The Dark Tower (94 page)

Mixed with this memory was fear concerning the sore itself. What if it was cancer? Before, she’d always been able to thrust this idea away before it was fully articulated in her mind. This time she couldn’t. What if she’d caught her stupid self a cancer on her trek through the Badlands?

Her stomach knotted, then heaved. She kept her fine dinner in its place, but perhaps only for the time being.

Suddenly she wanted to be alone,
needed
to be alone. If she was going to vomit, she didn’t want to do it in front of Roland and this stranger. Even if she wasn’t, she wanted some time to get herself back under control. A gust of wind strong enough to shake the entire cottage roared past like a hotenj in full flight; the lights flickered and her stomach knotted again at the seasick motion of the shadows on the wall.

“I’ve got to go . . . the bathroom . . .” she managed to say. For a moment the world wavered, but then it steadied down again. In the fireplace a knot of wood exploded, shooting a flurry of crimson sparks up the chimney.

“You sure?” Joe asked. He was no longer angry (if he had been), but he was looking at her doubtfully.

“Let her go,” Roland said. “She needs to settle herself down, I think.”

Susannah began to give him a grateful smile, but it hurt the sore place and started it bleeding again, too. She didn’t know what else might change in the immediate future thanks to the dumb, unhealing sore, but she
did
know she was done listening to jokes for awhile. She’d need a transfusion if she did much more laughing.

“I’ll be back,” she said. “Don’t you boys go and eat all the rest of that pudding on me.” The very thought of food made her feel ill, but it was something to say.

“On the subject of pudding, I make no promise,” Roland said. Then, as she began to turn away: “If thee feels lightheaded in there, call me.”

“I will,” she said. “Thank you, Roland.”

Although Joe Collins lived alone, his bathroom had a pleasantly feminine feel to it. Susannah had noticed that the first time she’d used it. The wallpaper was pink, with green leaves and—what else?—wild roses. The john looked perfectly modern except for the ring, which was wood instead of plastic. Had he carved it himself? She didn’t think it was out of the question, although probably the robot had brought it from some forgotten store of stuff. Stuttering Carl? Was that what Joe called the robot? No, Bill. Stuttering Bill.

On one side of the john there was a stool, on the other a claw-foot tub with a shower attachment that made her think of Hitchcock’s
Psycho
(but
every
shower made her think of that damned movie
since she’d seen it in Times Square). There was also a porcelain washstand set in a waist-high wooden cabinet—good old plainoak rather than ironwood, she judged. There was a mirror above it. She presumed you swung it out and there were your pills and potions. All the comforts of home.

She removed the napkin with a wince and a little hissing cry. It had stuck in the drying blood, and pulling it away hurt. She was dismayed by the amount of blood on her cheeks, lips, and chin—not to mention her neck and the shoulder of her shirt. She told herself not to let it make her crazy; you ripped the top off something and it was going to bleed, that was all. Especially if it was on your stupid
face
.

In the other room she heard Joe say something, she couldn’t tell what, and Roland’s response: a few words with a chuckle tacked on at the end.
So weird to hear him do that,
she thought.
Almost like he’s drunk
. Had she ever seen Roland drunk? She realized she had not. Never falling-down drunk, never mother-naked, never fully caught by laughter . . . until now.

Ten’ yo business, woman,
Detta told her.

“All right,” she muttered. “All right, all right.”

Thinking drunk. Thinking naked. Thinking lost in laughter. Thinking they were all so close to being the same thing.

Maybe they
were
the same thing.

Then she got up on the stool and turned on the water. It came in a gush, blotting out the sounds from the other room.

She settled for cold, splashing it gently on her face, then using a facecloth—even more gently—to clean the skin around the sore. When that was done, she patted the sore itself. Doing it didn’t hurt as much as she’d been afraid it might. Susannah
was a little encouraged. When she was done, she rinsed out Joe’s facecloth before the bloodstains could set and leaned close to the mirror. What she saw made her breathe a sigh of relief. Slapping her hand incautiously to her face like that had torn the entire top off the sore, but maybe in the end that would turn out to be for the best. One thing was for sure: if Joe had a bottle of hydrogen peroxide or some kind of antibiotic cream in his medicine cabinet, she intended to give the damned mess a good cleaning-out while it was open. And ne’mine how much it might sting. Such a cleansing was due and overdue. Once it was finished, she’d bandage it over and then just hope for the best.

