'Christ,' Richie muttered, lighting a cigarette. 'I don't know how you handled it, Ben.'

'I just kept the Coach's face in front of me,' Ben said. 'I just kept remembering the way he looked after he grabbed my tits in the hallway to the boys' locker room that time. That's how I did it. I got myself some new jeans and stuff with the paper-route money, and the old guy in the first –floor apartment used his awl to punch some new holes in my belt — about five of them, as I remember. I think that I might have remembered the other time I had to buy a pair of new jeans — that was when Henry pushed me into the Barrens that day and they just about got torn off my body.'

'Yeah,' Eddie said, grinning. 'And you told me about the chocolate milk. Remember that?'

Ben nodded. 'If I did remember,' he went on, 'it was just for a second — there and gone. About that same time I started taking Health and Nutrition at school, and I found out you could eat just about all the raw green stuff you wanted and not gain weight. So one night my mother put on a salad with lettuce and raw spinach in it, chunks of apple and maybe a little leftover ham. Now I've never liked rabbit-food that much, but I had three helpings and just raved on and on to my mother about how good it was.

'That went a long way toward solving the problem. She didn't care so much what I ate as long as I ate a lot of it. She buried me in salads. I ate them for the next three years. There were times when I had to look in the mirror to make sure my nose wasn't wriggling.'

'So what happened about the Coach?' Eddie asked. 'Did you go out for track?' He touched his aspirator, as if the thought of running had reminded him of it.

'Oh yeah, I went out,' Ben said. 'The two-twenty and the four-forty. By then I'd lost seventy pounds and I'd sprung up two inches so that what was left was better distributed. On the first day of trials I won the two-twenty by six lengths and the four –forty by eight. Then I went over to Coach, who looked mad enough to chew nails and spit out staples, and I said: "Looks like it's time you got out on the circuit and started picking corn. When are you heading down Kansas way?"'

'He didn't say a thing at first — just swung a roundhouse and knocked me flat on my back. Then he told me to get off the field. Said he didn't want a smartmouth bastard like me on his track team.

'"I wouldn't be on it if President Kennedy appointed me to it," I said, wiping blood out of the corner of my mouth. "And since you got me going I won't hold you to it . . . but the next time you sit down to a big plate of corn on the cob, spare me a thought."

'He told me if I didn't get out right then he was going to beat the living crap out of me.' Ben was smiling a little . . . but there was nothing very pleasant about that smile, certainly nothing nostalgic. 'Those were his exact words. Everyone was watching us, including the kids I'd beaten. They looked pretty embarrassed. So I just said, "I'll tell you what, Coach. You get one free, on account of you're a sore loser but too old to learn any better now. But you put one more on me and I'll try to see to it that you lose your job. I'm not sure I can do it, but I can make a good try. I lost the weight so I could have a little dignity and a little peace. Those are things worth fighting for."'

Bill said, 'All of that sounds wonderful, Ben . . . but the writer in me wonders if any kid ever really talked like that.'

Ben nodded, still smiling that peculiar smile. 'I doubt if any kid who hadn't been through the things we went through ever did,' he said. 'But I said them . . . and I meant them.'

Bill thought about this and then nodded. 'All right.'

'The Coach stood back with his hands on the hips of his sweat-pants,' Ben said. 'He opened his mouth and then he closed it again. Nobody said anything. I walked off, and that was the

last I had to do with Coach Woodleigh. When my home-room teacher handed me my course sheet for my junior year, someone had typed the word excused next to phys. ed. and he'd initialed it.'

'You beat him!' Richie exclaimed, and shook his clenched hands over his head. 'Way to go, Ben!'

Ben shrugged. 'I think what I did was beat part of myself. Coach got me going, I guess . . . but it was thinking of you guys that made me really believe that I could do it. And I did do it.'

Ben shrugged charmingly, but Bill believed he could see fine drops of sweat at his hairline. 'End of True Confessions. Except I sure could use another beer. Talking's thirsty work.'

Mike signalled the waitress.

All six of them ended up ordering another round, and they talked of light matters until the drinks came. Bill looked into his beer, watching the way the bubbles crawled up the sides of the glass. He was both amused and appalled to realize he was hoping someone else would begin to story about the years between — that Beverly would tell them about the wonderful man she had married (even if he was boring, as most wonderful men were), or that Richie Tozier would begin to expound on Funny Incidents in the Broadcasting Studio, or that Eddie Kaspbrak would tell them what Teddy Kennedy was really like, how much Robert Redford tipped . . . or maybe offer some insights into why Ben had been able to give up the extra pounds while he had needed to hang onto his aspirator.

The fact is, Bill thought, Mike is going to start talking any minute now, and I' m not sure I want to hear what he has to say. The fact is, my heart is beating just a little too fast and my hands are just a little too cold. The fact is, I'm just about twenty-five years too old to be this scared. We all are. So say something, someone. Let's talk of careers and spouses and what it's like to look at your old playmates and realize that you've taken a few really good shots in the nose from time itself. Let's talk about sex, baseball, the price of gas, the future of the Warsaw Pact nations. Anything but what we came here to talk about. So say something, some body.

Someone did. Eddie Kaspbrak did. But it was not what Teddy Kennedy was really like or how much Redford tipped or even why he had found it necessary to keep what Richie had sometimes called 'Eddie's lung-sucker' in the old days. He asked Mike when Stan Uris had died.

'The night before last. When I made the calls.'

'Did it have to do with . . . with why we're here?'

'I could beg the question and say that, since he didn' t leave a note, no one can know for sure,' Mike answered, 'but since it happened almost immediately after I called him, I think the assumption is safe enough.'

'He killed himself, didn't he?' Beverly said dully. 'Oh God — poor Stan.'

The others were looking at Mike, who finished his drink and said: 'He committed suicide, yes. Apparently went up to the bathroom shortly after I called him, drew a bath, got into it, and cut his wrists.'

Bill looked down the table, which seemed suddenly lined with shocked, pale faces — no bodies, only those faces, like white circles. Like white balloons, moon balloons, tethered here by an old promise that should have long since lapsed.

'How did you find out?' Richie asked. 'Was it carried in the papers up here?'

'No. For some time now I've subscribed to the newspapers of those towns closest to all of you. I have kept tabs over the years.'

'I Spy.' Richie's face was sour. 'Thanks, Mike.'

'It was my job,' Mike said simply.

'Poor Stan,' Beverly repeated. She seemed stunned, unable to cope with the news. 'But he was so brave back then. So . . . determined.'

'People change,' Eddie said.

' — 'Do they?' Bill asked. 'Stan was — ' He moved his hands on the tablecloth, trying to catch the right words. 'He was an ordered person. The kind of person who has to have his books divided up into fiction and nonfiction on his shelves . . . and then wants to have each section in alphabetical order. I can remember something he said once — I don't remember where we were or what we were doing, at least not yet, but I think it was toward the end of things. He said he could stand to be scared, but he hated being dirty. That seemed to me the essence of Stan. Maybe it was just too much, when Mike called. He saw his choices as being only two: stay alive and get dirty or die clean. Maybe people really don't change as much as we think. Maybe they just . . . maybe they just stiffen-up.'