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As if to confir at through the doorway suddenly rose and slid sidewards The view turned (that feeling of vertigo again, a feeling of standing still on a plate heels under it, a plate which hands he could not seepast the edges of the doorway He passed a place where several women, all dressed in the sas, and he would have liked toview stop in spite of his pain and exhaustion so he could see what the steel things were�Dmachines of some sort One looked a bit like an oven The arin which the voice had requested The bottle she poured fro it into looked like glass but the gunslinger didn&039;t think it actually was

What the doorway showed hadbefore he could seeturns and he was looking at aThis word the gunslinger could read VACANT, it said

The view slid down a little A hand entered it froh and grasped the knob of the door the gunslinger was looking at He saw the cuff of a blue shirt, slightly pulled back to reveal crisp curls of black hair Long fingers A ring on one of theht have been a ruby or a firediht it this last�Dit was too big and vulgar to be real

Theinto the strangest privy he had ever seen It was all es of the es of the door on the beach The gunslinger heard the sound of it being closed and latched He was spared another of those giddy spins, so he supposed themust have reached behind himself to lock himself in

Then the view did turn�Dnot all the way around but half�Dand he was looking into aa face he had seen once beforeon a Tarot card The same dark eyes and spill of dark hair The face was calh which he sa reflected back at him�DRoland saw some of the dread and horror of that baboon-ridden creature on the Tarot card

The

He&039;s sick, too

Then he reht of the Oracle

A deer suddenly thought helike the devil-grass

A trifle upsetting, isn&039;t he?

Without thought, with the simple resolve that hadon and on long after Cuthbert and the others had died or given up, committed suicide or treachery or sile-minded and incurious resolve that had driven him across the desert and all the years before the desert in the wake of the h the doorway

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Eddie ordered a gin and tonic�D into New York Custoot started he would just keep on going�Dbut he had to have soet down and you can&039;t find the elevator, Henry had told hiot to do it any way you can Even if it&039;s only with a shovel

Then, after he&039;d given his order and the stewardess had left, he started to feel like he wasto voh Custoin on your breath was not so good; going through Custo on your pants would be disaster So better to be safe The feeling would probably pass, it usually did, but better to be safe

Trouble was, he was going cool turkey Cool, not cold More words of wisdoe and e on the penthouse balcony of the Regency Tower, not quite on the nod but edging toward it, the sun warood old days, when Eddie had just started to snort the stuff and Henry himself had yet to pick up his first needle

Everybody talks about going cold turkey, Henry had said, but before you get there, you gotta go cool turkey

And Eddie, stoned out of his mind, had cackledabout Henry, however, had not so much as cracked a smile

In some ways cool turkey&039;s worse than cold turkey, Henry said At least when you onna puke, you KNOW you&039;re going to shake, you KNOW you&039;re gonna sweat until it feels like you&039;re drowning in it Cool turkey is, like, the curse of expectation

Eddie re Henry what you called it when a needle-freak (which, in those dio, they had both soleot a hot shot

You call that baked turkey, Henry had replied promptly, and then had looked surprised, the way a person does when he&039;s said so that turned out to be a lot funnier than he actually thought it would be, and they looked at each other, and then they were both howling with laughter and clutching each other Baked turkey, pretty funny, not so funny now

Eddie walked up the aisle past the galley to the head, checked the sign�DVACANT�Dand opened the door

Hey Henry, o great sage if e brother, while we&039;re on the subject of our feathered friends, you want to hear uy at Kennedy decides there&039;s so a little funny about the way you look, or it&039;s one of the days when they got the dogs with the PhD noses out there instead of at Port Authority and they all start to bark and pee all over the floor and it&039;s you they&039;re all just about strangling theet to, and after the Custoe they take you into the little roo off your shirt and you say yeah I sure would I&039;d mind like hell, I picked up a little cold down in the Bahah and I&039;ht turn into pneumonia and they say oh is that so, do you always sweat like that when the air-conditioning&039;s too high, Mr Dean, you do, well, excuse us all to hell, now do it, and you do it, and they say maybe you better take off the t-shirt too, because you look like ot soes under your pits look like , and you don&039;t even bother to say anything else, it&039;s like a center-fielder who doesn&039;t even bother to chase the ball when it&039;s hit a certain way, he just turns around and watches it go into the upper deck, because when it&039;s gone it&039;s gone, so you take off the t-shirt and hey, looky here, you&039;re some lucky kid, those aren&039;t tuht call tus looktape, and by the way, don&039;t worry about that soose It&039;s cooked

