Eddie looked around. In spite of his own adjustment problems (his involved coming back to a New York that
was clearly a few years behind his when), he knew what Jake meant. Something was wrong.
He looked down at the sidewalk, suddenly sure he wouldn't have a shadow. They'd lost their shadows like the
kids in one of the stories… one of the nineteen fairy tales… or was it maybe something newer, like The Lion,
The Witch, and The Wardrobe or Peter Pan? One of what might be called the Modern Nineteen?
Didn't matter in any case, because their shadows were there.
Shouldn't be, though, Eddie thought. Shouldn't be able to see our shadows when it's this dark.
Stupid thought. It wasn't dark. It was morning, for Christ's sake, a bright May morning, sunshine winking off
the chrome of passing cars and the windows of the stores on the east side of Second Avenue brightly enough
to make you squint your eyes. Yet still it seemed somehow dark to Eddie, as if all this were nothing but
fragile surface, like the canvas backdrop of a stage set. "At rise we see the Forest of Arden." Or a Castle in
Denmark. Or the Kitchen of Willy Loman's House. In this case we see Second Avenue, midtown New York.
Yes, like that. Only behind this canvas you wouldn't find the workshop and storage areas of backstage but
only a great bulging darkness. Some vast dead universe where Roland's Tower had already fallen.
Please let me be wrong, Eddie thought. Please let this just be a case of culture shock or the plain old heebiejeebies.
He didn't think it was.
"How'd we get here?" he asked Jake. "There was no door…" He trailed off, and then asked with some hope:
"Maybe it is a dream?"
"No," Jake said. "It's more like when we traveled in the Wizard's Glass. Except this time there was no ball." A
thought struck him. "Did you hear music, though? Chimes? Just before you wound up here?"
Eddie nodded. "It was sort of overwhelming. Made my eyes water."
"Right," Jake said. "Exactly."
Oy sniffed a fire hydrant. Eddie and Jake paused to let the little guy lift his leg and add his own notice to
what was undoubtedly an already crowded bulletin board. Ahead of them, that other Jake—Kid Seventyseven—
was still walking slowly and gawking everywhere. To Eddie he looked like a tourist from Michigan.
He even craned up to see the tops of the buildings, and Eddie had an idea that if the New York Board of
Cynicism caught you doing that, they took away your Bloomingdale's charge card. Not that he was
complaining; it made the kid easy to follow.
And just as Eddie was thinking that, Kid Seventy-seven disappeared.
"Where'd you go? Christ, where'd you go?"
"Relax," Jake said. (At his ankle, Oy added his two cents' worth: "Ax!") The kid was grinning. "I just went
into the bookstore. The… um… Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, it's called."
"Where you got Charlie the Choo-Choo and the riddle book?"
"Right."
Eddie loved the mystified, dazzled grin Jake was wearing. It lit up his whole face. "Remember how excited
Roland got when I told him the owner's name?"
Eddie did. The owner of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind was a fellow named Calvin Tower.
"Hurry up," Jake said. "I want to watch."
Eddie didn't have to be asked twice. He wanted to watch, too.
FOUR
Jake stopped in the doorway to the bookstore. His smile didn't fade, exactly, but it faltered.
"What is it?" Eddie asked. "What's wrong?"
"Dunno. Something's different, I think. It's just… so much has happened since I was here…"
He was looking at the chalkboard in the window, which Eddie thought was actually a very clever way of
selling books. It looked like the sort of thing you saw in diners, or maybe the fish markets.
TODAY'S SPECIALS
From Mississippi! Pan-Fried William Faulkner
Hardcovers Market Price Vintage Library Paperbacks 75c each
From Maine! Chilled Stephen King
Hardcovers Market Price
Book Club Bargains
Paperbacks 75c each
From California! Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler
Hardcovers Market Price
Paperbacks 7 for $5.00
Eddie looked beyond this and saw that other Jake—the one without the tan or the look of hard clarity in his
eyes— standing at a small display table. Kiddie books. Probably both the Nineteen Fairy Tales and the
Modern Nineteen.
