Interior Darkness: Selected Stories

by Peter Straub

  There came a day when a once-handsome gentleman in a blue blazer as taut as a sausage casing waved Little Red to his table and ordered a second 16-oz. rib eye steak, rare, and a second order of onion rings, and oh yeah, might as well throw in a second bottle of that Napa Valley cabernet.

  “I won’t do that,” said Little Red.

  “Kid, you gotta be shitting me,” said the patron. His face shone a hectic pink. “I ordered another rib eye, more onion rings, and a fresh bottle of wine.”

  “You don’t want any more food,” said Little Red. He bent down and gazed into the man’s eyes. “Something inside you wants it, but you don’t.”

  The man gripped his wrist and moved his huge head alongside Little Red’s. “You act that way with me, kid, and one cold night you could wake up and find me in your room, wearing nothing but a T-shirt.”

  “Then let it be so,” said Little Red.

  6. The Miracle of the Murdered Cat

  Years after he had come into his adult estate, Little Red one day left his apartment to replenish his stock of Beck’s beer. It was just before 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning in early June. Two trumpet players and a petty thief who had dropped in late Thursday night were scattered around the sitting room, basically doing nothing but waiting for him to come back with their breakfasts.

  The Koreans who owned the deli on the corner of Fifty-fifth and Eighth lately had been communicating some kind of weirdness, so he turned the corner, intending to walk past the front of their shop and continue north to the deli on the corner of Fifty-sixth Street, where the Koreans were still sane. The blind beggar startled him by stepping out of the entrance and saying, “My man, Little Red Man! Good morning to you, son. Seems to me you ought to be thinkin’ about getting more sleep one of these days.”

  “Morning to you, too,” said Little Red. “Early for you to be getting to work, isn’t it?”

  “Somethin’ big’s gonna happen today,” said the beggar-man. “Wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out.” He set down his box, placed himself on it, and opened the 12-oz. bottle of Dr Pepper he had just purchased.

  Only a few taxicabs moved up wide Eighth Avenue, and no one else was on the sidewalk on either side. Iron shutters protected the windows of most of the shops.

  As he moved up the block, Little Red looked across the street and saw a small shape leave the shelter of a rank of garbage cans and dart into the avenue. It was a little orange cat, bony with starvation.

  The cat had raced to within fifteen feet of the western curb when a taxi rocketing north toward Columbus Circle swerved toward it. The cat froze, eyed the taxi, then gathered itself into a ball and streaked forward.

  Little Red stood openmouthed on the sidewalk. “You worthless little son of a bitch,” he said. “Get moving!”

  As the cat came nearly within leaping distance of the curb, the cab picked up speed and struck it. Little Red heard a muffled sound, then saw the cat roll across the surface of the road and come to rest in the gutter.

  “Damn,” he said, and glanced back at the beggar-man. He sat on his box, gripping his bottle of Dr Pepper and staring straight ahead at nothing. Little Red came up to the lifeless cat and lowered himself to the sidewalk. “You just get on now,” he said. “Get going, little cat.”

  The lump of fur in the gutter twitched, twitched again, and struggled to its feet. It turned its head to Little Red and regarded him with opaque, suspicious eyes.

  “Git,” said Little Red.

  The cat wobbled up onto the sidewalk, sat to drag its tongue over an oily patch of fur, and limped off into the shelter of a doorway.

  Little Red stood up and glanced back down the street. The blind man cupped his hands around his mouth and called out something. Little Red could not quite make out his words, but they sounded approving.

  7. The Miracle of the Kitchen Mouse

  On a warm night last year, Little Red awakened in his command center to a silent apartment. His television set was turned off, and a single red light burned in the control panel of his CD player, which, having come to the end of The Count on the Coast, Vol. II, awaited further instructions.

  Little Red rubbed his hands over his face and sat up, trying to decide whether or not to put on a new CD before falling back asleep. Before he could make up his mind, a small gray mouse slipped from between two six-packs of Beck’s empties and hesitated at the edge of the sitting room. The mouse appeared to be looking at him.

  “You go your way, and I’ll go mine,” said Little Red.

  “God bless you, Little Red,” said the mouse. Its voice was surprisingly deep.

  “Thank you,” said Little Red, and lapsed back into easy-breathing slumber.

  THE BEATITUDES OF LITTLE RED, II

  Over the long run, staying on good terms with your dentist really pays off.

  Bargain up, not down.

  When you’re thinking about sex, the only person you have to please is yourself.

  At least once a day, think about the greatest performance you ever heard.

  Every now and then, remember Marilyn Monroe.

  Put your garbage in the bin.

  When spring comes, notice it.

  Taste what you eat, dummy.

  God pities demons, but He does not love them.

  No matter how poor you are, put a little art up on your walls.

  Let other people talk first. Your turn will come.

  Wealth is measured in books and records.

  All leases run out, sorry.

  Every human being is beautiful, especially the ugly ones.

  Resolution and restitution exist only in fantasy.

  Learn to live broken. It’s the only way.

  Dirty dishes are just as sacred as clean ones.

