Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Bobby asked. He remembered to keep his voice low, but he took Ted’s arm and shook it. ‘Tell me! You know, I know you do! Is it Mr Biderman? Is it something about Mr Biderman?’

Ted looked out the window, brow furrowed, lips drawn down tightly. At last he sighed, pulled out his cigarettes, and lit one. ‘Bobby,’ he said, ‘Mr Biderman is not a nice man. Your mother knows it, but she also knows that sometimes we have to go along with people who are not nice. Go along to get along, she thinks, and she has done this. She’s done things over the last year that she’s not proud of, but she has been careful. In some ways she has needed to be as careful as I have, and whether I like her or not, I admire her for that.’

‘What did she do? What did he make her do?’ Something cold moved in Bobby’s chest.

‘Why did Mr Biderman take her to Providence?’

‘For the real-estate conference.’

‘Is that all? Is that all?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t know. Or perhaps she has covered over what she knows and what she fears with what she hopes. I can’t say. Sometimes I can — sometimes I know things very directly and clearly. The first moment I saw you I knew that you wanted a bicycle, that getting one was very important to you, and you meant to earn the money for one this summer

if you could. I admired your determination.’

‘You touched me on purpose, didn’t you?’

‘Yes indeed. The first time, anyway. I did it to know you a little. But friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too. Besides, when I touch, I pass on a kind of — well, a kind of window. I think you know that. The second time I touched you . . . really touching, holding on, you know what I mean . . . that was a mistake, but not such an awful one; for a little while you knew more than you should, but it wore off, didn’t it? If I’d gone on, though . . . touching and touching, the way people do when they’re close . . . there’d come a point where things would change. Where it wouldn’t wear off.’ He raised his mostly smoked cigarette and looked at it distastefully. ‘The way you smoke one too many of these and you’re hooked for life.’

‘Is my mother all right now?’ Bobby asked, knowing that Ted couldn’t tell him that; Ted’s gift, whatever it was, didn’t stretch that far.

‘I don’t know. I — ‘

Ted suddenly stiffened. He was looking out the window at something up ahead. He

smashed his cigarette into the armrest ashtray, doing it hard enough to send sparks scattering across the back of his hand. He didn’t seem to feel them. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Oh Christ, Bobby, we’re in for it.’

Bobby leaned across his lap to look out the window, thinking in the back of his mind about what Ted had just been saying — touching and touching, the way people do when they’re close — even as he peered up Asher Avenue.

Ahead was a three-way intersection, Asher Avenue, Bridgeport Avenue, and the

Connecticut Pike all coming together at a place known as Puritan Square. Trolley-tracks gleamed in the afternoon sun; delivery trucks honked impatiently as they waited their turns to dart through the crush. A sweating policeman with a whistle in his mouth and white gloves on his hands was directing traffic. Off to the left was the William Penn Grille, a famous restaurant which was supposed to have the best steaks in Connecticut (Mr Biderman had taken the whole office staff there after the agency sold the Waverley Estate, and Bobby’s mom had come home with about a dozen William Penn Grille books of matches). Its main claim to fame, his mom had once told Bobby, was that the bar was over the Harwich town line, but the restaurant proper was in Bridgeport.

Parked in front, on the very edge of Puritan Square, was a DeSoto automobile of a purple Bobby had never seen before — had never even suspected. The color was so bright it hurt his eyes to look at it. It hurt his whole head.