"Why do you keep looking back there?" the guy in charge had asked.
"From time to time I need an antidote," Eddie said.
"From what?"
"Your face."
3
The cab-driver dropped Eddie at the building in Co-Op City, thanked him for the dollar tip, and drove off. Eddie just stood for a moment, zipper bag in one hand, his jacket hooked over a finger of the other and slung back over his shoulder. Here he shared a two-bedroom apartment with his brother. He stood for a moment looking up at it, a monolith with all the style and taste of a brick Saltines box. The many windows made it look like a prison cellblock to Eddie, and he found the view as depressing as Roland--the other--did amazing.
Never, even as a child, did I see a building so high, Roland said. And there are so many of them!
Yeah, Eddie agreed. We live like a bunch of ants in a hill. It may look good to you, but I'll tell you, Roland, it gets old. It gets old in a hurry.
The blue car cruised by; the pizza truck turned in and approached. Eddie stiffened and felt Roland stiffen inside him. Maybe they intended to blow him away after all.
The door? Roland asked. Shall we go through? Do you wish it? Eddie sensed Roland was ready--for anything--but the voice was calm.
Not yet, Eddie said. Could be they only want to talk. But be ready.
He sensed that was an unnecessary thing to say; he sensed that Roland was readier to move and act in his deepest sleep than Eddie would ever be in his most wide-awake moment.
The pizza truck with the smiling kid on the side closed in. The passenger window rolled down and Eddie waited outside the entrance to his building with his shadow trailing out long in front of him from the toes of his sneakers, waiting to see which it would be--a face or a gun.
4
The second time Roland left him had been no more than five minutes after the Customs people had finally given up and let Eddie go.
The gunslinger had eaten, but not enough; he needed to drink; most of all he needed medicine. Eddie couldn't yet help him with the medicine Roland really needed (although he suspected the gunslinger was right and Balazar could . . . if Balazar wanted to), but simple aspirin might at least knock down the fever that Eddie had felt when the gunslinger stepped close to sever the top part of the tape girdle. He paused in front of the newsstand in the main terminal.
Do you have aspirin where you come from?
I have never heard of it. Is it magic or medicine?
Both, I guess.
Eddie went into the newsstand and bought a tin of Extra-Strength Anacin. He went over to the snack bar and bought a couple of foot-long dogs and an extra-large Pepsi. He was putting mustard and catsup on the franks (Henry called the foot-longs Godzilla-dogs) when he suddenly remembered this stuff wasn't for him. For all he knew, Roland might not like mustard and catsup. For all he knew, Roland might be a veggie. For all he knew, this crap might kill Roland.
Well, too late now, Eddie thought. When Roland spoke--when Roland acted--Eddie knew all this was really happening. When he was quiet, that giddy feeling that it must be a dream--an extraordinarily vivid dream he was having as he slept on Delta 901 inbound to Kennedy--insisted on creeping back.
Roland had told him he could carry the food into his own world. He had already done something similar once, he said, when Eddie was asleep. Eddie found it all but impossible to believe, but Roland assured him it was true.
Well, we still have to be damned careful, Eddie said. They've got two Customs guys watching me. Us. Whatever the hell I am now.
I know we have to be careful, Roland returned. There aren't two; there are five. Eddie suddenly felt one of the weirdest sensations of his entire life. He did not move his eyes but felt them moved. Roland moved them.
A guy in a muscle shirt talking into a telephone.
A woman sitting on a bench, rooting through her purse.
A young black guy who would have been spectacularly handsome except for the harelip which surgery had only partially repaired, looking at the tee-shirts in the newsstand Eddie had come from not long since.