  In the midst of death, we are in life.

  If some miserable bastard tries to cheat you, you might as well let the sorry piece of shit get away with it.

  As soon as possible, move away from home.

  Don’t buy shoes that hurt your feet.

  We are all walking through fire, so keep walking.

  Never tell other people how to raise their children.

  The truth not only hurts, it’s unbearable. You have to live with it anyway.

  Don’t reject what you don’t understand.

  Simplicity works.

  Only idiots boast, and only fools believe in “bragging rights.”

  You are not better than anyone else.

  Cherish the dents in your armor.

  Always look for the source.

  Rhythm is repetition, repetition, repetition.

  Snobbery is a disease of the imagination.

  Happiness is primarily for children.

  When it’s time to go, that’s what time it is.

  Little Red, His Hobbies and Amusements

  Apart from music, books, and television, he has no hobbies or amusements.

  Epistle of C—— M——to R—— B——, Concerning Little Red

  Dear R——,

  Have you heard of the man, if he is a man, called Little Red? Has the word reached you? Okay, I know how that sounds, but don’t start getting worried about me, because I haven’t flipped out or lost my mind or anything, and I’m not trying to convert you to anything. I just want to describe something to you, that’s all. You can make up your own mind about it afterward. Whatever you think will be okay with me. I guess I’m still trying to make up my own mind—probably that’s one reason why I’m writing you this letter.

  I told you that before I left Chicago the last time, I took some lessons from C—— F——, right? What a great player that cat is. Well, you know. The year we got out of high school, we must have listened to Live in Las Vegas at least a thousand times. Man, he really opened our eyes, didn’t he? And not just about the trombone, as amazing as that was, but about music in general, remember? So he was playing in town, and I went every night and stayed for every set, and before long he noticed I was there all the time, and on the third night I bough
t him a drink, and we got talking, and he found out I played trombone, and when and where and all that, and he asked me if I would sit in during the second set the next night. So I brought my horn and I sat in, and he was amazing. I guess I did okay, because he said, “That was nice, kid.” Which made me feel very very good, as you can imagine. I asked could he give me some lessons while he was in town. Know what he told me? “I can probably show you some things, sure.”

  We met four times in his hotel room, besides spending an hour or two together after the gig, most nights. Mainly, he worked on my breathing and lip exercises, but apart from that the real education was just listening to him talk, man. Crazy shit that happened on the road with Kenton and Woody Herman, stories about the guys who could really cut it and the guys who couldn’t but got over anyhow, all kinds of great stories. And one day he says to me, When you get to New York, kid, you should look up this guy Little Red, and tell him I said you were okay.

  “What is he,” I asked, “a trombone player?”

  Nah, he said, just a guy he thought I should know. Maybe he could do me some good. “Little Red, he’s hard to describe if you haven’t met him,” he said. “Being with the guy is sort of like doing the tango.” Then he laughed.

  “The tango?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You might wind up with your head up your ass, but you know you had a hell of a time anyway.”

  So when I got to New York I asked around about this Little Red, and plenty of people knew him, it turned out, musicians especially, but nobody could tell me exactly what the guy did, or what made him so special. It was like—if you know, then there’s no point in talking about it, and if you don’t, you can’t talk about it at all, you can’t even begin. Because I met a couple of guys like that, when Little Red’s name came up they just shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads. One guy even walked out of the room we were in!

  Eventually I decided I had to see for myself, and I called him up. He acted sort of cagey. How did I hear about him, who did I know? “C—— F—— said to tell you I was okay,” I said. All right, he said, come on over later, around 10, when he’d be free.

  About 10:30, I got to his building—55th off 8th, an easy walk from my room on 44th and 9th. I buzz his apartment, he buzzes me in. And here he is, opening the door to his apartment, this skinny guy with a red beard and long red hair tied back in a ponytail. His face looks sad, and he looks pretty tired, but he gives me a beer right away and sits me down in his incredibly messy room, stuff piled up in front of a wall of about a million records, and asks me what I’d like to hear. I dunno, I say, I’m a trombone player, is it possible he has some good stuff I maybe don’t know about? And we’re off! The guy has hundreds of great things I’d never heard before, some I never heard of at all, and before I know it five or six hours have gone by and I have to get back to my room before I pass out in his chair. He says he’ll make me a tape of the best stuff we heard, and I go home. In all that time, I realized, Little Red said maybe a dozen words altogether. I felt like something tremendously important had happened to me, but I couldn’t have told you what it was.

  The third time I went back to Little Red’s, I started complaining about feeling stuck in my playing, and he put on an old Vic Dickenson record that made my head spin around on my shoulders. It was exactly what I needed, and he knew it! He understood.

  After that, I started spending more and more time at his place. Winter had ended, but spring hadn’t come yet. When I walked up 9th Avenue, the air was bright and cold. Little Red seemed not to notice how frigid his apartment was, and after a while, I forgot all about it. The sunlight burned around the edges of the shades in his kitchen and his living room, and as the time went by it faded away and turned to utter darkness, and sometimes I thought of all the stars filling the sky over 55th Street, even though we wouldn’t be able to see them if we went outside.

