Never mind, sugar, you just bite down on your tongue and let Roland handle this. You can't kill him!
No, Eddie supposed not.
Not, at least, until sai Tower had signed on the dotted line. After that, however...after that...
Six
"Aaron!" Tower called as he mounted the porch steps.
Roland caught Deepneau's eyes and put a finger across his lips.
"Aaron, heyAaron !" Tower sounded strong and happy to be alive - not a man on the run but a man on a wonderful busman's holiday. "Aaron, I went over to that widow's house in East Fryeburg, and holy Joe, she's got every novel Herman Wouk ever wrote! Not the book club editions, either, which is what I expected, but - "
Thescroink! of the screen door's rusty spring being stretched was followed by the clump of shoes across the porch.
" - the Doubleday firsts!Marjorie Morningstar! The Caine Mutiny! I think somebody across the lake better hope their fire insurance is paid up, because - "
He stepped in. Saw Aaron. Saw Roland sitting across from Deepneau, looking at him steadily from those frightening blue eyes with the deep crow's feet at the corners. And, last of all, he saw Eddie. But Eddie didn't see him. At the last moment Eddie Dean had lowered his clasped hands between his knees and then lowered his head so his gaze was fixed upon them and the board floor below them. He was quite literally biting his tongue. There were two drops of blood on the side of his right thumb. He fixed his eyes on these. He fixed every iota of his attention on them. Because if he looked at the owner of that jolly voice, Eddie would surely kill him.
Saw our car. Saw it but never went over for a look. Never called out and asked his friend who was here, or if everything was okay. IfAaronwas okay. Because he had some guy named Herman Wouk on his mind, not book club editions but the real thing. No worries, mate. Because you've got no more short-term imagination than Jack Andolini. You and Jack, just a couple ragged cockroaches, scuttling across the floor of the universe. Eyes on the prize, right? Eyes on the f**king prize.
"You," Tower said. The happiness and excitement were gone from his voice. "The guy from - "
"The guy from nowhere," Eddie said without looking up. "The one who peeled Jack Andolini off you when you were about two minutes from shitting in your pants. And this is how you repay. You're quite the guy, aren't you?" As soon as he finished speaking, Eddie clamped down on his tongue again. His clasped hands were trembling. He expected Roland to intervene - surely he would, Eddie couldn't be expected to deal with this selfish monster on his own, he wasn't capable of it - but Roland said nothing.
Tower laughed. The sound was as nervous and brittle as his voice when he'd realized who was sitting in the kitchen of his rented cabin. "Oh, sir...Mr. Dean...I really think you've exaggerated the seriousness of that situation - "
"What I remember," Eddie said, still without looking up, "is the smell of the gasoline. I fired my dinh's gun, do you recall that? I suppose we were lucky there were no fumes, and that I fired it in the right direction. They poured gasoline all over the corner where you keep your desk. They were going to burn your favorite books...or should I say your best friends, your family? Because that's what they are to you, aren't they? And Deepneau, who the f**k is he? Just some old guy full of cancer who ran north with you when you needed a running buddy. You'd leave him dying in a ditch if someone offered you a first edition of Shakespeare or some special Ernest Hemingway."
"I resent that!" Tower cried. "I happen to know that my bookshop has been burned flat, and through an oversight it's uninsured! I'm ruined, and it's all your fault! I want you out of here!"
"You defaulted on the insurance when you needed cash to buy that Hopalong Cassidy collection from the Clarence Mulford estate last year," Aaron Deepneau said mildly. "You told me that insurance lapse was only temporary, but - "
"It was!" Tower said. He sounded both injured and surprised, as if he had never expected betrayal from this quarter. Probably he hadn't. "Itwas only temporary, goddammit!"
" - but to blame this young man," Deepneau went on in that same composed but regretful voice, "seems most unfair."
"I want you out of here!" Tower snarled at Eddie. "You and your friend, as well! I have no wish to do business with you! If you ever thought I did, it was a...amisapprehension! " He seized upon this last word as though upon a prize, and nearly shouted it out.
Eddie clasped his hands more tightly yet. He had never been more aware of the gun he was wearing; it had gained a kind of balefully lively weight. He reeked with sweat; he could smell it. And now drops of blood began to ooze out from between his palms and fall to the floor. He could feel his teeth beginning to sink into his tongue. Well, it was certainly a way to forget the pain in one's leg. Eddie decided to give the tongue in question another brief conditional parole.
"What I remember most clearly about my visit to you - "
"You have some books that belong to me," Tower said. "I want them back. Iinsist on - "
"Shut up, Cal," Deepneau said.
"What?"Tower did not sound wounded now; he sounded shocked. Almost breathless.
"Stop squirming. You've earned this scolding, and you know it. If you're lucky, a scolding is all it will be. So shut up and for once in your life take it like a man."
"Hear him very well," Roland said in a tone of dry approval.
"What I remember most clearly," Eddie pushed on, "is how horrified you were by what I told Jack - about how I and my friends would fill Grand Army Plaza with corpses if he didn't lay off. Some of them women and children. You didn't like that, but do you know what, Cal? Jack Andolini's here, right now, in East Stoneham."