There was nothing wrong about any of them on top, but Eddie recognized them for what they were nonetheless and it was like seeing those hidden images in a child's puzzle, which, once seen, could never be unseen. He felt dull heat in his cheeks, because it had taken the other to point out what he should have seen at once. He had spotted only two. These three were a little better, but not that much; the eyes of the phoneman weren't blank, imagining the person he was talking to but aware, actually looking, and the place where Eddie was . . . that was the place to which the phoneman's eyes just happened to keep returning. The purse-woman didn't find what she wanted or give up but simply went on rooting endlessly. And the shopper had had a chance to look at every shirt on the spindle-rack at least a dozen times.
All of a sudden Eddie felt five again, afraid to cross the street without Henry to hold his hand.
Never mind, Roland said. And don't worry about the food, either. I've eaten bugs while they were still lively enough for some of them to go running down my throat.
Yeah, Eddie replied, but this is New York.
He took the dogs and the soda to the far end of the counter and stood with his back to the terminal's main concourse. Then he glanced up in the left-hand corner. A convex mirror bulged there like a hypertensive eye. He could see all of his followers in it, but none was close enough to see the food and cup of soda, and that was good, because Eddie didn't have the slightest idea what was going to happen to it.
Put the astin on the meat-things. Then hold everything in your hands.
Aspirin.
Good. Call it flutergork if you want, pr . . . Eddie. Just do it.
He took the Anacin out of the stapled bag he had stuffed in his pocket, almost put it down on one of the hotdogs, and suddenly realized that Roland would have problems just getting what Eddie thought of as the poison-proofing--off the tin, let alone opening it.
He did it himself, shook three of the pills onto one of the napkins, debated, then added three more.
Three now, three later, he said. If there is a later.
All right. Thank you.
Now what?
Hold all of it.
Eddie had glanced into the convex mirror again. Two of the agents were strolling casually toward the snack-bar, maybe not liking the way Eddie's back was turned, maybe smelling a little prestidigitation in progress and wanting a closer look. If something was going to happen, it better happen quick.
He put his hands around everything, feeling the heat of the dogs in their soft white rolls, the chill of the Pepsi. In that moment he looked like a guy getting ready to carry a snack back to his kids . . . and then the stuff started to melt.
He stared down, eyes widening, widening, until it felt to him that they must soon fall out and dangle by their stalks.
He could see the hotdogs through the rolls. He could see the Pepsi through the cup, the ice-choked liquid curving to conform to a shape which could no longer be seen.
Then he could see the red Formica counter through the foot-longs and the white wall through the Pepsi. His hands slid toward each other, the resistance between them growing less and less . . . and then they closed against each other, palm to palm. The food . . . the napkins . . . the Pepsi-Cola . . . the six Anacin . . . all the things which had been between his hands were gone.
Jesus jumped up and played the fiddle, Eddie thought numbly. He flicked his eyes up toward the convex mirror.
The doorway was gone . . . just as Roland was gone from his mind.
Eat hearty, my friend, Eddie thought . . . but was this weird alien presence that called itself Roland his friend? That was far from proved, wasn't it? He had saved Eddie's bacon, true enough, but that didn't mean he was a Boy Scout.
All the same, he liked Roland. Feared him . . . but liked him as well.
Suspected that in time he could love him, as he loved Henry.
Eat well, stranger, he
thought. Eat well, stay alive . . . and come back.
Close by were a few mustard-stained napkins left by a previous customer. Eddie balled them up, tossed them in the trash-barrel by the door on his way out, and chewed air as if finishing a last bite of something. He was even able to manufacture a burp as he approached the black guy on his way toward the signs pointing the way to LUGGAGE and GROUND TRANSPORTATION.
"Couldn't find a shirt you liked?" Eddie asked.
"I beg your pardon?" the black guy turned from the American Airlines departures monitor he was pretending to study.
"I thought maybe you were looking for one that said PLEASE FEED ME, I AM A U.S. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE," Eddie said, and walked on.
As he headed down the stairs he saw the purse-rooter hurriedly snap her purse shut and get to her feet.
Oh boy, this is gonna be like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
It had been one fuck of an interesting day, and Eddie didn't think it was over yet.