He reached behind hihtened The sound of theto see how bad he looked, and suddenly a terrible, pervasive feeling swept over hi watched

Hey, coht uneasily You&039;re supposed to be the uy in the world That&039;s why they sent you That&039;s why�D

But it suddenly seemed those were not his own eyes in the reen eyes that had melted so s during the last third of his twenty-one years, not his eyes but those of a stranger Not hazel but a blue the color of fading LevisEyes that were chilly, precise, unexpected marvels of calibration Bombardier&039;s eyes

Reflected in the wave and snatching so from it

He had time to think What in God&039;s na to pass; he was going to throw up after all

In the half-second before he did, in the half-second he went on looking into the mirror, he saw those blue eyes disappearbut before that happened there was suddenly the feeling of being two peopleof being possessed, like the little girl in The Exorcist

Clearly he felt a new ht not as his own thought but h I&039; else, but Eddie didn&039;t hear it He was too busy throwing up into the basin as quietly as he could

When he was done, before he had even wiped hishappened which had never happened to hi�Donly a blank interval As if a single line in a column of newsprint had been neatly and coht helplessly What the hell is this shit?

Then he had to throw up again, and ainst it, regurgitation had at least thisit, you couldn&039;t think of anything else

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I&039;ve coht And, a second later: He sees me in the mirror !

Roland pulled back�Ddid not leave but pulled back, like a child retreating to the furthest corner of a very long rooe; he was also inside a man as not himself Inside The Prisoner In that first moment, when he had been close to the front (it was the only way he could describe it), he had been more than inside; he had almost been the man He felt the man&039;s illness, whatever it was, and sensed that the man was about to retch Roland understood that if he needed to, he could take control of this man&039;s body He would suffer his pains, would be ridden by whatever demon-ape rode him, but if he needed to he could

Or he could stay back here, unnoticed

When the prisoner&039;s fit of voer leaped forward - this time all the way to the front He understood very little about this strange situation, and to act in a situation one does not understand is to invite the s he needed to know�Dand he needed to know thehed any consequences which h from his oorld still there?

And if it as his physical self still there, collapsed, untenanted, perhaps dying or already dead without his self&039;s self to go on unthinkingly running lungs and heart and nerves? Even if his body still lived, it ht fell Then the lobstrosities would come out to ask their questions and look for shore dinners

He snapped the head which was for a lance

The door was still there, still behind hies buried in the steel of this peculiar privy And, yes, there he lay, Roland, the last gunslinger, lying on his side, his bound right hand on his stoht I&039;llhave to go back and s

He let go of the prisoner&039;sto see if the prisoner kneas there or not

4

After the vohtly closed

Blanked there for a second Don&039;t knohat it was Did I look around?

He groped for the faucet and ran cool water Eyes still closed, he splashed it over his cheeks and brow

When it could be avoided no longer, he looked up into the ain

His own eyes looked back at him

There were no alien voices in his head

No feeling of being watched

You had a e and eminent junkie advised hi cool turkey

Eddie glanced at his watch An hour and a half to New YorkThe plane was scheduled to land at 4:05 EDT , but it was really going to be high noon Shon time

He went back to his seat His drink was on the divider He took two sips and the stew ca else for him He opened his mouth to say noand then there was another of those odd blankto eat, please," the gunslinger said through Eddie Dean&039;sa hot snack in�D"

"I&039;er said with perfect truthfulness "Anything at all, even a popkin�D"

"Popkin?" the arer suddenly looked into the prisoner&039;s mind Sandwichthe as as distant as the murunslinger said

