FIVE
The dreams, when they came, were not dreams at all. They all knew this except perhaps for Susannah, who in a very real sense was not there at all that night.
My God, I’m back in New York, Eddie thought. And, on the heels of this: Really back in New York. This is really happening.
It was. He was in New York. On Second Avenue.
That was when Jake and Oy came around the corner from Fifty-fourth Street. “Hey, Eddie,” Jake said, grinning. “Welcome home.”
Game on, Eddie thought. Game on.
CHAPTER II:
NEW YORK GROOVE
ONE
Jake fell asleep looking into pure darkness—no stars in that cloudy night sky, no moon. As he drifted off, he had a sensation of falling that he recognized with dismay: in his previous life as a so-called normal child he’d often had dreams of falling, especially around exam time, but these had ceased since his violent rebirth into Mid-World.
Then the falling feeling was gone. He heard a brief chiming melody that was somehow too beautiful: three notes and you wanted it to stop, a dozen and you thought it would kill you if it didn’t. Each chime seemed to make his bones vibrate. Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it? he thought, for although the chiming melody was nothing like the sinister warble of the thinny, somehow it was.
It was.
Then, just when he truly believed he could bear it no longer, the terrible, gorgeous tune stopped. The darkness behind his closed eyes suddenly lit up a brilliant dark red.
He opened them cautiously on strong sunlight.
And gaped.
At New York.
Taxis bustled past, gleaming bright yellow in the sunshine. A young black man wearing Walkman earphones strolled by Jake, bopping his sandaled feet a little bit to the music and going “Cha-da-ba, cha-da-bow!” under his breath. A jackhammer battered Jake’s eardrums. Chunks of cement dropped into a dumptruck with a crash that echoed from one cliff-face of buildings to another. The world was a-din with racket. He had gotten used to the deep silences of Mid-World without even realizing it. No, more. Had come to love them. Still, this noise and bustle had its attractions, and Jake couldn’t deny it. Back in the New York groove. He felt a little grin stretch his lips.
“Ake! Ake!” cried a low, rather distressed voice.
Jake looked down and saw Oy sitting on the sidewalk with his tail curled neatly around him. The billy-bumbler wasn’t wearing little red booties and Jake wasn’t wearing the red Oxfords (thank God), but this was still very like their visit to Roland’s Gilead, which they had reached by traveling in the pink Wizard’s Glass. The glass ball that had caused so much trouble and woe.
No glass this time . . . he’d just gone to sleep. But this was no dream. It was more intense than any dream he’d ever had, and more textured. Also . . .
Also, people kept detouring around him and Oy as they stood to the left of a midtown saloon called Kansas City Blues. While Jake was making this observation, a woman actually stepped over Oy, hitching up her straight black skirt a bit at the knee in order to do so. Her preoccupied face (I’m just one more New Yorker minding my business, so don’t screw with me was what that face said to Jake) never changed.
They don’t see us, but somehow they sense us. And if they can sense us, we must really be here.
The first logical question was Why? Jake considered this for a moment, then decided to table it. He had an idea the answer would come. Meantime, why not enjoy New York while he had it?
“Come on, Oy,” he said, and walked around the corner. The billy-bumbler, clearly no city boy, walked so close to him that Jake could feel his breath feathering against his ankle.
Second Avenue, he thought. Then: My God—
Before he could finish the thought, he saw Eddie Dean standing outside of the Barcelona Luggage store, looking dazed and more than a little out of place in old jeans, a deerskin shirt, and deerskin moccasins. His hair was clean, but it hung to his shoulders in a way that suggested no professional had seen to it in quite some time. Jake realized he himself didn’t look much better; he was also wearing a deerskin shirt and, on his lower half, the battered remains of the Dockers he’d had on the day he left home for good, setting sail for Brooklyn, Dutch Hill, and another world.
Good thing no one can see us, Jake thought, then decided that wasn’t true. If people could see them, they’d probably get rich on spare change before noon. The thought made him grin. “Hey, Eddie,” he said. “Welcome home.”
Eddie nodded, looking bemused. “See you brought your friend.”
Jake reached down and gave Oy an affectionate pat. “He’s my version of the American Express Card. I don’t go home without him.”
Jake was about to go on—he felt witty, bubbly, full of amusing things to say—when someone came around the corner, passed them without looking (as everyone else had), and changed everything. It was a kid wearing Dockers that looked like Jake’s because they were Jake’s. Not the pair he had on now, but they were his, all right. So were the sneakers. They were the ones Jake had lost in Dutch Hill. The plaster-man who guarded the door between the worlds had torn them right off his feet.
The boy who had just passed them was John Chambers, it was him, only this version looked soft and innocent and painfully young. How did you survive? he asked his own retreating back. How did you survive the mental stress of losing your mind, and running away from home, and that horrible house in Brooklyn? Most of all, how did you survive the doorkeeper? You must be tougher than you look.
Eddie did a doubletake so comical that Jake laughed in spite of his own shocked surprise. It made him think of those comic-book panels where Archie or Jughead is trying to look in two directions at the same time. He looked down and saw a similar expression on Oy’s face. Somehow that made the whole thing even funnier.
“What the fuck?” Eddie asked.
“Instant replay,” Jake said, and laughed harder. It came out sounding goofy as shit, but he didn’t care. He felt goofy. “It’s like when we watched Roland in the Great Hall of Gilead, only this is New York and it’s May 31st, 1977! It’s the day I took French Leave from Piper! Instant replay, baby!”
“French—?” Eddie began, but Jake didn’t give him a chance to finish. He was struck by another realization. Except struck was too mild a word. He was buried by it, like a man who just happens to be on the beach when a tidal wave rolls in. His face blazed so brightly that Eddie actually took a step back.
“The rose!” he whispered. He felt too weak in the diaphragm to speak any louder, and his throat was as dry as a sandstorm. “Eddie, the rose!”
“What about it?”
“This is the day I see it!” He reached out and touched Eddie’s forearm with a trembling hand. “I go to the bookstore . . . then to the vacant lot. I think there used to be a delicatessen—”
Eddie was nodding and beginning to look excited himself. “Tom and Jerry’s Artistic Deli, corner of Second and Forty-sixth—”
“The deli’s gone but the rose is there! That me walking down the street is going to see it, and we can see it, too!”
At that, Eddie’s own eyes blazed. “Come on, then,” he said. “We don’t want to lose you. Him. Whoever the fuck.”
“Don’t worry,” Jake said. “I know where he’s going.”