Song of Susannah

riffled through the wallet, a very nice Lord Buxton, with the other. There was a wad of traveler’s checks-no good to her, not with that insanely convoluted signature-and about two hundred dollars in good old American cabbage. She took it and dropped it into the Borders bag which had lately held the pair of shoes. When she looked up she was dismayed to see that a couple of Girl Scouts, maybe fourteen years old and both wearing backpacks, had joined the businessman. They were staring at the turtle with shiny eyes and wet lips. Susannah found herself remembering the girls in the audience on the night Elvis Presley had played The Ed Sullivan Show.

“Too coooool,” one of them said, almost in a sigh.

“Totally awesome,” said the other.

“You girls go on about your business,” Susannah said.

Their faces tucked in, assuming identical looks of sorrow. They could almost have been twins from the Calla. “Do we have to?” asked the first.

“Yes!” Susannah said.

“Thankee-sai, long days and pleasant nights,” said the second. Tears had begun to roll down her cheeks. Her friend was also crying.

“Forget you saw me!” Susannah called as they started away.

She watched them nervously until they reached Second Avenue and headed uptown, then turned her attention back to Mats van Wyck. “You get a wiggle on, too, Mats. Hoss your freight down to that hotel and rent a room. Tell them your friend Susannah will be right along.”

“What is this freight-hossing? I do not understand-”

“It means hurry up.” She handed back his wallet, minus the cash, wishing she could have gotten a longer look at all those plastic cards, wondering why anyone would need so many. “Once you have the room nailed down, go on to where you were going. Forget you ever saw me.”

Now, like the girls in their green uniforms, Mats began to weep. “Must I also forget the skolpadda? ”

“Yes.” Susannah remembered a hypnotist she’d once seen performing on some TV variety show, maybe even EdSullivan. “No turtle, but you’re going to feel good the rest of the day, you hear me? You’re going to feel like…” A million bucks might not mean that much to him, and for all she knew a million kroner wouldn’t buy a haircut. ’You’re going to feel like the Swedish Ambassador himself. And you’ll stop worrying about your wife’s fancy-man. To hell with him, right?”

“Yah, to hell wit dot guy!” Mats cried, and although he was still weeping, he was now smiling, too. There was something divinely childish in that smile. It made Susannah feel happy and sad at the same time. She wanted to do something else for Mats van Wyck, if she could.

“And your bowels?”

“Yah?”

“Like clockwork for the rest of your life,” Susannah said, holding the turtle up. “What’s your usual time, Mats?”

“I am going yust after breakfast.”

“Then that’s when it’ll be. For the rest of your life. Unless you’re busy. If you’re late for an appointment or something like that, just say… um… Maturin, and the urge’ll pass until the next day.”

“Maturin.”

“Correct. Go on, now.”

“May I not take the skolpadda?”

“No, you may not. Go on, now.”

He started away, then paused and looked back at her. Although his cheeks were wet, his expression was pixie-ish, a trifle sly. “Perhaps I should take it,” he said. “Perhaps it is mine by right.”

Like to see you try, honky was Detta’s thought, but Susannah-who felt more and more in charge of this wacky triad, at least for the time being-shushed her. “Why would you say that, my friend? Tell, I beg.”

The sly look remained. Don’t kid a kidder, it said. That was what it looked like to Susannah, anyway. “Mats, Maturin,” he said. “Maturin, Mats. You see?”

Susannah did. She started to tell him it was just a coincidence and then thought: Calla, Callahan.

“I see,” she said, “but the skolpadda isn’t yours. Nor mine, either.”

“Then whose?” Plaintive. Den hoose? it sounded like.

And before her conscious mind could stop her (or at least censor her), Susannah spoke the truth her heart and soul knew: “It belongs to the Tower, sai. The Dark Tower. And it’s to there I’ll return it, ka willing.”

“Gods be with you, lady-sai.”

“And you, Mats. Long days and pleasant nights.”

She watched the Swedish diplomat walk away, then looked down at the scrimshaw turtle and said, “That was pretty amazing, Mats old buddy.”

Mia had no interest in the turtle; she had but a single object. This hotel, she said. Will there be a telephone?

