In the Night Room

while the band was playing “Stardust” (for the youngest musician there could remember the Eisenhower presidency), Philip approached Tim at one side of the bandstand and with a touch of his old paranoia said, “I saw you grinning to yourself while China walked up the aisle. What were you so amused about?”

“You make me happy these days, Philip.”

He took it in good faith. “Lately, I almost make myself happy. By the way, where’s your friend Willy? I thought we’d be seeing her today.”

“Yes, Tim,” said China Underhill, wandering up. “I hope you know you could have brought Willy. I think she’s charming.”

“She wishes she could be here, too,” Tim said. “Unfortunately, she had to go back to New York this morning.”

“Um,” Philip said. “Will you be seeing her a fair amount, back home?”

“Answer cloudy,” Tim said. “Ask again.”

“Willy said the funniest thing to me during your reading,” said China. “She asked me if I loved my God. I said, ‘Of course I love my God, Willy. Don’t you?’ You’d never guess what she told me. She said, ‘I love my god, too, but I wish he didn’t need it so much.’ ”

“You can’t imagine how much I miss her,” Tim said.

From Timothy Underhill’s journal

So here I am, on tour, in the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, waiting for my escort to drive me first to a radio station, then to a bookstore for a reading, then to the airport—tomorrow, Phoenix! After a morning-show interview and before lunch with my publisher’s rep, I wandered around downtown St. Louis, trying to get the flavor of the city, and when I came across a big secondhand- and rare-books store called Stryker’s, I strolled in. I cannot enter such a place without buying a book or two, and I roamed through the stacks looking for anything I hadn’t read that might be interesting. In minutes, I turned up a beat-up old copy of H. G. Wells’s Boon, the book in which he disparaged Henry James, and because it cost only five dollars, I picked it up. In another part of the store, I found an even more battered copy of Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s The Young and Evil, with a dust jacket yet, going for the price of a necktie at Barneys. Boon and Parker Tyler would certainly see me through Phoenix and on to Orange County. I was winding my way back through the aisles and half corridors when I saw the sign for MYSTERY SUSPENSE and decided, in a moment of authorly vanity, to see how many of my books they had in stock.

On a long, waist-high shelf I found a nice row of my books, two copies of Blood Orchid, three of The Divided Man, one of A Beast in View, and two each of the books I wrote with my collaborator. Ten altogether, a handsome number, and all in hardback. As books will do, the middle copy of The Divided Man seemed to call to me and invite inspection. In all innocence, I reached for the book and pulled it halfway off the shelf. Then I noticed that it was roughly thirty pages shorter than the books on either side. I removed it from the shelf and saw that it was in fine condition and had not been vandalized. In fact, it seemed remarkably bright; in fact, it seemed brand-new. What happened next was a moment of recognition, surprise, and terror all jumbled up together. The word “galvanic” was invented for moments like that. I uttered some sort of moan or grunt, as if the book had stung me.

The “real” book of my best book—I realized first how beautiful it must be, then how much I could learn from it. What powers would be mine, were I to read it. I could, it occurred to me, learn how to write the real book, which was the perfect book, every time. I could be the best novelist in the world! Praise, adulation, love, money, prizes would descend upon me in a great wave of never-ending applause. My hands trembled with the majesty of what they held, and I felt a sick love, an addict’s love, for the book.

A slight disturbance in the murky light at the end of the MYSTERY SUSPENSE aisle caused me to look up, and I found myself confronted by ungainly, unhappy April Blue-Gown. My sister was glaring at me with eyes that were furious black dots. Her mouth shaped words I did not want to, and did not, hear. This time, I listened anyhow. Only then, too late in the day for it to have influenced me, did I remember Cyrax telling me u will behold an IDEEL, & u must pass it by. I shoved the sirenlike thing back on the shelf and charged to the front of the store. I want no part of the ideal, I want nothing to do with it. I’ve seen what it does to people. Give me the messy, un-perfect world any day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PETER STRAUB is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City with his wife, Susan, director of the Read to Me Program.

ALSO BY PETER STRAUB

NOVELS

lost boy lost girl

Black House (with Stephen King)

Mr. X

The Hellfire Club

The Throat

Mrs. God

Mystery

Koko

The Talisman (with Stephen King)

Floating Dragon

Shadowland

Ghost Story

If You Could See Me Now

Julia

Under Venus

Marriages

POETRY

Open Air

Leeson Park & Belsize Square

COLLECTIONS

Wild Animals

Houses Without Doors

Magic Terror

Peter Straub’s Ghosts (editor)

Conjunctions 39:

The New Wave Fabulists (editor)

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