“Mister, I don’t know who your friend is, but as for you … man, I made you. You can’t be standing there because the only place you really exist is here.” He thumped a fist to the center of his forehead, as if in parody of Roland. Then he pointed to his house. His ranch-style house. “And in there. You’re in there, too, I guess. In a desk drawer, or maybe a box in the garage. You’re unfinished business. I haven’t thought of you in … in …”

His voice had grown thin. Now he began to sway like someone who hears faint but delicious music, and his knees buckled. He fell.

“Roland!” Eddie shouted, at last plunging forward. “Man’s had a fucking heart attack!” Already knowing (or perhaps only hoping) better. Because the singing was as strong as ever. The faces in the trees and shadows as clear.

The gunslinger was bending down and grasping King—who had already begun to thrash weakly—under the arms. “He’s but fainted. And who could blame him? Help me get him into the house.”

SIX

The master bedroom had a gorgeous view of the lake and a hideous purple rug on the floor. Eddie sat on the bed and watched through the bathroom door as King took off his wet sneakers and outer clothes, stepping between the door and the tiled bathroom wall for a moment to swap his wet under-shorts for a dry pair. He hadn’t objected to Eddie following him into the bedroom. Since coming to—and he’d been out for no more than thirty seconds—he had displayed an almost eerie calm.

Now he came out of the bathroom and crossed to the bureau. “Is this a practical joke?” he asked, rummaging for dry jeans and a fresh tee-shirt. To Eddie, King’s house said money—some, at least. God knew what the clothes said. “Is it something Mac McCutcheon and Floyd Calderwood dreamed up?”

“I don’t know those men, and it’s no joke.”

“Maybe not, but that man can’t be real.” King stepped into the jeans. He spoke to Eddie in a reasonable tone of voice. “I mean, I wrote about him!”

Eddie nodded. “I kind of figured that. But he’s real, just the same. I’ve been running with him for—” How long? Eddie didn’t know. “—for awhile,” he finished. “You wrote about him but not me?”

“Do you feel left out?”

Eddie laughed, but in truth he did feel left out. A little, anyway. Maybe King hadn’t gotten to him yet. If that was the case, he wasn’t exactly safe, was he?

“This doesn’t feel like a breakdown,” King said, “but I suppose they never do.”

“You’re not having a breakdown, but I have some sympathy for how you feel, sai. That man—”

“Roland. Roland of … Gilead?”

“You say true.”

“I don’t know if I had the Gilead part or not,” King said. “I’d have to check the pages, if I could find them. But it’s good. As in ‘There is no balm in Gilead.’”