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The diction is bad, the voice driving it little more than a rasp, but it's Rowan, all right. Callahan goes to him and takes the hands that lie on the counterpane. They curl over his with surprising firmness.
"As far as the novel goes… man, it was third-rate James Jones, and that's bad."
"How you doing, Rowan?" Callahan asks. Now he's crying himself. The goddam room will be floating soon.
"Oh, well, pretty sucky," says the man under the bandages. Then: "Thanks for coming."
"Not a problem, " Callahan says. "What do you need from me, Rowan? What can I do?"
"You can stay away from Home," Rowan says. His voice is fading, but his hands still clasp Callahan's. "They didn't want me. It was you they were after. Do you understand me, Don? They were looking for you. They kept asking me where you were, and by the end I would have told them if I'd known, believe me. But of course I didn't. "
One of the machines is beeping faster, the beeps ru
"Rowan -did they have red eyes? Were they wearing… I don't know… long coats? Like trenchcoats? Did they come in big fancy cars?"
"Nothing like that," Rowan whispers. "They were probably in their thirties but dressed like teenagers. They looked like teenagers, too. These guys'll look like teenagers for another twenty years -if they live that long -and then one day they'll just be old. "
Callahan thinks, Just a couple of punks. Is that what he's saying? It is, it almost certainly is, but that doesn't mean the Hitler Brothers weren't hired by the low men for this particular job. It makes sense. Even the newspaper article, brief as it was, pointed out that Rowan Magruder wasn't much like the Brothers' usual type of victim.
"Stay away from Home," Rowan whispers, but before Callahan can promise, the alarm does indeed go off. For a moment the hands holding his tighten, and Callahan feels a ghost of this man's old energy, that wild fierce energy that somehow kept Home's doors open in spite of all the times the bank account went absolutely flat-line, the energy that attracted men who could do all the things Rowan Magruder himself couldn't.
Then the room begins filling up with nurses, there's a doctor with an arrogant face yelling for the patient's chart, and pretty soon Rowan's twin sister will be back, this time possibly breathing fire. Callahan decides it's time to blow this pop-shop, and the greater pop-shop that is New York City. The low men are still interested in him, it seems, very interested indeed, and if they have a base of operations, it's probably right here in Fun City, USA. Consequently, a return to the West Coast would probably be an excellent idea. He can't afford another plane ticket, but he has enough cash to ride the Big Gray Dog. Won't be for the first time, either. Another trip west, why not? He can see himself with absolute clarity, the man in Seat 29-C: a fresh, unopened package of cigarettes in his shirt pocket; afresh, unopened bottle of Early Times in a paper bag; the new Jfohn D. MacDonald novel, also fresh and unopened, lying on his lap. Maybe he'll be on the far side of the Hudson and riding through Fort Lee, deep into Chapter One and nipping his second drink before they finally turn off all the machines in Room 577 and his old friend goes out into the darkness and toward whatever waits for us there.
SEVEN
"577," Eddie said.
"Nineteen," Jake said.
"Beg pardon?" Callahan asked again.
"Five, seven, and seven," Susa
"Does that mean something?"
"Put them all together, they spell mother, a word that means the world to me," Eddie said with a sentimental smile.
Susa
"Oh, I left," Callahan said. "Just not quite as soon as I intended. My intention when I left the hospital really was to go back down to Port Authority and buy a ticket on the Forty bus."
"What's that?" Jake asked.
"Hobo-speak for the farthest you can go. If you buy a ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska, you're riding on the Forty bus."
"Over here, it'd be Bus Nineteen," Eddie said.
"As I was walking, I got thinking about all the old times. Some of them were fu
"Used the paper," Susa
Callahan gri
"I was ru
"Chew Chew Mama's," Jake said.
Callahan stared at him with real amazement, then looked at Roland. "Gunslinger, you boys are starting to scare me a little."
Roland only twirled his fingers in his old gesture: Keep going, partner.
"I decided to go in and get a hamburger for old times' sake," Callahan said. "And while I was eating the burger, I decided I didn't want to leave New York without at least looking into Home through the front window. I could stand across the street, like the times when I swung by there after Lupe died. Why not? I'd never been bothered there before. Not by the vampires, not by the low men, either." He looked at them. "I can't tell you if I really believed that, or if it was some kind of elaborate, suicidal mind-game. I can recapture a lot of what I felt that night, what I said and how I thought, but not that.
"In any case, I never got to Home. I paid up and I went walking down Second Avenue. Home was at First and Forty-seventh, but I didn't want to walk directly in front of it So I decided to go down to First and Forty-sixth and cross over there."
"Why not Forty-eighth?" Eddie asked him quietly. "You could have turned down Forty-eighth, that would have been quicker. Saved you doubling back a block."
Callahan considered the question, then shook his head. "If there was a reason, I don't remember."
"There was a reason," Susa
"Why would I-"
"For the same reason people want to walk past a bakery when the doughnuts are coming out of the oven," Eddie said. "Some things are just nice, that's all."