Suddenly it was all real to him, or as real as he thought he needed it to be. Eddie raised his left hand and popped up his thumb: let’s go . Behind him, Roland had sat down and eased the box out of the pink bag. And when Eddie gave him the thumbs-up, the gunslinger opened the box.

Eddie’s ears were immediately assaulted by a sweetly dissonant jangle of chimes. His eyes began to water. In front of him, the free-standing door clicked open and the cave was suddenly illuminated by strong sunlight. There was the sound of beeping horns and the rat-a-tat-tat of a jackhammer. Not so long ago he had wanted a door like this so badly that he’d almost killed Roland to get it. And now that he had it, he was scared to death.

The todash chimes felt as if they were tearing his head apart. If he listened to that for long, he’d go insane. Go if you’re going, he thought.

He stepped forward, through his gushing eyes seeing three hands reach out and grasp four doorknobs. He pulled the door toward him and golden late-day sunlight dazzled his eyes. He could smell gasoline and hot city air and someone’s after-shave.

Hardly able to see anything, Eddie stepped through the unfound door and into the summer of a world from which he was now fan-gon, the exiled one.

Four

It was Second Avenue, all right; here was the Blimpie’s, and from behind him came the cheery sound of that Mungo Jerry song with the Caribbean beat. People moved around him in a flood—uptown, downtown, all around the town. They paid no attention to Eddie, partly because most of them were only concentrating on getting out of town at the end of another day, mostly because in New York, not noticing other people was a way of life.

Eddie shrugged his right shoulder, settling the strap of Roland’s swag-bag there more firmly, then looked behind him. The door back to Calla Bryn Sturgis was there. He could see Roland sitting at the mouth of the cave with the box open on his lap.

Those fucking chimes must be driving him crazy,Eddie thought. And then, as he watched, he saw the gunslinger remove a couple of bullets from his gunbelt and stick them in his ears. Eddie grinned. Good move, man. At least it had helped to block out the warble of the thinny back on I-70. Whether it worked now or whether it didn’t, Roland was on his own. Eddie had things to do.