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Beverly Marsh sits in her bathtub and hears his words shot through her skull like a pistol.
(take off those pants slutchild)
It’s been maybe a week, but she can hardly hear her own thoughts over the words of her father.
(i know how to check)
She sits in the tub most days, fully clothed, soaking and scrubbing whatever skin she can reach, because she’s dirty. It doesn’t matter if it’s blood or sex or sewage. She’s dirty, and this is the only way she can feel clean.
She calls Richie most nights on her clunky rotary phone - with her father dead, it’s only a matter of time before the bill’s overdue and they shut off her service. She’s not sure if she can handle the constant isolation before anyone figures out what’s happened. He’s more than happy to shoot the shit - she asks about his day, he shows her different Voices he’s working on, and they manage to talk about everything and exactly nothing at the same time. It’s rare that he can’t call (usually because his father is home or his mother hasn’t drunk herself into a stupor), but on the nights that he can’t, she comes to Stanley Uris.
Stan knows what it’s like to feel dirty even when his skin is spotless. She’s seen him in the bathroom, washing over and over until it feels right, deliberating which holder fits his toothbrush better; she’s said nothing, because it’s none of her business, but she knows, he’s said, that the one thing he can’t stand is being dirty. Beverly doesn’t like it too much either, so one night when Richie’s father actually feels like setting foot in his house, she rings him up.
“Hello?” His voice is hushed; behind him, Beverly can hear the chatter of a man and a woman - Mr. and Mrs. Uris, probably.
“Hey, Stan?” There’s a woman’s laughter on his end. Beverly immediately feels embarrassed - she’s probably interrupting dinner and she should probably just go sit in the bathtub instead of bothering him.
He hears the shake of her voice, different than her normal waver, and his voice grows stronger through the tinny line. “Bev? What’s wrong?” She can practically hear the crease of his forehead.
She weighs her options for a second; she can either ask him for help (something she hates doing) or she can deal with this by herself (something she’d slightly prefer to do, but knows would end badly). There’s only the buzz of the phone for a long moment, and he’s beginning to repeat her name when she cuts him off with a small, “Can you come over?”
“Are you sure? We’re having my mom’s chicken for dinner, you can come and eat with us if you want,” he offers. Beverly knows he’s dead serious with his invitation, knows that Mrs. Uris would gladly make her up a plate, but she shakes her head before repeating that she’d like him to come over. It doesn’t feel right to her to dirty up his house. These things, their worlds, shouldn’t mix like that, and she knows somewhere deep in her chest that the second she touched her gleaming porcelain plate it would crumble into dust and maggots and filth.
There’s something in her tone because Stan doesn’t argue, and there’s got to be something in his, too, because his parents let him go. He arrives shortly on his bike. Beverly is so glad her daddy will never know she had a boy in the apartment. She bites her tongue as if somehow she can unthink the treacherous thought, but it’s moot, because she’s thought it and now Stan is knocking precisely and gently at her door and she’s rising from her bed to open it for him. He offers her a faint smile as their eyes meet.
She has no idea what to say next. He doesn’t seem to, either - she can see his brain working a mile a minute behind his eyes, wondering if he should ask or lecture about the stack of dirty dishes he can see through the doorway because she’s too afraid to clean them lest the dirt grow into her skin - so she leads him wordlessly into her bedroom. Something else her daddy would slap her for. Just once, she wonders what it might have been like if she’d slapped him back.
They sit on her dirtyfilthynastyslutty bed in silence for another few minutes before she turns to speak, but words are already being said.
“I know how it feels,” Stanley Uris says softly.
She pauses. “You don’t.”
She doesn’t mean to be rude, doesn’t mean to reject his kindness, but she’s dirty in a different way than he is. He can take a bath and rise dripping wet but perfectly clean. She could burn her skin off with chemicals and she’d still be dirty deep within herself.
“I’m sorry we made you go down there,” she whispers, drawing her legs up onto the bed and holding her knees. Her head drops down so she’s looking down at the bed through the crack between her thighs. A shield.
“You didn’t,” he says back, gently but firmly. Something about the way he says it makes her believe him entirely and she brings her head up to look at him.
The way he looks at her makes her burst into tears.
He reaches for her, to comfort, to protect, but doesn’t get all the way there. He must not be sure if she wants to be touched or left alone so she makes the decision for him and throws herself into his arms. They fit together so cleanly.
His hands stroke down the back of her head as she weeps into his chest. Beverly decides that she likes his hands. They aren’t demanding anything of her, aren’t slapping her, aren’t holding her with anything but a sort of reverence. She wonders for a moment if Bill would hold her like that. She decides she doesn’t care.
They stay like that for awhile, until Beverly’s wails turn into sniffles, until Stan’s hand has probably cramped and gone numb but he hasn’t said anything, bless him, until she feels confident enough to sit up straight again.
“Do you feel better?” he asks her.
“No, but I will,” she replies. “Thank you for that. It just gets so much sometimes, and it feels like I can’t handle it at all.” Stan nods in acknowledgement, so she continues. “It’s just bullshit. You know? It’s a load of bullshit and I don’t know what to do with myself. And you think you can cry it all out but you can’t, and then you can’t cry anymore but you still feel like shit.”
He breaks his silence then with, “I know. Ever since, I’ve felt sort of empty. But full at the same time, except it’s like the good stuff all went away and now there’s -”
“Dirt,” Beverly interrupts. “And muck.”
“And sewer shit.”
She leans against his side and his arm envelops her protectively. “I love you, Stanny,” she tells him, quietly but clearly.
Stan feels his heart swell. It’s not a romantic kind of love - it’s never been - but he can say with absolute certainty that he’ll never love another woman like he loves Beverly Marsh. He tells her that, too, leaning down to kiss the top of her fiery head and speaking the words into her hair.
He stays the night, in his day clothes, ignoring the wrinkles that will most certainly be present in the morning so that he can sleep right up next to her.