The Dark Tower

On impulse she rolls the cylinder and seesthat the rounds inside look old, their casings dull.

These’ll never fire, she thinks…and, without knowing why, or precisely what it means: These are wets.

She sights up the barrel and is queerlysaddened—but not surprised—to find that the barrel lets through nolight. It’s plugged. Has been for decades, from the look of it. This gun willnever fire again. There is no choice to be made, after all. This gun is over.

Susa

Before she can reach the man with the papercup, he turns. He is indeed wearing a sweatshirt that says I DRINK NOZZ-A-LA!,but she barely registers that. It’s him: that’s what she registers. It’s EdwardCantor Dean. And then even that becomes secondary, because what she sees in hiseyes is all she has feared. It’s total puzzlement. He doesn’t know her.

Then, tentatively, he smiles, and it is thesmile she remembers, the one she always loved. Also he’s clean, she knows it atonce. She sees it in his face. Mostly in his eyes. The carolers from Harlemsing, and he holds out the cup of hot chocolate.

“Thank God,” he says. “I’d just aboutdecided I’d have to drink this myself. That the voices were wrong and I wasgoing crazy after all. That… well…” He trails off, looking more than puzzled.He looks afraid. “Listen, you are here for me, aren’t you? Please tellme I’m not making an utter ass of myself. Because, lady, right now I feel asnervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”

“You’re not,” she says. “Making an ass ofyourself, I mean.” She’s remembering Jake’s story about the voices he heardarguing in his mind, one yelling that he was dead, the other that he was alive.Both of them utterly convinced. She has at least some idea of how terrible thatmust be, because she knows a little about other voices. Strange voices.

“Thank God,” he says. “Your name isSusa

“Yes,” she says. “My name is Susa

Her throat is terribly dry, but the wordscome out, at least. She takes the cup from him and sips the hot chocolatethrough the cream. It is sweet and good, a taste of this world. The sound ofthe honking cabs, their drivers hurrying to make their day before the snowshuts them down, is equally good. Gri

(Mid-World)

the gunslinger’s where and when are growinghazy, but she thinks she will remember just enough to know it’s allhappened before, and there is something incredibly sad about this.

But at the same time, it’s good.

It’s a damn miracle, is what it is.

“Are you cold?” he asks.

“No, I’m okay. Why?”

“You shivered.”

“It’s the sweetness of the cream.” Then,looking at him as she does it, she pokes her tongue out and licks a bit of thenutmeg-dusted foam.

“If you aren’t cold now, you will be,” hesays. “WRKO says the temperature’s go

“Bought it in Brendio’s, on Fifth Avenue,”he says.

Susa

He blushes. “Actually, you know, they sortof did. Try it on.”

It’s a perfect fit.

“Tell me something,” she says. “Who’s thePresident? You’re not going to tell me it’s Ronald Reagan, are you?”

He looks at her incredulously for a moment,and then smiles. “What? That old actor who used to host Death Valley Dayson TV? You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. I always thought you were theone who was kidding about Ro

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s okay, just tell me who thePresident is.”

“Gary Hart,” he says, as if speaking to achild. “From Colorado. He almost dropped out of the race in 1980—as I’msure you know—over that Monkey Business business. Then he said‘Fuck em if they can’t take a joke’ and hung on in there. Ended up wi

His smile fades a little as he studies her.

“You’re not kidding me, are you?”

“Are you kidding me about thevoices? The ones you hear in our head? The ones that wake you up at two in themorning?”

Eddie looks almost shocked. “How can youknow that?”

“It’s a long story. Maybe someday I’ll tellyou.” If I can still remember, she thinks.

“It’s not just the voices.”

“No?”

“No. I’ve been dreaming of you. For monthsnow. I’ve been waiting for you. Listen, we don’t know each other… this iscrazy… but do you have a place to stay? You don’t, do you?”

She shakes her head. Doing a passable JohnWayne (or maybe it’s Blaine the train she’s imitating), she says: “Ah’m astranger here in Dodge, pilgrim.”

Her heart is pounding slowly and heavily inher chest, but she feels a rising joy. This is going to be all right. Shedoesn’t know how it can be, but yes, it’s going to be just fine. This time kais working in her favor, and the force of ka is enormous. This she knows fromexperience.

“If I asked how I know you… or where youcome from…” He pauses, looking at her levelly, and then says the rest of it.“Or how I can possibly love you already…?”

She smiles. It feels good to smile, and itno longer hurts the side of her face, because whatever was there (some sort ofscar, maybe—she can’t quite remember) is gone. “Sugar,” she tells him,“it’s what I said: a long story. You’ll get some of it in time, though… what Iremember of it. And it could be that we still have some work to do. For anoutfit called the Tet Corporation.” She looks around and then says, “What yearis this?”

“1987,” he says.

“And do you live in Brooklyn? Or maybe theBronx?”

The young man whose dreams and squabblingvoices have led him here—with a cup of hot chocolate in his hand and aMERRY CHRISTMAS hat in his back pocket—bursts out laughing. “God, no! I’mfrom White Plains! I came in on the train with my brother. He’s right over there.He wanted a closer look at the polar bears.”

The brother. Henry. The great sage andeminent junkie. Her heart sinks.

“Let me introduce you,” he says.

“No, really, I—”

“Hey, if we’re go

She hasn’t noticed the boy standing down bythe railing which guards the sunken polar bears’ environment from the rest ofthe park, but now he turns and her heart takes a great, giddy leap in herchest. Jake waves and ambles toward them.