What Eddie had discovered about Tower during their palaver was dismaying. He harbored some respect for the man (for any man who could hold out for more than twenty seconds against Balazar’s goons), but didn’t like him much. There was a kind of willful stupidity about him. Eddie thought it was self-created and maybe propped up by his analyst, who would tell him about how he had to take care of himself, how he had to be the captain of his own ship, the author of his own destiny, respect his own desires, all that blah-blah. All the little code words and terms that meant it was all right to be a selfish fuck. That it was noble, even. When Tower told Eddie that Aaron Deepneau was his only friend, Eddie wasn’t surprised. What surprised him was that Tower had any friends at all. Such a man could never be ka-tet, and it made Eddie uneasy to know that their destinies were so tightly bound together.

You’ll just have to trust to ka. It’s what ka’s for, isn’t it?

Sure it was, but Eddie didn’t have to like it.

Fourteen

Eddie asked if Tower had a ring with Ex Liveris on it. Tower looked puzzled, then laughed and told Eddie he must mean Ex Libris . He rummaged on one of his shelves, found a book, showed Eddie the plate in front. Eddie nodded.

“No,” Tower said. “But it’d be just the thing for a guy like me, wouldn’t it?” He looked at Eddie keenly. “Why do you ask?”

But Tower’s future responsibility to save a man now exploring the hidden highways of multiple Americas was a subject Eddie didn’t feel like getting into right now. He’d come as close to blowing the guy’s mind as he wanted to, and he had to get back through the unfound door before Black Thirteen wore Roland away to a frazzle.

“Never mind. But if you see one, you ought to pick it up. One more thing and then I’m gone.”

“What’s that?”

“I want your promise that as soon as I leave, you’ll leave.”

Tower once more grew shifty. It was the side of him Eddie knew he could come to outright loathe, given time. “Why…to tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can do that. Early evenings are often a very busy time for me…people are much more prone to browse once the workday’s over…and Mr. Brice is coming in to look at a first of The Troubled Air, Irwin Shaw’s novel about radio and the McCarthy era…I’ll have to at least skim through my appointment calendar, and…”

He droned on, actually gathering steam as he descended toward trivialities.

Eddie said, very mildly: “Do you like your balls, Calvin? Are you maybe as attached to them as they are to you?”