welcome body.
It should have been Ben with you, dear, he thought drowsily. I think that was the way it was really supposed to be. Why wasn't it Ben?
Because it was you then and it's you now, that's all. Because what goes around always comes around. I think Bob Dylan said that . . . or maybe it was Ronald Reagan. And maybe it's me now because Ben's the one who's supposed to see the lady home.
Beverly wriggled against him, not in a sexual way (although, even as he fled toward sleep, she felt him stir again against her leg and was glad), but only wanting his warmth. She was already half asleep herself. Her happiness here with him, after all these years, was real. She knew that because of its bitter undertaste. There was tonight, and perhaps there would be another tune for them tomorrow morning. Then they would go down in the sewers as they had before, and they would find their It. The circle would close even tighter and their present lives would merge smoothly with their own childhoods; they would become like creatures on some crazy Moebius strip.
Either that, or they would die down there.
She turned over. He slipped an arm between her side and her arm and cupped one breast gently. She did not have to lie awake, wondering if the hand might suddenly clamp down in a hard pinch.
Her thoughts began to break up as sleep slid into her. As always, she saw brilliant wildflower patterns as she crossed over - masses and masses of them nodding brightly under a blue sky. These faded and there was a falling sensation - the sort of sensation that had sometimes snapped her awake and sweating as a child, a scream on the other side of her face. Childhood dreams of falling, she had read in her college psychology text, were common.
But she didn't snap back this time; she could feel the warm and comforting weight of Bill's arm, his hand cradling her breast. She thought that if she was falling, at least she wasn't falling alone.
Then she touched down and was running: this dream, whatever it was, moved fast. She ran after it, pursuing sleep, silence, maybe just time. The years moved fast. The years ran. If you turned around and ran after your own childhood, you'd have to really let out your stride and bust your buns. Twenty-nine, the year she had streaked her hair (faster). Twenty-two, the year she had fallen in love with a football player named Greg Mallory who had damn near raped her after a fraternity party (faster, faster). Sixteen, getting drunk with two of her girlfriends on the Bluebird Hill Overlook in Portland. Fourteen . . . . . . twelve . . .
faster, faster, faster . . .
She ran into sleep, chasing twelve, catching it, running through the barrier of memory that It had cast over all of them (it tasted like cold fog in her laboring dreamlungs), running back into her eleventh year, running, running like hell, running to beat the devil, looking back now, looking back