The army woman looked doubtful "WellI have sounslinger said, although he had never heard of tooter fish in his life Beggars could not be choosers

"You do look a little pale," the arht er"

She gave him a professional smile "I&039;ll see what I can rustle up"

Russel? the gunslinger thought dazedly In his oorld to russel was a slang verbto take a woman by force Never mind Food would coh the doorway to the body which needed it so badly, but one thing at a tiht, and Eddie Dean&039;s head shook, as if in disbelief

Then the gunslinger retreated again

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Nerves, the great oracle and eminent junkie assured him Just nerves All part of the cool turkey experience, little brother

But if nerves hat it was, how co over hi that urge to squirm and scratch that came before the actual shakes; even if he had not been in Henry&039;s "cool turkey" state, there was the fact that he was about to atteh US Customs, a felony punishable by not less than ten years in federal prison, and he see blackouts as well

Still, that feeling of sleepiness

He sipped at his drink again, then let his eyes slip shut

Why&039;d you black out?

I didn&039;t, or she&039;d be running for all the eear they carry

Blanked out, then It&039;s no good either way You never blanked out like that before in your life Nodded out, yeah, but never blanked out

Souely, as if he had pounded it with a ha his eyes No ache No throb No blue bombardier&039;s eyes As for the blank-outs, they were just a coreat oracle and eler&039;s blues

But I&039;ht How &039;bout that?

Henry&039;s face drifted by him like an untethered balloon Don&039;t worry, Henry was saying You&039;ll be all right, little brother You fly down there toNassau, check in at the Aquinas, there&039;ll be a uys He&039;ll fix you, leave you enough stuff to take you through the weekend Sunday night he brings the coke and you give hi you do the routine just like Balazar said This guy will play; he kno it&039;s supposed to go Monday noon you fly out, and with a face as honest as yours, you&039;ll breeze through Custooes down It&039;s gonna be a breeze, little brother, nothing but a cool breeze

But it had been sort of a warm breeze after all

The trouble with him and Henry was they were like Charlie Brown and Lucy The only difference was once in awhile Henry would hold onto the football so Eddie could kick it�Dnot often, but once in awhile Eddie had even thought, while in one of his heroin dazes, that he ought to write Charles Schultz a letter Dear Mr Schultz, he would say You&039;reLucy pull the football up at the last second She ought to hold it down there once in awhile Nothing Charlie Brown could ever predict, you understand Sometimes she&039;d maybe hold it down for hi for afor three or four days, and then, you know, you get the idea That would REALLY fuck the kid up, wouldn&039;t it?

Eddie kneould really fuck the kid up

Frouys, Henry had said, but the guy who showed up had been a sallow-skinned thing with a British accent, a hairlineout of a 1940s filmnoire, and yellow teeth that all leaned inward, like the teeth of a very old animal trap

"You have the key, Senor?" he asked, except in that British public school accent it cah school

"The key&039;s safe," Eddie said, "if that&039;s what you ive it to oes You&039;re supposed to have soht you&039;re supposed to bring o into town and use it to get so else I don&039;t knohat, &039;cause that&039;s not my business"

Suddenly there was a s&039;s hand "Why don&039;t you just give it to me, Senor? I will save time and effort; you will save your life"

There was deep steel in Eddie Dean, junkie or no junkie Henry knew it; more important, Balazar knew it That hy he had been sent Most of the and back again He knew it, Henry knew it, Balazar, too But only he and Henry kneould have gone even if he was as straight as a stake For Henry Balazar hadn&039;t got quite that far in his figuring, but fuck Balazar

"Why don&039;t you just put that thing away, you little scuzz?" Eddie asked "Or do you maybe want Balazar to send someone down here and cut your eyes out of your head with a rusty knife?"

The sallow thing sic; in its place was a small envelope He handed it to Eddie "Just a little joke, you know"

"If you say so"

"I see you Sunday night"

He turned toward the door

"I think you better wait"

The sallow thing turned back, eyebrows raised "You think I won&039;t go if I want to go?"