It

something like this in the first place if I had a driver who was free, but I got two guys out sick, Demetrios on vacation, and everyone else booked up solid. You’ll be snug in your own bed by one in the morning, Marty — one in the morning at the very, very latest. I apple –solutely guarantee it.’
She didn’t laugh at apple-solutely, either.
He cleared his throat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Instantly the ghost-mom whispered: Don’t sit that way, Eddie. It’s bad for your posture, and it cramps your lungs. You have very delicate lungs.
He sat up straight again, hardly aware he was doing it.
‘This better be the only time I have to drive,’ she nearly moaned. ‘I’ve turned into such a horse in the last two years, and my uniforms look so bad now.’
‘It’s the only time, I swear.’
‘Who called you, Eddie?’
As if on cue, lights swept across the wall; a horn honked once as the cab turned into the driveway. He felt a surge of relief. They had spent the fifteen minutes talking about Pacino instead of Derry and Mike Hanlon and Henry Bowers, and that was good. Good for Myra, and good for him as well. He did not want to spend any time thinking or talking about those things until he had to.
Eddie stood up. ‘It’s my cab.’
She got up so fast she tripped over the hem of her own nightgown and fell forward. Eddie caught her, but for a moment the issue was in grave doubt: she outweighed him by a hundred pounds.
And she was beginning to blubber again.
‘Eddie, you have to tell me!’
‘I can’t. There’s no time.’
‘You never kept anything from me before, Eddie,’ she wept.
‘And I’m not now. Not really. I don’t remember it all. At least, not yet. The man who tailed was — is — an old friend. He — ‘
‘You’ll get sick,’ she said de sperately, following him as he walked toward the front hall again. ‘I know you will. Let me come, Eddie, please, I’ll take care of you, Pacino can get a cab or something, it won’t kill him, what do you say, okay?’ Her voice was rising, becoming frantic, a nd to Eddie’s horror she began to look more and more like his mother, his mother as she had looked in the last months before she died: old and fat and crazy. I’ll rub your back and see that you get your pills . . . . I . . . I’ll help you . . . . I won’t talk if you don’t want me to but you can tell me everything . . . . Eddie . . . Eddie, please don’t go! Eddie, please! Pleeeeeease!’
He was striding down the hall to the front door now, walking blind, head down, moving as a man moves against a high wind. He was wheezing again. When he picked up the bags each of them seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He could feel her plump pink hands on him,
touching, exploring, pulling with helpless desire but no real strength, trying to seduce him with her sweet tears of concern, trying to draw him back.
I’m not going to make it! he thought desperately. The asthma was worse now, worse than it had been since he was a kid. He reached for the doorknob but it seemed to be receding from him, receding into the blackness of outer space.
‘If you stay I’ll make you a sour-cream coffee-cake,’ she babbled. ‘We’ll have popcorn . . . . I’ll make your favorite turkey dinner . . . . I’ll make it for breakfast tomorrow morning if you want . . . I’ll start right now . . . and giblet gravy . . . . Eddie please I’m scared you’re scaringme so bad!’
She grabbed his collar and pulled him backward, like a beefy cop putting the grab on a suspicious fellow who is trying to flee. With a final fading effort, Eddie kept going . . . and when he was at the absolute end of his strength and ability to resist, he felt her grip trail away.
She gave one final wail.
His fingers closed around the doorknob — how blessedly cool it was! He pulled the door open and saw a Checker cab sitting out there, an ambassador from the land of sanity. The night was clear. The stars were bright and lucid.
He turned back to Myra, whistling and wheezing. ‘You need to understand that this isn’t something I want to do,’ he said. ‘If I had a choice — any choice at all — I wouldn’t go. Please understand that, Marty. I’m going but I’ll be coming back.’
Oh but that felt like a lie.
‘When? How long?’
‘A week. Or maybe ten days. Surely no longer than that.’
‘A week!’ she screamed, clutching at her bosom like a diva in a bad opera. ‘A week! Ten days! Please, Eddie! Pleeeeeee —
‘Marty, stop. Okay? Just stop.’
For a wonder, she did: stopped and stood looking at him with