She spread the facecloth on the side of the basin to dry, then plucked a towel (it was the same shade of pink as the wallpaper) from a fluffy stack on a nearby shelf. She got it halfway to her face, then froze. There was a piece of notepaper lying on the next towel in the stack. It was headed with a flower-decked bench being lowered by a pair of happy cartoon angels. Beneath was this printed, bold-face line:

RELAX! HERE COMES THE

DEUS EX MACHINA!

And, in faded fountain pen ink:

Odd’s Lane
Odd Lane

Turn this over after you think about it.

Frowning, Susannah plucked the sheet of notepaper from the stack of towels. Who had left it here? Joe? She doubted it like hell. She turned the paper over. Here the same hand had written:

You didn’t
think
about it!
what a bad girl!

I’ve left you something in the medicine cabinet, but first

** THINK ABOUT IT! **

(Hint: Comedy + Tregedy = MAKE BELIEVE)

In the other room, Joe continued to speak and this time Roland burst out laughing instead of just chuckling. It sounded to Susannah as if Joe had resumed his monologue. In a way she could understand that—he’d been doing something he loved, something he hadn’t had a chance to do in a good long stretch of years—but part of her didn’t like the idea at all. That Joe would resume while she was in the bathroom tending to herself, that Roland would
let
him resume. Would listen and laugh while she was shedding blood. It seemed like a rotten, boys-clubby kind of thing to do. She supposed she had gotten used to better from Eddie.

Why don’t you forget the boys for the time being and concentrate on what’s right in front of you? What does it mean?

One thing seemed obvious: someone had expected her to come in here and find that note. Not Roland, not Joe.
Her. What a bad girl,
it said.
Girl
.

But who could have known? Who could have been sure? It wasn’t as if she made a habit of slapping her face (or her chest, or her knee) when she
laughed; she couldn’t remember a single other instance when—

But she could. Once. At a Dean Martin–Jerry Lewis movie.
Dopes at Sea,
or something like that. She’d been caught up in the same fashion then, laughing simply because the laughter had reached some point of critical mass and become self-feeding. The whole audience—at the Clark in Times Square, for all she knew—doing the same, rocking and rolling, swinging and swaying, spraying popcorn from mouths that were no longer their own. Mouths that belonged, at least for a few minutes, to Martin and Lewis, those dopes at sea. But it had only happened that once.

Comedy plus tragedy equals make-believe. But there’s no tragedy here, is there?

She didn’t expect an answer to this, but she got one. It came in the cold voice of intuition.

Not yet, there isn’t
.

For no reason whatsoever she found herself thinking of Lippy. Grinning, gruesome Lippy. Did the
folken
laugh in hell? Susannah was somehow sure they did. They grinned like Lippy the Wonder-Nag when Satan began his

(
take my horse . . . please
)

routine, and then they laughed. Helplessly. Hopelessly. For all of eternity, may it please ya not at all.

What in the hell’s wrong with you, woman?

In the other room, Roland laughed again. Oy barked, and that also sounded like laughter.

Odd’s Lane, Odd Lane
. . .
think about it.

What was there to think about? One was the name of the street, the other was the same thing, only without the—

“Whoa-back, wait a minute,” she said in a low voice. Little more than a whisper, really, and who
did she think would hear her? Joe was talking—pretty much nonstop, it sounded like—and Roland was laughing. So who did she think might be listening? The cellar-dweller, if there really was one?

“Whoa-on a minute, just wait.”

She closed her eyes and once more saw the two street-signs on their pole, signs that were actually a little below the pilgrims, because the newcomers had been standing on a snowbank nine feet high.
TOWER ROAD
, one of the signs had read—that one pointing to the plowed road that disappeared over the horizon. The other, the one indicating the short lane with the cottages on it, had said
ODD’S LANE
, only . . .

“Only it
didn’t,
” she murmured, clenching the hand that wasn’t holding the note into a fist. “It
didn’t.
”

She could see it clearly enough in her mind’s eye:
ODD’S LANE
, with the apostrophe and the
S added,
and why would somebody do that? Was the sign-changer maybe a compulsive neatnik who couldn’t stand—

What? Couldn’t stand what?

Beyond the closed bathroom door, Roland roared louder than ever. Something fell over and broke.
He’s not used to laughing like that,
Susannah thought.
You best look out, Roland, or you’ll do yourself damage. Laugh yourself into a hernia, or something.