  Usually, we were alone. He talked to me—he spoke. There were times when other people came in, said a few things, then left us alone again.

  Often, he let his words drift away into silence, brought some fresh bread in from his kitchen, and shared it with me. That bread had a wonderful, wonderful taste. I’ve never managed to find that taste again.

  A couple of times he poured out wine for me instead of beer, and that wine seemed extraordinary. It tasted like sunshine, like sunshine on rich farmland.

  Once, he asked me if I knew anything about a woman named something like Simone Vey. When I said I’d never heard of her, he said that was all right, he was just asking. Later he wrote out her name for me, and it was spelled W-E-I-L, not V-E-Y. Who is this woman? What did she do? I can’t find out anything about her.

  After a couple of weeks, I got out of the habit of going home when it was time to sleep, and I just stretched out on the floor and slept until I woke up again. Little Red almost always went to sleep in his chair, and when I woke up I would see him, tilted back, his eyes closed, looking like the most peaceful man in the world.

  He talked to me, but it wasn’t as though he was teaching me anything, exactly. We talked back and forth, off and on, during the days and nights, in the way friends do, and to me everything seemed comfortable, familiar, as it should be.

  One morning he told me that I had to go, it was time. “You’re kidding,” I said. “This is perfect. I don’t really have to leave, do I?”

  “You must go,” he said. I wanted to fall to the floor and beg, I wanted to clutch the cuffs of his trousers and hang on until he changed his mind.

  He shoved me out into the hallway and locked the door behind me. I had no choice but to leave. I stumbled down the hall and wandered into the streets, remembering a night when I’d seen a mouse creep out of his kitchen, bless him by name, and receive his blessing in return. When I had staggered three or four blocks south on 8th Avenue, I realized that I could never again go back.

  It was a mistake that I had been there in the first place—he had taken me in by mistake, and my place was not in that crowded apartment. My place might be anywhere, a jail cell, a suburban bedroom with tacky paintings on the wall, a bench in a subway station, anywhere but in that apartment.

  I often try to remember the things he said to me. My heart thickens, my throat constricts, a few words come back, but how can I know if they are the right words? He can never tell me if they are.

  I think: some kind of love did pass between us. But how could Little Red have loved me? He could not, it is impossible. And yet, R——, a fearful, awkward bit of being, a particle hidden deep within myself, has no choice but to think that maybe, just maybe, in spite of everything, he does after all love me.

  So tell me, old friend, have you ever heard of Little Red?

  Yours,

  C——

  Lapland, or Film Noir

  A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

  Our initial purpose is to discuss the effect, the feeling tone of headlights reflected on wet urban streets in Lapland, Florida. This is central to our discourse, the feeling tone of those reflections. By implication, then, rain; cars veering at great speed around sharp corners; unholstered pistols, brandished; desperate men; a sick, thrilled sense of impendingness. The immediate historical context plays a central role, as does a profound national sense of the shameful, the squalid, matters never acknowledged in the golden but streaky Florida light. You’d need a spotlight and a truncheon to beat it out of these people. Florida, it will be remembered, tends toward the hot, the dark, the needy, the rotting, the “sultry.” The stunted and unnatural. Lapland, i.e., someone’s (theoretically) warm yet not really comfortable, in fact impossibly dispossessing…

  Steam rises through the grates.

  We are in……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­Gulf Coast……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­……………­…..sempiternal darkness……………­……………­…………�
�­……………­without surcease, without hope for Silky’s………………….

  —

  In Lapland, all the women are always awake. Even your mother lies awake all the night through, drawing essential feminine nourishment from the bottomless communal well. Headlights shine in long streaks on the rain-soaked streets. Just outside the city limits, a gas station attendant named Bud Forrester rolls on his side in bed, thinking of a woman named Carole Chandler. Carole Chandler is his boss’s wife, and she has no conscience whatsoever. Bud does possess a conscience, rudimentary though it is. He wishes he could amputate it, without pain, like a sixth finger no thicker around than a twig. In Bud Forrester’s past lies a tremendous crime for which his simple duties at the gas station represent a conscious and ongoing penance.

  During the commission of the crime, Frank Bigelow took two rounds in the gut, and he will never again void his bowels without whimpering, cursing, sweating. He walks with a limp, Frank. He isn’t the kind of guy who can accept stuff like the whimpering, the sweating, the limping with every step of his beautifully shod feet. And when everything depended on where the money was, the money was lifting and blowing all across the tarmac, jittering through the air, like leaves, falling earthward in zigzags, like leaves. Bud Forrester always had a little tingle of a premonition that it was going to end this way. The other guys, they didn’t want to hear about it. Bradford Galt and Tom Jardine, Bigelow had them hypnotized, in thrall. If Bud had tried to tell them about his little tingle, Galt and Jardine would have taped his mouth shut, bound his arms and legs, and locked him in a closet. That’s the way these boys operate—on only a couple of very simple levels.