'Beep-beep, Richie,' Beverly said.

'Yeah, you're right,' Richie said. 'The part about the Frederick's catalogue is a lie — y o u never find anything that good in a doctor's office. Anyway, the doc called me three days later and asked me which I wanted first, the good news or the bad news.

'"Gimme the good news first," I said.

'"The good news is the operation won't be necessary," he said. "The bad news is that anybody you've been to bed with over the last two or three years could hit you with a paternity suit pretty much at will."

'"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" I asked him.

'"I'm telling you that you aren't shooting blanks and haven't been for quite awhile now," he said. "Millions of little wigglies in your sperm sample. Your days of going gaily in bareback with no questions asked have temporarily come to an end, Richard.

'I thanked him and hung up. Then I called Sandy in Washington.

'"Rich!" she says to me,' and Richie's voice suddenly became the voice of this girl Sandy whom none of them had ever met. It was not an imitation or even a likeness, exactly; it was more like an auditory painting. ' "It's great to hear from you! I got married!"

'"Yeah, that's great," I said. "You should have let me know. I would have sent you a blender."

'She goes, "Same old Richie, always full of gags."

'So I said "Sure, same old Richie, always full of gags. By the way, Sandy, you didn't happen to have a kid or anything after you left LA, did you? Or maybe an unscheduled d and c, or something?"

'"That gag isn't so funny, Rich," she said, and I had a brainwave that she was getting ready to hang up on me, so I told her what happened. She started laughing, only this time it was real hard — she was laughing the way I always used to laugh with you guys, like somebody had told her the world's biggest bellybuster. So when she finally starts slowing down I ask her

what in God's name is funny. "It's just so wonderful," she said. "This time the joke's on you. After all these years the joke is finally on Records Tozier. How many bastards have you sired since I came east, Rich?"

'"I take it that means you still haven't experienced the joys of motherhood?" I ask her.

'"I'm due in July," she says. "Were there any more questions?"

'"Yeah," I go. "When did you change your mind about the immorality of bringing children into such a shitty world?"

'"When I finally met a man who wasn't a shit," she answers, and hangs up.'

Bill began to laugh. He laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks. 'Yeah,' Richie said. 'I think she cut it off quick so she'd really get the last word, but she could have hung on the line all day. I know when I've been aced. I went back to the doctor a week later and asked him if he could be a little clearer on the odds against that sort of spontaneous regeneration. He said he'd talked with some of his colleagues about the matter. It turned out that in the three –year period 1980-82, the California branch of the AMA logged twenty-three reports of spontaneous regeneration. Six of those turned out to be simply botched operations. Six others were either hoaxes or cons — guys looking to take a bite out of some doctor's bank account. So . . . eleven real ones in three years.'

'Eleven out of how many?' Beverly asked.

'Twenty –eight thousand six hundred and eighteen,' Richie said calmly.

Silence around the table.

'So I went and beat Irish Sweepstakes odds,' Richie said, 'and still no kid to show for it. That give you any good chucks, Eds?'

Eddie began stubbornly: 'It still doesn't prove — '

'No,' Bill said, 'it doesn't prove a thing. But it certainly suggests a link. The question is, what do we do now? Have you thought about that, Mike?'

'I've thought about it, sure,' Mike said, 'but it was impossible to decide anything until you all got together again and talked, the way you've been doing. There was no way I could predict how this reunion would go until it actually happened.'

He paused for a long time, looking thoughtfully at them.

'I've got one idea,' he said, 'but before I tell you what it is, I think we have to agree on whether or not we have business to do here. Do we want to try again to do what we tried to do once before? Do we want to try to kill It again? Or do we just divide the check up six ways and go back to what we were doing?'

'It seems as if — ' Beverly began, but Mike shook his head at her. He wasn't done.

'You have to understand that our chances of success are impossible to predict. I know they're not good, just as I know they would have been a little better if Stan was here, too. Still not real good, but better. With Stan gone, the circle we made that day is broken. I don't really think we can destroy Itf or even send It away for a little while, as we did before, with a broken circle. I think It will kill us, one by one by one, and probably in some extremely horrible ways. As children we made a complete circle in some way I don't understand even now. I think that, if we agree to go ahead, we'll have to try to form a smaller circle. I don't know if that can be done. I believe it might be possible to think we'd done it, only to discover — when it was too late — well . . . that it was too late.'

Mike regarded them again, eyes sunken and tired in his brown face. 'So I think we need to take a vote. Stay and try it again, or go home. Those are the choices. I got you here on the strength of an old promise I wasn't even sure you'd remember, but I can't hold you here on the strength of that promise. The results of that would be worse and more of it.'

He looked at Bill, and in that moment Bill understood what was coming. He dreaded it, was helpless to stop it, and then, with the same feeling of relief he imagined must come to a suicide when he takes his hands off the wheel of the speeding car and simply uses them to

cover his eyes, he accepted it. Mike had gotten them here, Mike had laid it all neatly out for them . . . and now he was relinquishing the mantle of leadership. He intended that mantle to go back to the person who had worn it in 1958.

'What do you say, Big Bill? Call the question.'

'Before I do,' Bill said, 'd– does everyone understand the question? You were going to say something, Bev.'

She shook her head.

'All right; I g-guess the question is, do we stay and fight or do we forget the whole thing? Those in favor of staying?'

No one at the table moved at all for perhaps five seconds, and Bill was reminded of auctions he had attended where the price on an item suddenly soared into the stratosphere and those who didn't want to bid anymore almost literally played statues; one was afraid to scratch an itch or wave a fly off the end of one's nose for fear the auctioneer would take it for another five grand or twenty-five.

Bill thought of Georgie, Georgie who had meant no one any harm, who had only wanted to get out of the house after being cooped up all week, Georgie with his color high, his newspaper boat in one hand, snapping the buckles of his yellow rainslicker with die other, Georgie thanking him . . . and then bending over and kissing Bill's fever-heated cheek: Thanks, Bill. It's a neat boat.

He felt the old rage rise in him, but he was older now and his perspective was wider. It wasn't just Georgie now. A horrid slew of names marched through his head: Betty Ripsom, found frozen into the ground, Cheryl Lamonica, fished out of the Kenduskeag, Matthew Clements, torn from his tricycle, Veronica Grogan, nine years old and found in a sewer, Steven Johnson, Lisa Albrecht, all the others, and God only knew how many of the missing.

He raised his hand slowly and said, 'Let's kill It. This time let's really kill It.'

For a moment his hand hung there alone, like the hand of the only kid in class who knows the right answer, the one all the other kids hate. Then Richie sighed, raised his own hand, and said: 'What the hell. It can't be any worse than interviewing Ozzy Osbourne.'