Song of Susannah

“And I very much doubt if you could show a permit to carry those frighteningly large handguns, either.”

Eddie glanced down at the big-and incredibly ancient-revolver riding just below his hip, then looked back up at Deepneau, amused. “That would also be correct,” he said.

“Then be careful. You’ll be leaving East Stoneham, so you’ll probably be okay if you are.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said, and stuck out his hand. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

Deepneau shook. “That’s a lovely thing to say, son, but I’m afraid my nights haven’t been especially pleasant just lately, and if things on the medical front don’t take a turn for the better soon, my days aren’t apt to be especially long, either.”

“They’re going to be longer than you might think,” Eddie said. “I have good reason to believe you’ve got at least another four years in you.”

Deepneau touched a finger to his lips, then pointed at the sky. “From the mouth of man to the ear of God.”

Eddie swung to Calvin Tower while Roland shook hands with Deepneau. For a moment Eddie didn’t think the bookstore owner was going to shake with him, but at last he did. Grudgingly.

“Long days and pleasant nights, sai Tower. You did the right thing.”

“I was coerced and you know it,” Tower said. “Store gone… property gone… about to be run off the first real vacation I’ve had in ten years…”

“Microsoft,” Eddie said abruptly. And then: “Lemons.”

Tower blinked. “Beg pardon?”

“Lemons” Eddie repeated, and then he laughed out loud.

FOURTEEN

Toward the end of his mostly useless life, the great sage and eminent junkie Henry Dean had enjoyed two things above all others: getting stoned; getting stoned and talking about how he was going to make a killing in the stock market. In investment matters, he considered himself a regular E. F. Hutton.

“One thing I would most definitely not invest in, bro,” Henry told him once when they were up on the roof. Not long before Eddie’s trip to the Bahamas as a cocaine mule, this had been. “One thing I would most apple-solutely not sink my money into is all this computer shit, Microsoft, Macintosh, Sanyo, Sankyo, Pentium, all that.”

“Seems pretty popular,” Eddie had ventured. Not that he’d much cared, but what the hell, it was a conversation. “Microsoft, especially. The coming thing.”

Henry had laughed indulgently and made jacking-off gestures. “My prick, that’s the coming thing.”

“But-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, people’re flocking to that crap. Driving all the prices up. And when I observe that action, do you know what I see?”

“No, what?”

“Lemons!”

“Lemons?” Eddie had asked. He’d thought he was following Henry, but he guessed he was lost, after all. Of course the sunset had been amazing that evening, and he had been most colossally fucked up.

“You heard me!” Henry had said, warming to the subject. “Fuckin lemons! Didn’t they teach you anything in school, bro? Lemons are these little animals that live over in Switzerland, or someplace like that. And every now and then-I think it’s every ten years, I’m not sure-they get suicidal and throw themselves over the cliffs.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, biting hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting into mad cackles. “Those lemons. I thought you meant the ones you use to make lemonade.”

“Fuckin wank,” Henry said, but he spoke with the indulgent good nature the great and eminent sometimes reserve for the small and uninformed. “Anyway, my point is that all these people who are flockin to invest in Microsoft and Macintosh and, I don’t know, fuckin Nervous Norvus Speed Dial Chips, all they’re gonna do is make Bill Fuckin Gates and Steve Fuckin Jobs-a-rino rich. This computer shit is gonna crash and burn by 1995, all the experts say so, and the people investin in it? Fuckin lemons, throwin themselves over the cliffs and into the fuckin ocean.”

“Just fuckin lemons,” Eddie agreed, and sprawled back on the still-warm roof so Henry wouldn’t see how close he was to losing it entirely. He was seeing billions of Sunkist lemons trotting toward these high cliffs, all of them wearing red jogging shorts and little white sneakers, like M amp;Ms in a TV ad.

“Yeah, but I wish I’d gotten into that fuckin Microsoft in ’82,” Henry said. “Do you realize that shares that were sellin for fifteen bucks back then are now sellin for thirty-five? Oh, man!”

“Lemons,” Eddie had said dreamily, watching the sunset’s colors begin to fade. At that point he’d had less than a month to live in his world-the one where Co-Op City was in Brooklyn and always had been-and Henry had less than a month to live, period.

