(Bowers and Huggins and Criss, oh my! Bowers and Huggins and Criss, oh my!)

and just a feeling that Derry was cold, that Derry was hard, that Derry didn't much give a shit if any of them lived or died, and certainly not if they triumphed over Pennywise the Clown. Derry folk had lived with Pennywise in all his guises for a long time . . . and maybe, in some mad way, they had even come to understand him. To like him, need him. Love him? Maybe. Yes, maybe that too.

So why this dismay?

Perhaps only because it seemed such dull change, somehow. Or perhaps because Derry seemed to have lost its essential face for him.

The Bijou Theater was gone, replaced with a parking lot (BY PERMIT ONLY, the sign over the ramp announced; VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO TOW). The Shoeboat and Bailley's Lunch, which had stood next to it, were also gone. They had been replaced by a branch of the Northern National Bank. A digital readout jutted from the front of the bland cinderblock structure, showing the time and the temperature — the latter in both degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius. The Center Street Drug, lair of Mr Keene and the place where Bill had gotten Eddie his asthma medicine that day, was also gone. Richard's Alley had become some strange hybrid called a 'mini-mall.' Looking inside as the cab idled at a stoplight, Bill could see a record shop, a natural-foods store, and a toys-and –games shop which was featuring a clearance sale on ALL DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS SUPPLIES.

The cab pulled forward with a jerk. 'Gonna take awhile,' the driver said. 'I wish all these goddam banks would stagger their lunch-hours. Pardon my French if you're a religious man.'

'That's all right,' Bill said. It was overcast outside, and no w a few splatters of rain hit the cab's windshield. The radio muttered about an escaped mental patient from somewhere who was supposed to be very dangerous, and then began muttering about the Red Sox who weren't. Showers early, then clearing. When Barry Manilow began moaning about Mandy, who came and who gave without taking, the cabbie snapped the radio off. Bill asked, 'When did they go up?'

'What? The banks?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Oh, late sixties, early seb'nies, most of em,' the cabbie said. He was a big man with a thick neck. He wore a red-and –black-checked hunter's jacket. A fluorescent-orange cap was jammed down squarely on his head. It was smudged with engine-oil. 'They got this urban-renewal money. Reb 'nue Sharin, they call it. So how they shared it was rip down everythin. And the banks come in. I guess that was all that could afford to come in. Hell of a note, ain't it? Urban renewal, says they. Shit for dinner, says I. Pardon my French if you're a religious man. There was a lot of talk about how they was gonna revitalize the downtown. Ayup, they revitalized it just fine. Tore down most the old stores and put up a lot of banks and parking lots. And you know you still can't find a fucking slot to park your car in. Ought to string the whole City Council up by their cocks. Except for that Polock woman that's on it. String her up by her tits. On second thought, it don't seem like she's got any. Flat as a fuckin board. Pardon my French if you're a religious man.'

'I am,' Bill said, grinning.

'Then get outta my cab and go to fucking church,' the cabbie said, and they both burst out laughing.

'You lived here long?' Bill asked.

'My whole life. Born in Derry Home Hospital, and they'll bury my fuckin remains out in Mount Hope Cemetery.'

'Good deal,' Bill said.

'Yeah, right,' the cabbie said. He hawked, rolled down his window, and spat an extremely large yellow-green lunger into the rainy air. His attitude, contradictory but somehow attractive — almost piquant — was one of glum good cheer. 'Guy who catches that won't have to buy no fuckin chewing gum for a week. Pardon my French if you're a religious man.'

'It hasn't all changed,' Bill said. The depressing promenade of banks and parking lots was slipping behind them as they climbed Center Street. Over the hill and past the First National, they began to pick up some speed. 'The Aladdin's still there.'

'Yeah,' the cabbie conceded. 'But just barely. Suckers tried to tear that down, too.'

'For another bank?' Bill asked, a pan of h im amused to find that another part of him stood aghast at the idea. He couldn't believe that anyone in his right mind would want to tear down that stately pleasure dome with its glittering glass chandelier, its sweeping right-and –left staircases which spiraled up to the balcony, and its mammoth curtain, which did not simply pull apart when the show started but which instead rose in magical folds and tucks and gathers, all underlit in fabulous shades of red and blue and yellow and green while pullies off stage ratcheted and groaned. Not the Aladdin, that shocked part of him cried out. How couldthey ever even think of tearing down the Aladdin for a BANK?

'Oh, ayup, a bank,' the cabbie said. 'You're fucking-A, pardon my French if you're a religious man. It was the First Merchants of Penobscot County had its eye on the 'laddin. Wanted to pull it down and put up what they called a "complete banking mall." Got all the papers from the City Council, and the Aladdin was condemned. Then a bunch of folks formed a committee — folks that had lived here a long time — and they petitioned, and they marched, and they hollered, and finally they had a public City Council meeting about it, and Hanlon blew those suckers out.' The cabbie sounded extremely satisfied.

'Hanlon?' Bill asked, startled. 'Mike Hanlon?'

'Ayup,' the cabbie said. He twisted around briefly to look at Bill, revealing a round, chapped face and horn-rimmed glasses with old specks of white paint on the bows. 'Librarian. Black fella. You know him?'

'I did,' Bill said, remembering how he had met Mike, back in July 1958. It had been Bowers and Huggins and Criss again . . . of course. Bowers and Huggins and Criss

(oh my)

at every turn, playing their own part, unwitting visegrips driving the seven of them together — tight, tighter, tightest. 'We played together when we were kids. Before I moved away.'

'Well, there you go,' the cabbie said. 'It's a small fucking world, pardon my — '

' — French if you're a religious man,' Bill finished wit h him.

'There you go,' the cabbie repeated comfortably, and they rode in silence for awhile before he said, 'It's changed a lot, Derry has, but yeah, a lot of it's still here. The Town House, where I picked you up. The Standpipe in Memorial Park. You remember that place, mister? When we were kids, we used to think that place was haunted.'

'I remember it,' Bill said.

'Look, there's the hospital. You recognize it?'

They were passing the Derry Home Hospital on the right now. Behind it, the Penobscot flowed toward its meeting-place with the Kenduskeag. Under the rainy spring sky, the river was dull pewter. The hospital that Bill remembered — a white woodframe building with two wings, three stories high — was still there, but now it was surrounded, dwarfed, by a whole complex of buildings, maybe a dozen in all. He could see a parking-lot off to the left, and what looked like better than five hundred cars parked there.

'My God, that's not a hospital, that's a fucking college campus!' Bill excla imed.

The cab-driver cackled. 'Not bein a religious man, I'll pardon your French. Yeah, it's almost as big as the Eastern Maine up in Bangor now. They got radiation labs and a therapy center and six hundred rooms and their own laundry and God knows what else. The old hospital's still there, but it's all administration now.'

Bill felt a queer doubling sensation in his mind, the sort of sensation he remembered getting the first time he watched a 3– D movie. Trying to bring together two images that didn't quite jibe. You could fool your eyes and your brain into doing that trick, he remembered, but you were apt to end up with a whopper of a headache . . . and he could feel his own headache coming on now. New Derry, fine. But the old Derry was still here, like the wooden Home Hospital building. The old Derry was mostly buried under all the new construction . . . but your eye was somehow dragged helplessly back to look at it . . . to look for it.