and heard their quiet after-love talk. Most of it was about him. He lay quietly, open eyes looking into the darkness long after their talk had ceased and their breathing had evened out into a single easy note.
It was, he thought, fine to be young and in love. Even in the graveyard which this world had become, it was fine.
Enjoy it while you can, he thought, because there is more death ahead. We have come to a stream of blood. That it will lead us to a river of the same stuff I have no doubt. And, further along, to an ocean. In this world the graves yawn and none of the dead rest easy.
As dawn began to come up in the east, he closed his eyes. Slept briefly. And dreamed of Jake.
19
EDDIE ALSO DREAMED—DREAMED he was back in New York, walking along Second Avenue with a book in his hand.
In this dream it was spring. The air was warm, the city was blooming, and homesickness sobbed within him like a muscle with a fishhook caught deep within it. Enjoy this dream, and make it go on as long as you can, he thought. Savor it . . . because this is as close to New York as you’re going to get. You can’t go home, Eddie. That part’s done.
He looked down at the book and was utterly unsurprised to find it was You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Stamped into the dark red cover were three shapes; key, rose, and door. He stopped for a moment, flipped the book open, and read the first line. The man in black fled across the desert, Wolfe had written, and the gunslinger followed.
Eddie closed it and walked on. It was about nine in the morning, he judged, maybe nine-thirty, and traffic on Second Avenue was light. Taxis honked and wove their way from lane to lane with spring sunshine twinkling off their windshields and bright yellow paintjobs. A bum on the corner of Second and Fifty-second asked him for a handout and Eddie tossed the book with the red cover into his lap. He observed (also without surprise) that the bum was Enrico Balazar. He was sitting cross-legged in front of a magic shop. HOUSE OF CARDS, the sign in the window read, and the display inside showed a tower which had been built of Tarot cards. Standing on top was a model of King Kong. There was a tiny radar-dish growing out of the great ape’s head.
Eddie walked on, lazing his way downtown, the street-signs floating past him. He knew where he was going as soon as he saw it: a small shop on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth.
Yeah, he thought. A feeling of great relief swept through him. This is the place. The very place. The window was full of hanging meats and cheeses. TOM AND GERRY’S ARTISTIC DELI, the sign read. PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!
As he stood looking in, someone else he knew came around the corner. It was Jack Andolini, wearing a three-piece suit the color of vanilla ice cream and carrying a black cane in his left hand. Half of his face was gone, lopped off by the claws of the lobstrosities.
Go on in, Eddie, Jack said as he passed. After all, there are other worlds than these and that fuckin train rolls through all of them.
I can’t, Eddie replied. The door is locked. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he did; knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key, Jack said, not looking back. Eddie looked down and saw he did have a key; a primitive-looking thing with three notches like inverted V’s.
That little s-shape at the end of the last notch is the secret, he thought. He stepped under the awning of Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli and inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily. He opened the door and stepped through into a huge open field. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the traffic on Second Avenue hurrying by, and then the door slammed shut and fell over. There was nothing behind it. Nothing at all. He turned back to survey his new surroundings, and what he saw filled him with terror at first. The field was a deep scarlet, as if some titanic battle had been fought here and the ground had been drenched with so much blood that it could not all be absorbed.