THREE

Susannah-Mia put the turtle into the pocket of her bluejeans and forced herself to wait for twenty minutes on the park bench. She spent much of this time admiring her new lower legs (whoever they belonged to, they were pretty fine) and wiggling her new toes inside her new

(stolen)

shoes. Once she closed her eyes and summoned up the control room of the Dogan. More banks of warning lights had gone on there, and the machinery under the floor was throbbing louder than ever, but the needle of the dial marked Susannah-Mio was still just a little way into the yellow. Cracks in the floor had begun to appear, as she had known they would, but so far they didn’t look serious. The situation wasn’t that great, but she thought they could live with it for now.

What are you waiting for? Mia demanded. Why are we just sitting here?

I’m giving the Swede a chance to do his business for us at the hotel and clear out, Susannah replied.

And when she thought enough time had passed for him to have done that, she gathered her bags, got up, crossed Second Avenue, and started down Forty-sixth Street to the Plaza-Park Hotel.

FOUR

The lobby was full of pleasant afternoon light reflected by angles of green glass. Susannah had never seen such a beautiful room-outside of St. Patrick’s, that was-but there was something alien about it, too.

Because it’s the future, she thought.

God knew there were enough signs of that. The cars looked smaller, and entirely different. Many of the younger women she saw were walking around with their lower bellies exposed and their bra-straps showing. Susannah had to see this latter phenomenon four or five times on her stroll down Forty-sixth Street before she could completely convince herself that it was some sort of bizarre fashion fillip, and not a mistake. In her day, a woman with a bra-strap showing (or an inch of slip, snowing down south they used to say) would have ducked into the nearest public restroom to pin it up, and at once. As for the deal with the nude bellies…

Would have gotten you arrested anywhere but Coney Island, she thought. No doubt about it.

But the thing which made the biggest impression was also the hardest thing to define: the city just seemed bigger. It thundered and hummed all around her. It vibrated. Every breath of air was perfumed with its signature smell. The women waiting for taxis outside the hotel (with or without their bra-straps showing) could only be New York women; the doormen (not one but two) flagging cabs could only be New York doormen; the cabbies (she was amazed by how many of them were dark-skinned, and she saw one who was wearing a turban) could only be New York cabbies, but they were all… different. The world had moved on. It was as if her New York, that of 1964, had been a triple-A ball-club. This was the major leagues.

She paused for a moment just inside the lobby, pulling the scrimshaw turtle out of her pocket and getting her bearings. To her left was a parlor area. Two women were sitting there, chatting, and Susannah stared at them for a moment, hardly able to credit how much leg they were showing under the hems of their skirts (what skirts, ha-ha?). And they weren’t teenagers or kollege kuties, either; these were women in their thirties, at least (although she supposed they might be in their sixties, who knew what scientific advances there might have been over the last thirty-five years).

To the right was a little shop. Somewhere in the shadows behind it a piano was tinkling out something blessedly familiar-'Night and Day'-and Susannah knew if she went toward the sound, she’d find a lot of leather seats, a lot of sparkling bottles, and a gentleman in a white coat who’d be happy to serve her even if it was only the middle of the afternoon. All this was a decided relief.

Directly ahead of her was the reception desk, and behind it was the most exotic woman Susannah had ever seen in her life. She appeared to be white, black, and Chinese, all whipped together. In 1964, such a woman would undoubtedly have been called a mongrel, no matter how beautiful she might have been. Here she had been popped into an extremely handsome ladies’ suit and put behind the reception desk of a large first-class hotel. The Dark Tower might be increasingly shaky, Susannah thought, and the world might be moving on, but she thought the lovely desk clerk was proof (if any were needed) that not everything was falling down or going in the wrong direction. She was talking to a customer who was complaining about his in-room movie bill, whatever that might be.

Never mind, it’s the future, Susannah told herself once again. It’s science fiction, like the City of Lud. Best leave it at that.

I don’t care what it is or when, Mia said. I want to be near a telephone. I want to see to my chap.

Susannah walked past a sign on a tripod, then turned back and gave it a closer look.

AS OF JULY 1ST, 1999, THE NEW YORK PLAZA-PARK HYATT

WILL BECOME THE REGAL U.N. PLAZA HOTEL