"Yeah, but this is New York we're talking about, Roland. In New York, everybody steals."
"They won't steal from you. Take the gun."
Eddie looked into Roland's eyes for a moment, then took the swag-bag and slung the strap over his shoulder.
"You've got a feeling."
"A hunch, yes."
"Ka at work?"
Roland shrugged. "It's always at work."
"All right," Eddie said. "And Roland—if I don't make it back, take care of Suze."
"Your job is to make sure I don't have to."
No, Eddie thought. My job is to protect the rose.
He turned to the door. He had a thousand more questions, but Roland was right, the time to ask them was
done.
"Eddie, if you really don't want to—"
"No," he said. "I do want to." He raised his left hand and gave a thumbs-up. "When you see me do that, open
the box."
"All right."
Roland speaking from behind him. Because now it was just Eddie and the door. The door with unfound
written on it in some strange and lovely language. Once he'd read a novel called The Door Into Summer,
by… who? One of the science-fiction guys he was always dragging home from the library, one of his old
reliables, perfect for the long afternoons of summer vacation. Murray Leinster, Paul Anderson, Gordon
Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison… Robert Heinlein. He thought it was Heinlein who'd written The
Door Into Summer. Henry always ragging him about the books he brought home, calling him the wittle sissy,
the wittle bookworm, asking him if he could read and jerk off at the same time, wanting to know how he
could sit fuckin still for so long with his nose stuck in some made-up piece of shit about rockets and time
machines. Henry older than him. Henry covered with pimples that were always shiny with Noxema and Stri-
Dex. Henry getting ready to go into the Army. Eddie younger. Eddie bringing books home from the library.
Eddie thirteen years old, almost the age Jake is now. It's 1977 and he's thirteen and on Second Avenue and the
taxis are shiny yellow in the sun. A black man wearing Walkman earphones is walking past Chew Chew
Mama's, Eddie can see him, Eddie knows the black man is listening to Elton John singing— what else?
—"Someone Saved My Life Tonight." The sidewalk is crowded. It's late afternoon and people are going
home after another day in the steel arroyos of Calla New York, where they grow money instead of rice, can
ya say prime rate. Women looking amiably weird in expensive business suits and sneakers; their high heels
are in their gunna because the workday is done and they're going home. Everyone seems to be smiling
because the light is so bright and the air is so warm, it's summer in the city and somewhere there's the sound
of a jack hammer, like on that old Lovin Spoonful song. Before him is a door into the summer of '77, the
cabbies are getting a buck and a quarter on the drop and thirty cents every fifth of a mile thereafter, it was
less before and it'll be more after but this is now, the dancing point of now. The space shuttle with the teacher
on board hasn't blown up. John Lennon is still alive, although he won't be much longer if he doesn't stop
messing with that wicked heroin, that China White. As for Eddie Dean, Edward Cantor Dean, he knows
nothing about heroin. A few cigarettes are his only vice (other than trying to jack off, at which he will not be
successful for almost another year). He's thirteen. It's 1977 and he has exactly four hairs on his chest, he
counts them religiously each morning, hoping for big number five. It's the summer after the Summer of the
Tall Ships. It's a late afternoon in the month of June and he can hear a happy tune. The tune is coming from
the speakers over the doorway of the Tower of Power record shop, it's Mungo Jerry singing "In the
Summertime," and—
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.
When the word gentlemen crossed Eddie's mind, it brought another pulse of anger with it. That was quite a
word for guys who'd break a fat and harmless bookstore owner's glasses, then take him out back and terrorize
him. Gentlemen! Fuck-commala!
He tried the bookshop door. It was locked, but the lock wasn't such of a much; the door rattled in its jamb like
a loose tooth. Standing there in the recessed doorway, looking (he hoped) like a fellow who was especially
interested in some book he'd glimpsed inside, Eddie began to increase his pressure on the lock, first using just
his hand on the knob, then leaning his shoulder against the door in a way he hoped would look casual.
Chances are ninety-four in a hundred that no one's looking at you, anyway. This is New York, right? Can you
tell me how to get to City Hall or should I just go fuck myself?
He pushed harder. He was still a good way from exerting maximum pressure when there was a snap and the
door swung inward. Eddie entered without hesitation, as if he had every right in the world to be there, then
closed the door again. It wouldn't latch. He took a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas off the children's
table, ripped out the last page (Never liked the way this one ended, anyway, he thought), folded it three times,
and stuck it into the crack between the door and the jamb. Good enough to keep it closed. Then he looked