Quit it, he told himself. That's obsessive-compulsive crap and you know it.
Maybe, but good old Jake Seventy-seven was about to make a purchase from that table which had gone on to
change—and very likely to save—their lives. He'd worry about the number nineteen later. Or not at all, if he
could manage it.
"Come on," he told Jake. "Let's go in."
The boy hung back.
"What's the matter?" Eddie asked. "Tower won't be able to see us, if that's what you're worried about."
" Tower won't be able to," Jake said, "but what if he can?" He pointed at his other self, the one who had yet to
meet Gasher and Tick-Tock and the old people of River Crossing. The one who had yet to meet Blaine the
Mono and Rhea of the Coos.
Jake was looking at Eddie with a kind of haunted curiosity. "What if I see myself?"
Eddie supposed that might really happen. Hell, anything might happen. But that didn't change what he felt in
his heart. "I think we're supposed to go in, Jake."
"Yeah…" It came out in a long sigh. "I do, too."
FIVE
They went in and they weren't seen and Eddie was relieved to count twenty-one books on the display table
that had attracted the boy's notice. Except, of course, when Jake picked up the two he wanted—Charlie the
Choo-Choo and the riddle book—that left nineteen.
"Find something, son?" a mild voice inquired. It was a fat fellow in an open-throated white shirt. Behind him,
at a counter that looked as if it might have been filched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, a trio of old
guys were drinking coffee and nibbling pastries. A chessboard with a game in progress sat on the marble
counter.
"The guy sitting on the end is Aaron Deepneau," Jake whispered. "He's going to explain the riddle about
Samson to me."
"Shh!" Eddie said. He wanted to hear the conversation between Calvin Tower and Kid Seventy-seven. All of
a sudden that seemed very important… only why was it so fucking dark in here?
Except it's not dark at all. The east side of the street gets plenty of sun at this hour, and with the door open,
this place is getting all of it. How can you say it's dark ?
Because it somehow was. The sunlight—the contrast of the sunlight—only made it worse. The fact that you
couldn't exactly see that darkness made it worse still… and Eddie realized a terrible thing: these people were
in danger. Tower, Deepneau, Kid Seventy-seven. Probably him and Mid-World Jake and Oy, as well.
All of them.
SIX
Jake watched his other, younger self take a step back from the bookshop owner, his eyes widening in
surprise. Because his name is Tower, Jake thought. That's what surprised me. Not because of Roland's Tower,
though— I didn't know about that yet—but because of the picture I put on the last page of my Final Essay.
He had pasted a photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the last page, then had scribbled all over it with a
black Crayola, darkening it as best he could.
Tower asked him his name. Seventy-seven Jake told him and Tower joked around with him a little. It was
good joking-around, the kind you got from adults who really didn't mind kids.
"Good handle, pard," Tower was saying. "Sounds like the footloose hero in a Western novel—the guy who
blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, and then travels on. Something by Wayne D. Overholser,
maybe…"
Jake took a step closer to his old self (part of him was thinking what a wonderful sketch all this would make
on Saturday Night Live), and his eyes widened slightly. "Eddie!" He was still whispering, although he knew
the people in the bookstore couldn't—
Except maybe on some level they could. He remembered the lady back on Fifty-fourth Street, twitching her
skirt up at the knee so she could step over Oy. And now Calvin Tower's eyes shifted slightly in his direction
before going back to the other version of him.
"Might be good not to attract unnecessary attention," Eddie muttered in his ear.
"I know," Jake said, "but look at Charlie the Choo-Choo, Eddie!"
Eddie did, and for a moment saw nothing—except for Charlie himself, of course: Charlie with his headlight
eye and not-quite-trustworthy cowcatcher grin. Then Eddie's eyebrows went up.
"I thought Charlie the Choo-Choo was written by a lady named Beryl Evans," he whispered.
Jake nodded. "I did, too."
"Then who's this—" Eddie took another look. "Who's this Claudia y Inez Bachman?"
