Interior Darkness: Selected Stories

by Peter Straub

  I made a face, and he said, “This stuff’s really not so bad. Only one thing in the world can make you feel better than this stuff.”

  He placed his hand on my thigh and squeezed. “I’m giving you a head start, you know. Just because I liked you the first time I saw you.” He leaned over and stared at me. “You believe me? You believe the things I tell you?”

  I said I guessed so.

  “I got proof. I’ll show you it’s true. Want to see my proof?”

  When I said nothing, “Stan” leaned closer to me, inundating me with the stench of Thunderbird. “You know that little thing you pee with? Remember how I told you it gets real big when you’re about thirteen? Remember how I told you about how incredible that feels? Well, you have to trust Stan now, because Stan’s going to trust you.” He put his face right beside my ear. “Then I’ll tell you another secret.”

  He lifted his hand from my thigh and closed it around mine and pulled my hand down onto his crotch. “Feel anything?”

  I nodded, but I could not have described what I felt any more than the blind men could describe the elephant.

  “Stan” smiled tightly and tugged at his zipper in a way even I could tell was nervous. He reached inside his pants, fumbled, and pulled out a thick, pale club that looked like nothing human. I was so frightened I thought I would throw up, and I looked back up at the screen. Invisible chains held me to my seat.

  “See? Now you understand me.”

  Then he noticed that I was not looking at him. “Kid. Look. I said, Look. It’s not going to hurt you.”

  I could not look down at him. I saw nothing.

  “Come on. Touch it, see what it feels like.”

  I shook my head.

  “Let me tell you something. I like you a lot. I think the two of us are friends. This thing we’re doing, it’s unusual to you because this is your first time, but people do this all the time. Your mommy and daddy do it all the time, but they just don’t tell you about it. We’re pals, aren’t we?”

  I nodded dumbly. On the screen, Berry Kroeger was telling Alan Ladd, “Drop it, forget it, she’s poison.”

  “Well, this is what friends do when they really like each other, like your mommy and daddy. Look at this thing, will you? Come on.”

  Did my mommy and daddy like each other? He squeezed my shoulder, and I looked.

  Now the thing had folded up into itself and was drooping sideways against the fabric of his trousers. Almost as soon as I looked, it twitched and began to push itself out like the slide of a trombone.

  “There,” he said. “He likes you, you got him going. Tell me you like him too.”

  Terror would not let me speak. My brains had turned to powder.

  “I know what—let’s call him Jimmy. We’ll say his name is Jimmy. Now that you’ve been introduced, say hi to Jimmy.”

  “Hi, Jimmy,” I said, and despite my terror, could not keep myself from giggling.

  “Now go on, touch him.”

  I slowly extended my hand and put the tips of my fingers on “Jimmy.”

  “Pet him. Jimmy wants you to pet him.”

  I tapped my fingertips against “Jimmy” two or three times, and he twitched up another few degrees, as rigid as a surfboard.

  If I run, I thought, he’ll catch me and kill me. If I don’t do what he says, he’ll kill me.

  I rubbed my fingertips back and forth, moving the thin skin over the veins.

  “Can’t you imagine Jimmy going in a woman? Now you can see what you’ll be like when you’re a man. Keep on, but hold him with your whole hand. And give me what I asked you for.”

  I immediately took my hand from “Jimmy” and pulled my father’s clean white handkerchief from my back pocket.

  He took the handkerchief with his left hand and with his right guided me back to “Jimmy.” “You’re doing really great,” he whispered.

  In my hand “Jimmy” felt warm and slightly gummy. I could not join my fingers around its width. My head was buzzing. “Is Jimmy your secret?” I was able to say.

  “My secret comes later.”

  “Can I stop now?”

  “I’ll cut you into little pieces if you do,” he said, and when I froze, he stroked my hair and whispered, “Hey, can’t you tell when a guy’s kidding around? I’m really happy with you right now. You’re the best kid in the world. You’d want this too, if you knew how good it felt.”

