Well, like blood.
She heard a faint alarm-bell start to ring, far back in her mind, and ignored it. What was there to be alarmed about?
They were laughing, for goodness' sake! Having a good time!
"Can I be serious a minute? No? Well, f**k you and the nag you rode in on-tomorrow when I wake up, I'll be sober, but you'll still be ugly.
"And bald."
(Roland roared.)
"I'm gonna be serious, okay? If you don't like it, stick it where you keep your change-purse. My Nana was a great lady.
Women in general are great, you know it? But they have their flaws, just like men. If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving a baby's life, for instance, she'll save the baby without even considering how many men are on base. Bing!" He rapped his head with his knuckles and popped his eyes in a way that made them both laugh. Roland tried to put his coffee cup down and spilled it. He was holding his stomach. Hearing him laugh so hard-to surrender to laughter so completely-was funny in itself, and Susannah burst out in a fresh gale.
"Men are one thing, women are another. Put em together and you've got a whole new taste treat. Like Oreos. Like Peanut Butter Cups. Like raisin cake with snot sauce. Show me a man and a woman and I'll show you the Peculiar Institution-not slavery, marriage. But I repeat myself. Bing!" He rapped his head. Popped his eyes. This time they seemed to come kasproing halfway out of their sockets
(how does he do that)
and Susannah had to clutch her stomach, which was beginning to ache with the force of her laughter. And her temples were beginning to pound. It hurt, but it was a good hurt.
"Marriage is having a wife or a husband. Yeah! Check Webster's!
Bigamy is having a wife or husband too many. Of course, that's also monogamy. Bing!"
If Roland laughed any harder, Susannah thought, he would go sliding right out of his chair and into the puddle of spilled coffee.
"Then there's divorce, a Latin term meaning 'to rip a man's genitals out through the wallet."
"But I was talking about Cleveland, remember? You know how Cleveland got started? A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee I'm starting to enjoy the crime and die poverty, but it's not quite cold enough. Let's go west.'"
Laughter, Susannah would reflect later, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, selfsupporting.
You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny. Joe Collins took them to this point with his next sally.
"Hey, remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quiedy with the smallest people in front and the tallest people at die end of the line? What's the logic in that? Do tall people burn slower?"
Susannah shrieked wiui laughter and slapped die side of her face. This produced a sudden and unexpected burst of pain that drove all the laughter out of her in a moment. The sore beside her mouth had been growing again, but hadn't bled in two or three days. When she inadvertently struck it wiui her flailing hand, she knocked away the blackish-red crust covering it.
The sore did not just bleed; it gushed.
For a moment she was unaware of what had just happened.
She only knew that slapping the side of her face hurt much more than it should have done. Joe also seemed unaware (his eyes were mosdy closed again), must have been unaware, because he rapped faster than ever: "Hey, and what about that seafood restaurant they have at Sea World? I got halfway through my fishburger and wondered if I was eating a slow learner! Bing!
And speaking offish-"
Oy barked in alarm. Susannah felt sudden wet warmth run down the side of her neck and onto her shoulder.
"Stop, Joe," Roland said. He sounded out of breath. Weak.
With laughter, Susannah supposed. Oh, but the side of her face hurt, and-
Joe opened his eyes, looking annoyed. "What? Jesus Christ, you wanted it and I was givingit to ya!"
"Susannah's hurt herself." The gunslinger was up and looking at her, laughter lost in concern.
"I'm not hurt, Roland, I just slapped myself upside the head a litde harder than I m-" Then she looked at her hand and was dismayed to see it was wearing a red glove.
NINE
Oy barked again. Roland snatched the napkin from beside his overturned cup. One end was brown and soaking with coffee, but the other was dry. He pressed it against the gushing sore and Susannah winced away from his touch at first, her eyes filling with tears.
"Nay, let me stop the bleeding at least," Roland murmured, and grasped her head, working his fingers gently into the tight cap of her curls. "Hold steady." And for him she managed to do it.
Through her watering eyes Susannah thought Joe still looked pissed that she had interrupted his comedy routine in such drastic (not to mention messy) fashion, and in a way she didn't blame him. He'd been doing a really good job; she'd gone and spoiled it. Aside from the pain, which was abating a little now, she was horribly embarrassed, remembering the time she had started her period in gym class and a little trickle of blood had run down her thigh for the whole world to see-that part of it with whom she had third-period PE, at any rate. Some of the girls had begun chanting Plug it UP!, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
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 hot-enj 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."
TEN
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 litde 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 setded for cold, splashing it gendy on her face, then using a facecloth-even more gendy-to clean die 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 litde 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.