It

Dull panic, sneaking relief. It's the relief I'll embrace, I think, sneaking or not.

Bill called to say he and Audra had moved in. There is no change in her.

'I'll always remember you.' That's what Beverly told me just before she and Ben left.

I think I saw a different truth in her eyes.

June 6th, 1985

Interesting piece in the Derry News today, on page one. The story was headed: STORM CAUSES HENLEY TO GIVE UP AUDITORIUM EXPANSION PLANS. The Henley in question is Tim Henley a multi-millionaire developer who came into Derry like a whirlwind in the late sixties — it was Henley and Zitner who organized the consortium responsible for building the Derry Mall (which, according to another piece on page one, is probably going to be declared a total loss). Tim Henley was determined to see Derry grow. There was a profit-motive, yes indeed, but there was more to it than that: Henley genuinely wanted to see it happen. His sudden abandonment of the auditorium expansion suggests several things to me. That Henley may have soured on Derry is only the most obvious. I think it's also possible that he's in the process of losing his shirt because of the destruction of the mall.

But the article also suggests that Henley is not alone; that other investors and potential investors in Derry's future may be rethinking their options. Of course, Al Zitner won't have to bother; God retired him when downtown collapsed. Of the others, those who thought like Henley are now facing a rather difficult problem — how do you rebuild an urban area which is now at least fifty percent underwater?

I think that, after a long and ghoulishly vital existence, Derry may be dying . . . like a nightshade whose time to bloom has come and gone.

Called Bill Denbrough late this afternoon. No change in Audra.

An hour ago I put through another call, this one to Richie Tozier in California. His answering machine fielded the call, with Creedence Clearwater Revival music playing in the background. Those machines always fuck up my timing somehow. I left my name and number, hesitated, and added that I hoped he was able to wear his contact lenses again. I was about to hang up when Richie himself picked up the phone and said, 'Mikey! How you be?' His voice was pleased and warm . . . but there was an obvious bewilderment there as well. He was wearing the verbal expression of a man who has been caught utterly flat-footed.

'Hello, Richie,' I said. 'I'm doing pretty well.'

'Good. How much pain you having?'

'Some. It's going away. The itch is worse. I'll be damn glad when they finally decide to unstrap my ribs. By the way, I liked the Creedence.'

Richie laughed. 'Shit, that ain't Creedence, that's "Rock and Roll Girls," from Fogarty's new album. Centerfield, it's called. You haven't heard any of it?'

'Huh-uh.'

'You got to get it, it's great. It's just like . . . ' He trailed off for a moment and then said, 'It's just like the old days.'

'I'll pick it up,' I said, and I probably will. I always liked John Fogarty. 'Green River' was my all-tune Creedence favorite, I guess. Get back home, he says. Just before the fade he says it.

'What about Bill?'

'He and Audra are keeping house for me while I'm in here.'

'Good. That's good.' He paused for a moment. 'You want to hear something fucking bizarre, ole Mikey?'

'Sure,' I said. I had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.

'Well . . . I was sitting here in my study, listening to some of the new Cashbox hot prospects, going over some ad copy, reading memos . . . there's about two mountains of stuff backed up, and I'm looking at roughly a month of twenty-five –hour days. So I had the answering machine turned on, but with the volume turned up so I could intercept the calls I wanted and just let the dimwits talk to the tape. And the reason I let you talk to the tape as long as I did — '

' — was because at first you didn't have the slightest idea who I was.'

'Jesus, that's right! How did you know that?'

'Because we're forgetting again. All of us this time.'

'Mikey, are you sure?'

'What was Stan's last name?' I asked him.

There was silence on the other end of the line — a long silence. In it, faintly, I could hear a woman talking in Omaha . . . or maybe she was in Ruthven, Arizona, or Flint, Michigan. I heard her, as faint as a space-traveller leaving the solar system in the nosecone of a burned-out rocket, thank someone for the cookies.

Then Richie said, uncertainly: 'I think it was Underwood, but that isn't Jewish, it it?'

'It was Uris.'

'Uris!' Richie cried, sounding both relieved and shaken. 'Jesus, I hate it when I get something right on the tip of my tongue and can't quite pick it off. Someone brings out a Trivial Pursuit game, I say "Excuse me but I think the diarrhea's coming back so maybe I'll just go home, okay?" But you remember, anyhow, Mikey. Like before.'

'No. I looked it up in my address book.'

Another long silence. Then: 'You didn't remember?'

'Nope.'

'No shit?'

'No shit.'

'Then this tune it's really over,' he said, and the relief in his voice was unmistakable.

'Yes, I think so.'

That long-distance silence fell again — all the miles between Maine and California. I believe we were both thinking the same thing: it was over, yes, and in six weeks or six months, we will have forgotten all about each other. It's over, and all it's cost us is our friendship and Stan and Eddie's lives. I've almost forgotten them, you know it? Horrible as it may sound, I have almost forgotten Stan and Eddie. Was it asthma Eddie had, or chronic migraine? I'll be damned if I can remember for sure, although I think it was migraine. I'll ask Bill. He'll know.

'Well, you say hi to Bill and that pretty wife of his,' Richie said with a cheeriness that sounded canned.

'I will, Richie,' I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead. He remembered Bill's wife was in Derry . . . but not her name, or what had happened to her.

'And if you're ever in LA, you got the number. We'll get together and mouth some chow.'

'Sure.' I felt hot tears behind my eyes. 'And if you get back this way, the same thing goes.'

'Mikey?'

'Right here.'

'I love you, man.'

'Same here.'

'Okay. Keep your thumb on it.'

'Beep-beep, Richie.'

He laughed. 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stick it in your ear, Mike. Ah say, in yo ear, boy.'

He hung up and so did I. Then I lay back on my pillows with my eyes shut and didn't open them for a long time.

June 7th, 1985

Police Chief Andrew Rademacher, who took over from Chief Borton in the late sixties, is dead. It was a bizarre accident, one I can't help associating with what has been happening in Derry . . . what has just ended in Derry.

The combination police-station — courthouse stands on the edge of the area that fell into the Canal, and while it didn't go, the upheaval — or the flood — must have caused structural damage of which no one was aware.

Rademacher was working late in his office last night, the story in the paper says, as he has every night since the storm and the flood. The Police Chiefs office has moved from the third to the fifth floor since the old days, to just below an attic where all sorts of records and useless city artifacts are stored. One of those artifacts was the tramp-chair I have described earlier in these pages. It was made of iron and weighed better than four hundred pounds. The building shipped a quantity of water during the downpour of May 31st, and that must have weakened the attic floor (or so the paper says). Whatever the reason, the tramp –chair fell from the attic directly onto Chief Rademacher as he sat at his desk, reading accident reports. He was killed instantly. Officer Bruce Andeen rushed in and found him lying on the ruins of his shattered desk, his pen still in one hand.