Suddenly it was all real to him, or as real as he thought he needed it to be. Eddie raised his left hand and popped up his thumb: let’s go. Behind him, Roland had sat down and eased the box out of the pink bag. And when Eddie gave him the thumbs-up, the gunslinger opened the box.
Eddie’s ears were immediately assaulted by a sweetly dissonant jangle of chimes. His eyes began to water. In
front of him, the free-standing door clicked open and the cave was suddenly illuminated by strong sunlight.
There was the sound of beeping horns and the rat-a-tat-tat of a jackhammer. Not so long ago he had wanted a door like this so badly that he’d almost killed Roland to get it. And now that he had it, he was scared to death.
The todash chimes felt as if they were tearing his head apart. If he listened to that for long, he’d go insane.
Go if you’re going, he thought.
He stepped forward, through his gushing eyes seeing three hands reach out and grasp four doorknobs. He pulled the door toward him and golden late-day sunlight dazzled his eyes. He could smell gasoline and hot city air and someone’s aftershave.
Hardly able to see anything, Eddie stepped through the unfound door and into the summer of a world from which he was now fan-gon, the exiled one.
FOUR
It was Second Avenue, all right; here was the Blimpie’s, and from behind him came the cheery sound of that Mungo Jerry song with the Caribbean beat. People moved around him in a flood—uptown, downtown, all around the town. They paid no attention to Eddie, partly because most of them were only concentrating on getting out of town at the end of another day, mostly because in New York, not noticing other people was a way of life.
Eddie shrugged his right shoulder, settling the strap of Roland’s swag-bag there more firmly, then looked behind him. The door back to Calla Bryn Sturgis was there. He could see Roland sitting at the mouth of the cave with the box open on his lap.
Those fucking chimes must be driving him crazy, Eddie thought. And then, as he watched, he saw the gunslinger remove a couple of bullets from his gunbelt and stick them in his ears. Eddie grinned. Good move, man. At least it had helped to block out the warble of the thinny back on 1-70. Whether it worked now or whether it didn’t, Roland was on his own. Eddie had things to do.
He turned slowly on his little spot of the sidewalk, then looked over his shoulder again to verify the door had turned with him. It had. If it was like the other ones, it would now follow him everywhere he went. Even if it didn’t, Eddie didn’t foresee a problem; he wasn’t planning on going far. He noticed something else, as well: that sense of darkness lurking behind everything was gone. Because he was really here, he supposed, and not just todash. If there were vagrant dead lurking in the vicinity, he wouldn’t be able to see them.
Once more shrugging the swag-bag’s strap further up on his shoulder, Eddie set off for The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.
FIVE
People moved aside for him as he walked, but that wasn’t quite enough to prove he was really here; people did that when you were todash, too. At last Eddie provoked an actual collision with a young guy toting not
one briefcase but two—a Big Coffin Hunter of the business world if Eddie had ever seen one.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” Mr. Businessman squawked when their shoulders collided.
“Sorry, man, sorry,” Eddie said. He was here, all right. “Say, could you tell me what day—”
But Mr. Businessman was already gone, chasing the coronary he’d probably catch up to around the age of forty-five or fifty, from the look of him. Eddie remembered the punchline of an old New York joke: “Pardon me, sir, can you tell me how to get to City Hall, or should I just go fuck myself?” He burst out laughing, couldn’t help it.
Once he had himself back under control, he got moving again. On the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he saw a man looking into a shop window at a display of shoes and boots. This guy was also wearing a suit, but looked considerably more relaxed than the one Eddie had bumped into. Also he was carrying only a single briefcase, which Eddie took to be a good omen.
“Cry your pardon,” Eddie said, “but could you tell me what day it is?”
“Thursday,” the window-shopper said. “The twenty-third of June.”
“1977?”
The window-shopper gave Eddie a little half-smile, both quizzical and cynical, plus a raised eyebrow. “1977, that’s correct. Won’t be 1978 for… gee, another six months. Think of that.”
Eddie nodded. “Thankee-sai.”
“Nothing,” Eddie said, and hurried on.
Only three weeks to July fifteenth, give or take, he thought. That’s cutting it too goddam close for comfort.
Yes, but if he could persuade Calvin Tower to sell him the lot today, the whole question of time would be moot. Once, a long time ago, Eddie’s brother had boasted to some of his friends that his little bro could talk the devil into setting himself on fire, if he really set his mind to it. Eddie hoped he still had some of that persuasiveness. Do a little deal with Calvin Tower, invest in some real estate, then maybe take a half-hour time-out and actually enjoy that New York groove a little bit. Celebrate. Maybe get a chocolate egg-cream, or
—
The run of his thoughts broke off and he stopped so suddenly that someone bumped into him and then swore.
Eddie barely felt the bump or heard the curse. The dark-gray Lincoln Town Car was parked up there again—
not in front of the fire hydrant this time, but a couple of doors down.
Balazar’s Town Car.
Eddie started walking again. He was suddenly glad Roland had talked him into taking one of his revolvers.
And that the gun was fully loaded.
SIX
The chalkboard was back in the window (today’s special was a New England Boiled Dinner consisting of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Frost—for dessert, your choice of Mary McCarthy or Grace Metalious), but the sign hanging in the door read sorry we’re closed. According to the digital bank-clock up the street from Tower of Power Records, it was 3:14 p.m. Who shut up shop at quarter past three on a weekday afternoon?
Someone with a special customer, Eddie reckoned. That was who.
He cupped his hands to the sides of his face and looked into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. He saw the small round display table with the children’s books on it. To the right was the counter that looked as if it might have been niched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, only today no one was sitting there, not even Aaron Deepneau. The cash register was likewise unattended, although Eddie could read the words on the orange tab sticking up in its window: no sale.
Place was empty. Calvin Tower had been called away, maybe there’d been a family emergency—
He’s got an emergency, all right, the gunslinger’s cold voice spoke up in Eddie’s head. It came in that gray auto-carriage. And look again at the counter, Eddie. Only this time why don’t you actually use your eyes instead of just letting the light pour through them ?
Sometimes he thought in the voices of other people. He guessed lots of people did that—it was a way of changing perspective a little, seeing stuff from another angle. But this didn’t feel like that kind of pretending.
This felt like old long, tall, and ugly actually talking to him inside his head.
Eddie looked at the counter again. This time he saw the strew of plastic chessmen on the marble, and the overturned coffee cup. This time he saw the spectacles lying on the floor between two of the stools, one of the lenses cracked.
He felt the first pulse of anger deep in the middle of his head. It was dull, but if past experience was any indicator, the pulses were apt to come faster and harder, growing sharper as they did. Eventually they would blot out conscious thought, and God help anyone who wandered within range of Roland’s gun when that happened. He had once asked Roland if this happened to him, and Roland had replied, It happens to all of us.
When Eddie had shaken his head and responded that he wasn’t like Roland—not him, not Suze, not Jake—
the gunslinger had said nothing.
Tower and his special customers were out back, he thought, in that combination storeroom and office. And this time talking probably wasn’t what they had in mind. Eddie had an idea this was a little refresher course, Balazar’s gentlemen reminding Mr. Tower that the fifteenth of July was coming, reminding Mr. Tower of what the most prudent decision would be once it came.