If You Could See Me Now

by Peter Straub

  Startled, I looked at her. She was working her fat arms over a frying pan. Grease spat, flames jumped. Her face was set in an expression of sullen obduracy.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because of the other one. Like I said.” She was lying. She had been Alison’s agent; it was also clear that she had disliked having the photograph within her view.

  “What did you think of my cousin? Do you remember her?”

  “Not to speak of.” She went firmly back to the eggs.

  “You don’t want to talk about her.”

  “No. What’s past is past.”

  “In one sense,” I said, and laughed. “Only in one sense, my dear Mrs. Sunderson.”

  The “my dear” made her look toward me with magnified goggling eyes. More brooding, puzzled silence over the sizzling eggs on the gas burner.

  “Why did you tear up that picture of Duane’s girl? I saw it when I straightened up your mess in the front bedroom.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Oh I do remember. I didn’t really know what it was. It was a random gesture. A reflex.”

  “So some would say,” she pronounced as she brought me the eggs. “Maybe some would say the same about that car of yours.”

  —

  I could still taste those eggs two hours later when I stood on the asphalt of the Arden filling station beside a squat young man with Hank blazoned over his heart and listened to him groan about the condition of the VW.

  “This is some mess,” he said. “I sure hope you got insurance. First off, we ain’t even got a man these days who can beat out those dents for you. And all these is foreign parts. This glass here, and that headlight and missing hubcap. They might be a long time in coming. It’s gonna cost plenty.”

  “You don’t have to get them from Germany,” I pointed out. “There must be a VW agency around here somewhere.”

  “Maybe,” the boy reluctantly agreed. “I heard about one somewheres, but I can’t remember where it is right now. And we’re all backed up on work. We’re doubling up.”

  I looked around at the deserted gas station.

  “You can’t see it all,” Hank said defensively.

  “I can’t see any of it.” I was thinking that it must have been at this station that the Polish lover of Duane’s fiancée had worked. “Maybe this will help you squeeze it into your schedule.” I took a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and folded it into his hand.

  “You live here, Mister?”

  “What do you think?” He just coolly regarded me. “I’m a visitor. I had an accident. Look. Forget about the dents, they’re not too important, just get the glass and headlights repaired. And take a look at the engine to see if it needs any work. It’s been acting up.”

  “Okay. I need a name for the slip.”

  “Greening,” I said. “Miles Greening.”

  “That Jewish?”

  The boy reluctantly parted with one of the garage’s loaners, a 1957 Nash that steered like a lumber wagon; further into Arden, I took the precaution of parking it in a side street in an area where the houses appeared to be at least moderately prosperous.

  —

  An hour and a half later, I was listening to Paul Kant say to me, “You put yourself and me in trouble just by coming here, Miles. I tried to warn you. You really should have listened. I appreciate your friendliness, but there are only two people that the good folks around here think could have done these crimes, and here we are together. Cozy. If you’re not scared, you should be. Because I’m terrified. If anything else happens, anything else to a child I mean, I think I’m a dead man. They took baseball bats to my car last night, just to let me know they’re watching.”

  “Mine too,” I said. “And I saw them working on yours, but I didn’t know whose it was.”

  “So here we are, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why don’t you just get out while you have the chance?”

  “I can’t, for several reasons. One of them is that Polar Bears asked me to stay put until everything is over.”

  “Because of the Alison Greening business?”

  I nodded.

  He let out an enormous, scooping sigh, too large for his small body. “Of course. Of course. I didn’t even have to ask. I wish my sins were as far in the past as yours.” I looked up, puzzled, and saw him trying to light a cigarette with a trembling hand. “Hasn’t anybody warned you about being associated with me, Miles? I’m quite a notorious character.”

  “Hence the ritual.”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone in Arden used a word like hence, but yes, hence the ritual.”

  I had come to Paul’s by way of Main Street, where I first stopped in at a shop to buy a portable record player. The clerk looked at the name on my check and disappeared with it into an office at the rear of the shop. I was aware of my presence causing a little flurry of attention among the other customers—they were pretending not to look at me, but they moved with that exaggerated carelessness of people trying to catch every nuance. After a while the clerk returned with a nervous man in a brown suit and a rayon tie. He informed me that he could not accept my check.

  “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? Master Charge? 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. BankAmericard. 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 Master Charge, 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 side streets 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 prot
ect me. I just wanted 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 anymore. 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 antimacassars. 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.

  “What are you going to do? Just wait until they break in and do whatever it is they have in mind?”

