"It's the sweetness of the cream." Then, looking at him as she does it, she pokes her tongue out and licks a bit of the nutmeg-dusted foam.
"If you aren't cold now, you will be," he says. "WRKO says the temperature's gonna drop twenty degrees tonight. So I bought you something." From his back pocket he takes a knitted cap, the kind you can pull down over your ears. She looks at the front of it and sees the words there printed in red: MERRY CHRISTMAS...
"Bought it in Brendio's, on Fifth Avenue," he says.
Susannah has never heard of Brendio's. Brentano's, maybe-the bookstore-but not Brendio's. But of course in the America where she grew up, she never heard of Nozz-A-La or Takuro Spirit automobiles, either. "Did your voices tell you to buy it?" Teasing him a little now.
He blushes. "Actually, you know, they sort of did. Try it on."
It's a perfect fit.
"Tell me something," she says. "Who's the President? You're not going to tell me it's Ronald Reagan, are you?"
He looks at her incredulously for a moment, and then smiles. "What? That old actor who used to host Death Valley Days on TV? You're kidding, right?"
"Nope. I always thought you were the one who was kidding about Ronnie Reagan, Eddie."
"I don't know what you mean."
"That's okay, just tell me who the President is."
"Gary Hart," he says, as if speaking to a child. "From Colorado.
He almost dropped out of the race in 1980-as I'm sure you know-over that Monkey Business business. Then he said
"Fuck em if they can't take a joke' and hung on in there. Ended up winning in a landslide."
His smile fades a little as he studies her.
"You're not kidding me, are you?"
"Are you kidding me about the voices? The ones you hear in our head? The ones that wake you up at two in the morning?"
Eddie looks almost shocked. "How can you know that?"
"It's a long story. Maybe someday I'll tell you." If I can still remember, she thinks.
"It's not just the voices."
"No?"
"No. I've been dreaming of you. For months now. I've been waiting for you. Listen, we don't know each other... this is crazy... but do you have a place to stay? You don't, do you?"
She shakes her head. Doing a passable John Wayne (or maybe it's Blaine the train she's imitating), she says: "Ah'm a stranger here in Dodge, pilgrim."
Her heart is pounding slowly and heavily in her chest, but she feels a rising joy. This is going to be all right. She doesn't know how it can be, but yes, it's going to be just fine. This time ka is working in her favor, and the force of ka is enormous. This she knows from experience.
"If I asked how I know you... or where you come from..."
He pauses, looking at her levelly, and then says the rest of it.
"Or how I can possibly love you already...?"
She smiles. It feels good to smile, and it no longer hurts die side of her face, because whatever was there (some sort of scar, maybe-she can't quite remember) is gone. "Sugar," she tells him, "it's what I said: a long story. You'll get some of it in time, though... what I remember of it. And it could be that we still have some work to do. For an outfit called the Tet Corporation."
She looks around and then says, "What year is this?"
"1987," he says.
"And do you live in Brooklyn? Or maybe the Bronx?"
The young man whose dreams and squabbling voices have led him here-with a cup of hot chocolate in his hand and a MERRY CHRISTMAS hat in his back pocket-bursts out laughing. "God, no! I'm from White Plains! I came in on the train with my brother. He's right over there. He wanted a closer look at the polar bears."
The brother. Henry. The great sage and eminent junkie.
Her heart sinks.
"Let me introduce you," he says.
"No, really, I-"
"Hey, if we're gonna be friends, you gotta be friends with my kid brother. We're tight. Jake! Hey, Jake!"
She hasn't noticed the boy standing down by the railing which guards the sunken polar bears' environment from the rest of the park, but now he turns and her heart takes a great, giddy leap in her chest. Jake waves and ambles toward them.
"Jake's been dreaming about you, too," Eddie tells her. "It's the only reason I know I'm not going crazy. Any crazier than usual, at least."
She takes Eddie's hand-that familiar, well-loved hand.
And when the fingers close over hers, she thinks she will die of joy. She will have many questions-so will they-but for the time being she has only one that feels important. As the snow begins to fall more thickly around them, landing in his hair and in his lashes and on the shoulders of his sweatshirt, she asks it.
"You and Jake-what's your last name?"
"Toren," he says. "It's German."
Before either of them can say anything else, Jake joins them. And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.
And they didlive.
Beneath the flowing and sometimes glimpsed glammer of the Beam that connects Shardik the Bear and Maturin the Turtle by way of the Dark Tower, they did live.
That's all.
That's enough.
Say thankya.
FOUND (CODA)
ONE