“Yeah,” Henry had said, lying down beside him, “but man, I wish I coulda gotten in back in ’82.”

FIFTEEN

Now, still holding Tower’s hand, he said: “I’m from the future. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that he says you are, yes.” Tower jerked his head toward Roland, then tried to pull his hand free. Eddie held on.

“Listen to me, Cal. If you listen and then act on what I tell you, you can earn what that vacant lot of yours would be worth on the real estate market five, maybe even ten times over.”

“Big talk from a man who isn’t even wearing socks,” Tower said, and once again tried to pull his hand free. Again Eddie held it. Once he supposed he wouldn’t have been able to do that, but his hands were stronger now. So was his will.

“Big talk from a man who’s seen the future,” he corrected. “And the future is computers, Cal. The future is Microsoft. Can you remember that?”

“I can,” Aaron said. “Microsoft.'’

“Never heard of it,” Tower said.

“No,” Eddie agreed, “I don’t think it even exists yet. But it will, soon, and it’s going to be huge. Computers, okay? Computers for everybody, or at least that was the plan. Will be the plan. The guy in charge is Bill Gates. Always Bill, never William.”

It occurred to him briefly that since this world was different from the one in which he and Jake had grown up-the world of Claudia y Inez Bachman instead of Beryl Evans-that maybe the big computer genius here wouldn’t be Gates; could be someone named Chin Ho Fuk, for all Eddie knew. But he also knew that wasn’t likely. This world was very close to his: same cars, same brand names (Coke and Pepsi rather than Nozz-A-La), same people on the currency. He thought he could count on Bill Gates (not to mention Steve Jobs-a-rino) showing up when he was supposed to.

In one way, he didn’t even care. Calvin Tower was in many respects a total shithead. On the other hand, Tower had stood up to Andolini and Balazar for as long as he had to. He’d held onto the vacant lot. And now Roland had the bill of sale in his pocket. They owed Tower a fair return for what he’d sold them. It had nothing to do with how much or how little they liked the guy, which was probably a good thing for old Cal.

“This Microsoft stuff,” Eddie said, “you can pick it up for fifteen dollars a share in 1982. By 1987-which is when I sort of went on permanent vacation-those shares will be worth thirty-five apiece. That’s a hundred per cent gain. A little more.”

“Says you,” Tower said, and finally succeeded in pulling his hand free.

“If he says so,” Roland said, “it’s the truth.”

“Say thanks,” Eddie said. It occurred to him that he was suggesting that Tower take a fairly big leap based on a stone junkie’s observations, but he thought that in this case he could do that.

“Come on,” Roland said, and made that twirling gesture with his fingers. “If we’re going to see the writer, let’s go.”

Eddie slid behind the wheel of Cullum’s car, suddenly sure that he would never see either Tower or Aaron Deepneau again. With the exception of Pere Callahan, none of them would. The partings had begun.

“Do well,” he said to them. “May ya do well.”

“And you,” Deepneau said.

“Yes,” Tower said, and for once he didn’t sound a bit grudging. “Good luck to you both. Long days and happy nights, or whatever it is.”

There was just room to turn around without backing, and Eddie was glad-he wasn’t quite ready for reverse, at least not yet.

As Eddie drove back toward the Rocket Road, Roland looked over his shoulder and waved. This was highly unusual behavior for him, and the knowledge must have shown on Eddie’s face.

“It’s the end-game now,” Roland said. “All I’ve worked for and waited for all the long years. The end is coming. I feel it. Don’t you?”

Eddie nodded. It was like that point in a piece of music when all the instruments begin rushing toward some inevitable crashing climax.

“Susannah?” Roland asked.

“Still alive.”

“Mia?”

“Still in control.”

“The baby?”

“Still coming.”

“And Jake? Father Callahan?”

Eddie stopped at the road, looked both ways, then made his turn.

“No,” he said. “From them I haven’t heard. What about you?”

Roland shook his own head. From Jake, somewhere in the future with just an ex-Catholic priest and a billy-bumbler for protection, there was only silence. Roland hoped the boy was all right.

For the time being, he could do no more.

STAVE: Commala-me-mine
You have to walk the line.