enough for some of them to go running down my throat.
Yeah, Eddie replied, but this is New York.
He took the dogs and the soda to the far end of the counter and stood with his back to the terminal’s main concourse. Then he glanced up in the left-hand corner. A convex mirror bulged there like a hypertensive eye. He could see all of his followers in it, but none was close enough to see the food and cup of soda, and that was good, because Eddie didn’t have the slightest idea what was going to happen to it.
Put the astin on the meat-things. Then hold everything in your hands.
Aspirin.
Good. Call it flutergork if you want, pr . . . Eddie. Just do it.
He took the Anacin out of the stapled bag he had stuffed in his pocket, almost put it down on one of the hot-dogs, and suddenly realized that Roland would have problems just getting what Eddie thought of as the poison-proofing—off the tin, let alone opening it.
He did it himself, shook three of the pills onto one of the napkins, debated, then added three more.
Three now, three later, he said. If there is a later.
All right. Thank you.
Now what?
Hold all of it.
Eddie had glanced into the convex mirror again. Two of the agents were strolling casually toward the snack-bar, maybe not liking the way Eddie’s back was turned, maybe smelling a little prestidigitation in progress and wanting a closer look. If something was going to happen, it better happen quick.
He put his hands around everything, feeling the heat of the dogs in their soft white rolls, the chill of the Pepsi. In that moment he looked like a guy getting ready to carry a snack back to his kids . . . and then the stuff started to melt.
He stared down, eyes widening, widening, until it felt to him that they must soon fall out and dangle by their stalks.
He could see the hotdogs through the rolls. He could see the Pepsi through the cup, the ice-choked liquid curving to conform to a shape which could no longer be seen.
Then he could see the red Formica counter through the foot-longs and the white wall through the Pepsi. His hands slid toward each other, the resistance between them growing less and less . . . and then they closed against each other, palm to palm. The food . . . the napkins . . . the Pepsi-Cola . . . the six Anacin . . . all the things which had been between his hands were gone.
Jesus jumped up and played the fiddle, Eddie thought numbly. He flicked his eyes up toward the convex mirror.
The doorway was gone . . . just as Roland was gone from his mind.
Eat hearty, my friend, Eddie thought . . . but was this weird alien presence that called itself Roland his friend? That was far from proved, wasn’t it? He had saved Eddie’s bacon, true enough, but that didn’t mean he was a Boy Scout.
All the same, he liked Roland. Feared him . . . but liked him as well.
Suspected that in time he could love him, as he loved Henry.
Eat well, stranger, he thought. Eat well, stay alive . . . and come back.
Close by were a few mustard-stained napkins left by a previous customer. Eddie balled them up, tossed them in the trash-barrel by the door on his way out, and chewed air as if finishing a last bite of something. He was even able to manufacture a burp as he approached the black guy on his way toward the signs pointing the way to LUGGAGE and GROUND TRANSPORTATION.
“Couldn’t find a shirt you liked?” Eddie asked.
“I beg your pardon?” the black guy turned from the American Airlines departures monitor he was pretending to study.
“I thought maybe you were looking for one that said PLEASE FEED ME, I AM A U.S. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE,” Eddie said, and walked on.
As he headed down the stairs he saw the purse-rooter hurriedly snap her purse shut and get to her feet.
Oh boy, this is gonna be like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
It had been one fuck of an interesting day, and Eddie didn’t think it was over yet.
5
When Roland saw the lobster-things coming out of the waves again (their coming had nothing to do with tide, then; it was the dark that brought them), he left Eddie Dean to move himself before the creatures could find and eat him.