"I have no idea," Jake said. "I never heard of her in my life."
SEVEN
One of the old men at the counter came sauntering toward them. Eddie and Jake drew away. As they stepped
back, Eddie's spine gave a cold little wrench. Jake was very pale, and Oy was giving out a series of low,
distressed whines. Something was wrong here, all right. In a way they had lost their shadows. Eddie just
didn't know how.
Kid Seventy-seven had taken out his wallet and was paying for the two books. There was some more talk and
good-natured laughter, then he headed for the door. When Eddie started after him, Mid-World Jake grabbed
his arm. "No, not yet—I come back in."
"I don't care if you alphabetize the whole place," Eddie said. "Let's wait out on the sidewalk."
Jake thought about this, biting his lip, then nodded. They headed for the door, then stopped and moved aside
as the other Jake returned. The riddle book was open. Calvin Tower had lumbered over to the chessboard on
the counter. He looked around with an amiable smile.
"Change your mind about that cup of coffee, O Hyperborean Wanderer?"
"No, I wanted to ask you—"
"This is the part about Samson's Riddle," Mid-World Jake said. "I don't think it matters. Although the
Deepneau guy sings a pretty good song, if you want to hear it."
"I'll pass," Eddie said. "Come on."
They went out. And although things on Second Avenue were still wrong—that sense of endless dark behind
the scenes, behind the very sky—it was somehow better than in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. At
least there was fresh air.
"Tell you what," Jake said. "Let's go down to Second and Forty-sixth right now." He jerked his head toward
the version of him listening to Aaron Deepneau sing. "I'll catch up with us."
Eddie considered it, then shook his head.
Jake's face fell a little. "Don't you want to see the rose?"
"You bet your ass I do," Eddie said. "I'm wild to see it."
"Then—"
"I don't feel like we're done here yet. I don't know why, but I don't."
Jake—the Kid Seventy-seven version of him—had left the door open when he went back inside, and now
Eddie moved into it. Aaron Deepneau was telling Jake a riddle they would later try on Blaine the Mono:
What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks. Mid-World Jake, meanwhile, was once more
looking at the notice-board in the bookstore window
(Pan-Fried William Faulkner, Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler). He wore a frown of the kind that expresses
doubt and anxiety rather than ill temper.
"That sign's different, too," he said.
"How?"
"I can't remember."
"Is it important?"
Jake turned to him. The eyes below the furrowed brow were haunted. "I don't know. It's another riddle. I hate
riddles!"
Eddie sympathized. When is a Beryl not a Beryl? "When it's a Claudia," he said.
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Better step back, Jake, or you're going to run into yourself."
Jake gave the oncoming version of John Chambers a startled glance, then did as Eddie suggested. And when
Kid Seventy-seven started on down Second Avenue with his new books in his left hand, Mid-World Jake
gave Eddie a tired smile. "I do remember one thing," he said. "When I left this bookstore, I was sure I'd never
come here again. But I did."
"Considering that we're more ghosts than people, I'd say that's debatable." Eddie gave the back of Jake's neck
a friendly scruff. "And if you have forgotten something important, Roland might be able to help you
remember. He's good at that."
Jake grinned at this, relieved. He knew from personal experience that the gunslinger really was good at
helping people remember. Roland's friend Alain might have been the one with the strongest ability to touch
other minds, and his friend Cuthbert had gotten all the sense of humor in that particular ka-tet, but Roland
had developed over the years into one hell of a hypnotist. He could have made a fortune in Las Vegas.
"Can we follow me now?" Jake asked. "Check out the rose?" He looked up and down Second Avenue—a
street that was somehow bright and dark at the same time—with a kind of unhappy perplexity. "Things are
probably better there. The rose makes everything better."
Eddie was about to say okay when a dark gray Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of Calvin Tower's
bookshop. It parked by the yellow curb in front of a fire hydrant with absolutely no hesitation. The front
doors opened, and when Eddie saw who was getting out from behind the wheel, he seized Jake's shoulder.