  “What I’m going to do is wait it out,” he said. “It’s what I’m best at, after all. When they finally catch whoever it is, maybe I’ll get my job back. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought we might be able to help each other. If I were you I’d scram out of the back door in the middle of the night and go to Chicago or someplace until it’s all over.”

  “My car won’t move. And even if it did, I’d be picked up in a day or two.” He sent me that ghastly smile again. “You know, Miles, I almost envy that man. The killer. I’m almost jealous of him. Because he wasn’t too afraid to do what he had to do. Of course he is a beast, a fiend I suppose, but he just went ahead and did what he had to do. Didn’t he?” The small monkey’s face was pointing at me, still wearing that dead smile. Mixed in with the smells of dust and old lady’s possessions was the odor of long-dead flowers.

  “Like Hitler. You sound like you should talk to Zack.”

  His expression altered. “You know him?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “I’d keep away from him.”

  “What for?”

  “He can hurt you. He could hurt you, Miles.”

  “He’s my biggest fan,” I said. “He wants to be just like me.”

  Paul shrugged; the topic no longer interested him.

  I said, “I think I’m wasting my time.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “If you ever need help, Paul, you can come out to the Updahl farm. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “Neither one of us can help the other.” He looked at me blankly, wishing I would leave. After a moment he spoke again. “Miles, how old was your cousin when she died?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Poor Miles.”

  “Poor Miles, bullshit,” I said, and left him sitting there with the cigarette smoke curling around him.

  —

  Outside the warm air smelled unbelievably fresh, and I recognized that my chest was tight, clamped by an emotion too complex to identify. I inhaled deeply, going down Paul’s wooden steps to his tiny yard. It seemed to me that I could almost hear the paint peeling off that hopeless house. I looked both ways, knowing that if anyone spotted me I was in trouble, and saw something I hadn’t noticed when I had come in. In a corner of the yard beside Paul’s low fence was a doghouse, empty and as in need of paint as the house. A chain staked to the front of the doghouse trailed off into the weeds and bushes beside the fence. The chain seemed taut. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I was aware of the texture of the shirt next to my skin. I did not want to look, but I had to. I took two steps across the dying lawn. It was lying in the weeds with the chain around what was left of its neck. Maggots swarmed over it like a dirty blanket.

  The tightness in my chest increased by a factor of ten, and I got out fast. The dreadful thing stayed in my vision even when my back was turned to it. I went through the gate and began to walk
quickly down the alley. It had been a wasted gesture, the visit. I wanted only to get away.

  When I was no more than thirty feet from the end, a police car swung in front of me, blocking off the alley. A big man sat at the wheel, twisting his body to look at me. I was in full light, fully visible. I automatically felt guilty and afraid, and swiveled sideways to look down to the alley’s other end, which was clear. I looked back at the man in the police car. He was motioning for me to approach him. I walked toward the car, telling myself that I had not done anything.

  When I got closer, I saw that the man was Polar Bears, in uniform. He swung open the passenger door and circled a forefinger in the air, and I walked around the front of the car and got in beside him. “You’ve had brighter ideas,” he said. “Suppose someone saw you? I’m trying to keep you from getting your head busted in.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Let’s say it was a guess.” He looked at me in a kindly, almost paternal fashion which was as genuine as a glass eye. “I got a call about an hour ago from a boy works at the filling station. Boy named Hank Speltz. He was a little upset. It seems when you brought in that VW, you gave him a phony name.”

  “How did he know it was phony?”

  “Oh, Miles,” Polar Bears sighed. He started up the car and rolled away from the curb. At the corner he swung into Main Street and we purred gently along past Zumgo’s and the bars and the bakery and the Cream City brick façade of the Dairyland Laboratories. “You’re a famous man, you know. You’re like a movie star. You have to expect to be recognized.” When we reached the courthouse and the city hall, he did not pull into the police parking lot as I had expected, but kept going on over the bridge. On that side of Arden, the shops drop away fast, after you pass the bowling alley and the restaurants and a few houses, and you are back in open corn country.

  “I don’t think it’s a crime to have a car repaired under an assumed name,” I said. “Where are we going, anyhow?”

  “Just for a ride around the county, Miles. No, it’s no crime, that’s right. But since damn near everybody knows who you are, it’s not very effective either. It just makes boys like Hank, who aren’t too well supplied upstairs, sort of suspicious. And Miles, why in hell did you use that name?” On “hell” he banged one of his fists into the steering wheel. “Huh? Answer me that. Out of all the names you could have picked, why the devil did you pick Greening? That’s what you don’t want to remind people of, boy. I’m trying to keep all that in the background. We don’t want that to come out.”