  After what seemed an endless time, while Alan Ladd was climbing out of a taxicab, “Stan” abruptly arched his back, grimaced, and whispered, “Look!” His entire body jerked, and too startled to let go, I held “Jimmy” and watched thick, ivory-colored milk spurt and drool almost unendingly onto the handkerchief. An odor utterly foreign but as familiar as the toilet or lakeshore rose from the thick milk. “Stan” sighed, folded the handkerchief, and pushed the softening “Jimmy” back into his trousers. He leaned over and kissed the top of my head. I think I nearly fainted. I felt lightly, pointlessly dead. I could still feel him pulsing in my palm and fingers.

  —

  When it was time for me to go home, he told me his secret—his own real name was Jimmy, not Stan. He had been saving his real name until he knew he could trust me.

  —

  “Tomorrow,” he said, touching my cheek with his fingers. “We’ll see each other again tomorrow. But you don’t have anything to worry about. I trust you enough to give you my real name. You trusted me not to hurt you, and I didn’t. We have to trust each other not to say anything about this, or both you and me’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

  “I won’t say anything,” I said.

  —

  I love you.

  —

  I love you, yes I do.

  —

  Now we’re a secret, he said, folding the handkerchief into quarters and putting it back in my pocket. A lot of love has to be a secret. Especially when a boy and a man are getting to know each other and learning how to make each other happy and be good, loving friends—not many people can understand that, so the friendship has to be protected. When you walk out of here, he said, you have to forget that this happened. Otherwise people will try to hurt us both.

  —

  Afterward I remember only the confusion of Chicago Deadline, how the story had abruptly surged forward, skipping over whole characters and entire scenes, how for long stretches the actors had moved their lips without speaking. I could see Alan Ladd stepping out of the taxicab, looking straight through the screen into my eyes, knowing me.

  ———

  My mother said that I looked pale, and my father said that I didn’t get enough exercise. The twins looked up from their plates, then went back to spooning macaroni and cheese into their mouths. “Were you ever in Chicago?” I asked my father, who asked what was it to me. “Did you ever meet a movie actor?” I asked, and he said, “This kid must have a fever.” The twins giggled.

  —

  Alan Ladd and Donna Reed came into my bedroom together that night, moving with a brisk, cool theatricality, and kneeled down beside my cot. They smiled at me. Their voices were very soothing. I saw you missed a few things today, Alan said. Nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of you. I know, I said, I’m your number-one fan.

  Then the door cracked open, and my mother put her head inside the room. Alan and Donna smiled and stood up to let her pass between them and the cot. I missed them the second they stepped back. “Still awake?” I nodded. “Are you feeling all right, honey?” I nodded again, afraid that Alan and Donna would leave if she stayed too long. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “The Saturday after this, I’m taking you and the twins all the way across Lake Michigan on the ferry. There’s a whole bunch of us. It’ll be a lot of fun.” Good, that’s nice, I’ll like that.

  ———

  “I thought about you all last night and all this morning.”

  When I came into the lobby, he was leaning forward on one of the padded benches where the ushers sat and smoked, his elbows
on his knees and his chin in his hand, watching the door. The metal tip of a flat bottle protruded from his side pocket. Beside him was a package rolled up in brown paper. He winked at me, jerked his head toward the door into the theater, stood up, and went inside in an elaborate charade of not being with me. I knew he would be just inside the door, sitting in the middle of the last row, waiting for me. I gave my ticket to the bored usher, who tore it in half and handed over the stub. I knew exactly what had happened yesterday, just as if I had never forgotten any of it, and my insides began shaking. All of the colors of the lobby, the red and the shabby gilt, seemed much brighter than I remembered them. I could smell the popcorn in the case and the oily butter heating in the machine. My legs moved me over a mile of sizzling brown carpet and past the candy counter.

  Jimmy’s hair gleamed in the empty, darkening theater. When I took the seat next to him, he ruffled my hair and grinned down and said he had been thinking about me all night and all morning. The package in the brown paper was a sandwich for my lunch—a kid had to eat more than popcorn.

