can hear. And they would converge upon the would-be assassin of the rose. They would do so swiftly, and with absolutely no regard for their own safety. The rose had been able to protect itself when it had been growing in the trash and the weeds of the vacant lot (or at least draw those who would protect it), and that hadn't changed.
"Mr. Deschain? Are you ready to go upstairs now?"
"Aye," he said. "Lead me as you would."
SEVEN
The familiarity of the woman's face clicked into place for him just as they reached the ele-vaydor. Perhaps it was seeing her in profile that did it, something about the shape of the cheekbone.
He remembered Eddie telling him about his conversation with Calvin Tower after Jack Andolini and George Biondi had left the Manhattan Restaurant of die Mind. Tower had been speaking of his oldest friend's family. They like to boast that they have the most unique legal letterhead in New York, perhaps in the United States.
It simply reads "DEEPNEAU."
"Are you sai Aaron Deepneau's daughter?" he asked her.
"Surely not, you're too young. His granddaughter?"
Her smile faded. "Aaron never had children, Mr. Deschain.
I'm the granddaughter of his older brother, but my own parents and grandfather died young. Airy was the one who mosdy raised me."
"Did you call him so? Airy?" Roland was charmed.
"As a child I did, and it just kind of stuck." She held out a hand, her smile returning. "Nancy Deepneau. And I am so pleased to meet you. A litde frightened, but pleased."
Roland shook her hand, but the gesture was perfunctory, hardly more than a touch. Then, with considerably more feeling
(for this was the ritual he had grown up with, the one he understood), he placed his fist against his forehead and made a leg. "Long days and pleasant nights, Nancy Deepneau."
Her smile widened into a cheerful grin. "And may you have twice the number, Roland of Gilead! May you have twice the number."
The ele-vaydor came, they got on, and it was to the ninetyninth floor that they went.
EIGHT
The doors opened on a large round foyer. The floor was carpeted in a dusky pink shade that exacdy matched the hue of the rose. Across from the ele-vaydor was a glass door with THE TET CORPORATION lettered on it. Beyond, Roland saw another, smaller lobby where a woman sat at a desk, apparendy talking to herself. To the right of the outer lobby door were two men wearing business suits. They were chatting to each other, hands in pockets, seemingly relaxed, but Roland saw they were anything but. And they were armed. The coats of their suits were welltailored, but a man who knows how to look for a gun usually sees one, if a gun is there. These two fellows would stand in this foyer for an hour, maybe two (it was difficult for even good men to remain totally alert for much longer), falling into their little justchatting routine each time the ele-vaydor came, ready to move instandy if they smelled something wrong. Roland approved.
He didn't spend much time looking at the guards, however.
Once he had identified them for what they were, he let his gaze go where it had wanted to be from the moment the ele-vaydor doors opened. There was a large black-and-white picture on the wall to his left. This was a photograph (he had originally thought the word was fottergraf) about five feet long and three wide, mounted without a frame, curved so cunningly to the shape of the wall diat it looked like a hole into some unnaturally still reality. Three men in jeans and open-necked shirts sat on the top rail of a fence, their boots hooked under the lowest rail.
How many times, Roland wondered, had he seen cowboys or pastorillas sitting just that way while they watched branding, roping, gelding, or the breaking of wild horses? How many times had he sat so himself, sometimes with one or more of his old tet-Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie DeCurry-sitting to either side of him, as John Cullum and Aaron Deepneau sat flanking the black man with the gold-rimmed spectacles and the tiny white moustache? The remembering made him ache, and this was no mere ache of the mind; his stomach clenched and his heart sped up. The three in the picture had been caught laughing at something, and the result was a kind of timeless perfection, one of those rare moments when men are glad to be what they are and where they are.