now and then

I. A Kick to the Nuts

now

Mike's phone call comes like a swift kick to the nuts.

But, Richie thinks, at least it's something that feels real. And—oddly—familiar. Like, he's definitely been kicked in the nuts like this before, but it's been a minute. Maybe he doesn't remember where, or when, or how. But he sure as shit has, and as much as it makes him feel like death now, there's also something about this particular kick to the nuts that reminds him—as if he had forgotten for twenty-seven whole fuckin' years—that at one point in his life, he used to feel more than just numb.

And as much as he stands there and pretends to not know a Mike Hanlon from Derry, Maine, or the Losers, or anything-the-fuck-else he's talking about, as soon as he hangs up, Richie starts to feel real funny.

It starts as a faint ringing sound in his ears, like tinnitus, only worse. More like a migraine, actually. Really bad, like his mom used to get on blazing hot summer afternoons when the AC was wrecked to shit, and she'd had too much peach schnapps and whiskey. He remembers her laying on the couch, cold washcloth on her forehead, eyes shut, letting loose a quiet moan of discomfort every few minutes or so. He'd tiptoe through the living room after tossing his bike down on the front lawn and coming inside, wincing at every creaking floorboard on the way to his room. The hallway of their home seemed to stretch for miles, then. And when he finally reached his room, he'd close his door slowly—centimeter by centimeter—until it clicked softly into the frame. He'd crawl slowly into bed, and the rest of the night would be spent sitting Indian-style on Back to the Future bedsheets, flipping quietly through a comic book. Sarah would order a pizza, and bring it to his room later. Sometimes she'd eat it with him. They wouldn't talk about Mom. Or Dad. Sometimes they just wouldn't talk.

When he turns away from puking his guts out from a hundred feet up in a Chicago alley and his manager's yakking away at him (it's just noise at this point—blends in with the ringing), suddenly he's in the hallway again, with those damn creaking floorboards. And it's so freaking weird, too, because it doesn't actually feel any different. Feels like he's been in the hallway for a while, actually. But he didn't know he was. Like...like...

And then there's a glass of whiskey being thrust in his face, and he grabs it and swallows—because sure, yeah, fuck, whatever—and he's walking and walking, and moving. And suddenly the stage lights hit him, and it isn't until a few cheap laughs in when the first floorboard creaks.

He blinks at first, confused. Like he isn't even sure what hit him. But it's the principle of the thing. That he had thought about his mom at all. She's fine, she divorced Dad, she lives in Florida, for Christ's sake—(he'd tried to talk her out of that one—"Mom, don't move to fuckin' Florida. I've prayed every night for ten straight years that climate change will just snap that little bitch off at the handle and send it sinking into the Atlantic, and if you move there I'll feel real weird about it,"—but she'd just laughed, tepidly, and ignored him.) —and she's even sober now. They talk on the phone maybe once a month.

But he doesn't think about her like that anymore. In their house, from back when he was a kid. Before they'd packed up and skipped town to Oregon. It's weird. It's like, uh...fuzzy, you know? When people asked about where he grew up he'd blow a raspberry with his lips and say, "Fuckin' Maine", like it was the least interesting thing in the world, and then he'd say, "but we moved to Portland the summer I turned 17" and then he'd talk about that. "You know, pot's legal there now. They decided to wait until after I left, I guess. Fuck them, right?"

Because lots of people don't remember their childhoods. He was still, like, a fetus, you know. Brain barely even developed yet. He didn't find it weird.