Jake was about to go on—he felt witty, bubbly, full of amusing things to say—when someone came around the corner, passed them without looking (as everyone else had), and changed everything. It was a kid wearing Dockers that looked like Jake’s because they were Jake’s. Not the pair he had on now, but they were his, all right. So were the sneakers. They were the ones Jake had lost in Dutch Hill. The plaster-man who guarded the door between the worlds had torn them right off his feet.

The boy who had just passed them was John Chambers, it was him, only this version looked soft and innocent and painfully young. How did you survive? he asked his own retreating back. How did you survive the mental stress of losing your mind, and running away from home, and that horrible house in Brooklyn? Most of all, how did you survive the doorkeeper? You must be tougher than you look.

Eddie did a doubletake so comical that Jake laughed in spite of his own shocked surprise. It made him think of those comic-book panels where Archie or Jughead is trying to look in two directions at the same time. He looked down and saw a similar expression on Oy’s face. Somehow that made the whole thing even funnier.

“What the fuck ?” Eddie asked.

“Instant replay,” Jake said, and laughed harder. It came out sounding goofy as shit, but he didn’t care. He felt goofy. “It’s like when we watched Roland in the Great Hall of Gilead, only this is New York and it’s May 31st, 1977! It’s the day I took French Leave from Piper! Instant replay, baby!”

“French—?” Eddie began, but Jake didn’t give him a chance to finish. He was struck by another realization. Except struck was too mild a word. He was buried by it, like a man who just happens to be on the beach when a tidal wave rolls in. His face blazed so brightly that Eddie actually took a step back.

“The rose!” he whispered. He felt too weak in the diaphragm to speak any louder, and his throat was as dry as a sandstorm. “Eddie, the rose !”

“What about it?”

“This is the day I see it!” He reached out and touched Eddie’s forearm with a trembling hand. “I go to the bookstore…then to the vacant lot. I think there used to be a delicatessen—”

Eddie was nodding and beginning to look excited himself. “Tom and Jerry’s Artistic Deli, corner of Second and Forty-sixth—”

“The deli’s gone but the rose is there! That me walking down the street is going to see it, and we can see it, too !”

At that, Eddie’s own eyes blazed. “Come on, then,” he said. “We don’t want to lose you. Him. Whoever the fuck.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake said. “I know where he’s going.”

Two