  The lights went all the way down as the series of curtains opened over the screen. Loud music, beginning in the middle of a note, suddenly jumped from the speakers, and the Tom and Jerry cartoon “Bull Dozing” began. When I leaned back, Jimmy put his arm around me. I felt sweaty and cold at the same time, and my insides were still shaking. I suddenly realized that part of me was glad to be in this place, and I shocked myself with the knowledge that all morning I had been looking forward to this moment as much as I had been dreading it.

  “You want your sandwich now? It’s liver sausage, because that was my personal favorite.” I said no, thanks, I’d wait until the first movie was over. Okay, he said, just as long as you eat it. Then he said, Look at me. His face was right above mine, and he looked like Alan Ladd’s twin brother. You have to know something, he said. You’re the best kid I ever met. Ever. The man squeezed me up against his chest and into a dizzying funk of sweat and dirt and wine, along with a trace (imagined?) of that other, more animal odor that had come from him yesterday. Then he released me.

  —

  You want me to play with your little “Jimmy” today?

  No.

  Too small anyhow, he said with a laugh. He was in perfect good humor.

  Bet you wish it was the same size as mine.

  That wish terrified me, and I shook my head.

  Today we’re just going to watch the movies together, he said. I’m not greedy.

  Except for when one of the ushers came up the aisle, we sat like that all day, his arm around my shoulders, the back of my neck resting in the hollow of his elbow. When the credits for At War with the Army rolled up the screen, I felt as though I had fallen asleep and missed everything. I couldn’t believe that it was time to go home. Jimmy tightened his arm around me and in a voice full of amusement said, Touch me. I looked up into his face. Go on, he said, I want you to do that little thing for me. I prodded his fly with my index finger. “Jimmy” wobbled under the pressure of my fingers, seeming as long as my arm, and for a second of absolute wretchedness, I saw the other children running up and down the school playground behind the girls from the next block.

  “Go on,” he said.

  ———

  Trust me, he said, investing “Jimmy” with an identity more concentrated, more focused, than his own. “Jimmy” wanted “to talk,” “to speak his piece,” “was hungry,” “was dying for a kiss.” All these words meant the same thing. Trust me: I trust you, so you must trust me. Have I ever hurt you? No. Didn’t I give you a sandwich? Yes. Don’t I love you? You know I won’t tell your parents what you do—as long as you keep coming here, I won’t tell your parents anything because I won’t have to, see? And you love me too, don’t you?

  There. You see how much I love you?

  —

  I dreamed that I lived underground in a wooden room. I dreamed that my parents roamed the upper world, calling out my name and weeping because the animals had captured and eaten me. I dreamed that I was buried beneath a juniper tree, and the cut-off pieces of my body called out to each other and wept because they were separate. I dreamed that I ran down a dark forest path toward my parents, and when I finally reached the small clearing where they sat before a bright fire, my mother was Donna and Alan was my father. I dreamed that I could remember everything that was happening, every second of it, and that when the teacher called on me in class, when my mother came into my room at night, when the policeman went past me as I walked down Sherman Boulevard, I had to spill it out. But when I tried to speak, I could not remember what it was that I remembered, only that there was something to remember, and so I walked again and again toward my beautiful parents in the clearing, repeating myself like a fable, like the jokes of the women on the ferry.

  Don’t I love you? Don’t I show you, can’t you tell, that I love you? Yes. Don’t you, can’t you, love me too?

  —

  He stares at me as I stare at the movie. He could see me, the way I could see him, with his eyes closed. He has me memorized. He has stroked my hair, my face, my body into his memory, stroke after stroke, stealing me from myself. Eventually he took me in his mouth and his mouth memorized me too, and I knew that he wanted me to place my hands on that dirty-blond head resting so hugely in my lap, but I could not touch his head.

  —

  I thought: I have already forgotten this, I want to die, I am dead already, only death can make this not have happened.

  —

  When you grow up, I bet you’ll be in the movies and I’ll be your number-one fan.

