He turned slowly on his little spot of the sidewalk, then looked over his shoulder again to verify the door had turned with him. It had. If it was like the other ones, it would now follow him everywhere he went. Even if it didn’t, Eddie didn’t foresee a problem; he wasn’t planning on going far. He noticed something else, as well: that sense of darkness lurking behind everything was gone. Because he was really here, he supposed, and not just todash. If there were vagrant dead lurking in the vicinity, he wouldn’t be able to see them.

Once more shrugging the swag-bag’s strap further up on his shoulder, Eddie set off for The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

Five

People moved aside for him as he walked, but that wasn’t quite enough to prove he was really here; people did that when you were todash, too. At last Eddie provoked an actual collision with a young guy toting not one briefcase but two —a Big Coffin Hunter of the business world if Eddie had ever seen one.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” Mr. Businessman squawked when their shoulders collided.

“Sorry, man, sorry,” Eddie said. He was here, all right. “Say, could you tell me what day—”

But Mr. Businessman was already gone, chasing the coronary he’d probably catch up to around the age of forty-five or fifty, from the look of him. Eddie remembered the punchline of an old New York joke: “Pardon me, sir, can you tell me how to get to City Hall, or should I just go fuck myself?” He burst out laughing, couldn’t help it.

Once he had himself back under control, he got moving again. On the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he saw a man looking into a shop window at a display of shoes and boots. This guy was also wearing a suit, but looked considerably more relaxed than the one Eddie had bumped into. Also he was carrying only a single briefcase, which Eddie took to be a good omen.

“Cry your pardon,” Eddie said, “but could you tell me what day it is?”

“Thursday,” the window-shopper said. “The twenty-third of June.”

“1977?”

The window-shopper gave Eddie a little half-smile, both quizzical and cynical, plus a raised eyebrow. “1977, that’s correct. Won’t be 1978 for…gee, another six months. Think of that.”

Eddie nodded. “Thankee-sai.”

“Thankee- what?”

“Nothing,” Eddie said, and hurried on.

Only three weeks to July fifteenth, give or take,he thought. That’s cutting it too goddam close for comfort.