  ———

  By the weekend, those days at the Orpheum-Oriental seemed to have been spent underwater; or underground. The spiny anteater, the lyrebird, the kangaroo, the Tasmanian devil, the nun bat, and the frilled lizard were creatures found only in Australia. Australia was the world’s smallest continent, its largest island. It was cut off from the earth’s great landmasses. Beautiful girls with blond hair strutted across Australian beaches, and Australian Christmases were hot and sunbaked—everybody went outside and waved at the camera, exchanging presents from lawn chairs. The middle of Australia, its heart and gut, was a desert. Australian boys excelled at sports. Tom Cat loved Jerry Mouse, though he plotted again and again to murder him, and Jerry Mouse loved Tom Cat, though to save his life he had to run so fast, he burned a track through the carpet. Jimmy loved me and he would be gone someday, and then I would miss him a lot. Wouldn’t I? Say you’ll miss me.

  I’ll—

  I’ll miss—

  —

  I think I’d go crazy without you.

  —

  When you’re all grown up, will you remember me?

  —

  Each time I walked back out past the usher, who stood tearing in half the tickets of the people just entering, handing them the stubs, every time I pushed open the door and walked out onto the heat-filled sidewalk of Sherman Boulevard and saw the sun on the buildings across the street, I lost my hold on what had happened inside the darkness of the theater. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had two murders and a…My right hand felt as though I had been holding a smaller child’s sticky hand very tightly between my palm and fingers. If I lived in Australia, I would have blond hair like Alan Ladd and run forever across tan beaches on Christmas Day.

  ———

  I walked through high school in my sleep, reading novels, daydreaming in classes I did not like but earning spuriously good grades; in the middle of my senior year Brown University gave me a full scholarship. Two years later I amazed and disappointed all my old teachers and my parents and my parents’ friends by dropping out of school shortly before I would have failed all my courses but English and history, in which I was getting A’s. I was certain that no one could teach anyone else how to write. I knew exactly what I was going to do, and all I would miss of college was the social life.

  For five years I lived inexpensively in Providence, supporting myself by stacki
ng books in the school library and by petty thievery. I wrote when I was not working or listening to the local bands; then I destroyed what I had written and wrote again. In this way I saw myself to the end of a novel, like walking through a park one way and then walking backward and forward through the same park, over and over, until every nick on every swing, every tawny hair on every lion’s hide, had been witnessed and made to gleam or allowed to sink back into the importunate field of details from which it had been lifted. When this novel was rejected by the publisher to whom I had sent it, I moved to New York City and began another novel while I rewrote the first all over again at night. During this period an almost impersonal happiness, like the happiness of a stranger, lay beneath everything I did. I wrapped parcels of books at the Strand Book Store. For a short time, no more than a few months, I lived on shredded wheat and peanut butter. When my first book was accepted, I moved from a single room on the Lower East Side into another, larger single room, a “studio apartment,” on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, where I continue to live. My apartment is just large enough for my wooden desk, a convertible couch, two large crowded bookshelves, a shelf of stereo equipment, and dozens of cardboard boxes of records. In this apartment everything has its place and is in it.

  My parents have never been to this enclosed, tidy space, though I speak to my father on the phone every two or three months. In the past ten years I have returned to the city where I grew up only once, to visit my mother in the hospital after her stroke. During the four days I stayed in my father’s house I slept in my old room; my father slept upstairs. After the blind man’s death my father bought the duplex—on my first night home he told me that we were both successes. Now when we speak on the telephone he tells me of the fortunes of the local baseball and basketball teams and respectfully inquires about my progress on “the new book.” I think: This is not my father, he is not the same man.

  —

  My old cot disappeared long ago, and late at night I lay on the twins’ double bed. Like the house as a whole, like everything in my old neighborhood, the bedroom was larger than I remembered it. I brushed the wallpaper with my fingers, then looked up to the ceiling. The image of two men tangled up in the ropes of the same parachute, comically berating each other as they fell, came to me, and I wondered if the image had a place in the novel I was writing, or if it was a gift from the as-yet-unseen novel that would follow it. I could hear the floor creak as my father paced upstairs in the blind man’s former territory. My inner weather changed, and I began brooding about Mei-Mei Levitt, whom fifteen years earlier at Brown I had known as Mei-Mei Cheung.