by Stephen King
This is only to say that his experience of magic and magicians had led him to expect something quite different than what he did find in Katz's Drug Store.
He had anticipated a dim, candle-lit room full of bitter fumes, jars of unknown powders and liquids and philters, many covered with a thick layer of dust or spun about with a century's cobwebs. He had expected a man in a cowl, a man who might be dangerous. He saw people moving about inside through the transparent plate-glass windows, as casually as they would in any shop, and believed they must be an illusion.
They weren't.
So for a moment the gunslinger merely stood inside the door, first amazed, then ironically amused. Here he was in a world which struck him dumb with fresh wonders seemingly at every step, a world where carriages flew through the air and paper seemed as cheap as sand. And the newest wonder was simply that for these people, wonder had run out: here, in a place of miracles, he saw only dull faces and plodding bodies.
There were thousands of bottles, there were potions, there were philters, but the Mortcypedia identified most as quack remedies. Here was a salve that was supposed to restore fallen hair but would not; there a cream which promised to erase unsightly spots on the hands and arms but lied. Here were cures for things that needed no curing: things to make your bowels run or stop them up, to make your teeth white and your hair black, things to make your breath smell better as if you could not do that by chewing alder-bark. No magic here; only trivialities--although there was astin, and a few other remedies which sounded as if they might be useful. But for the most part, Roland was appalled by the place. In a place that promised alchemy but dealt more in perfume than potion, was it any wonder that wonder had run out?
But when he consulted the Mortcypedia again, he discovered that the truth of this place was not just in the things he was looking at. The potions that really worked were kept safely out of sight. One could only obtain these if you had a sorcerer's fiat. In this world, such sorcerers were called DOCKTORS, and they wrote their magic formulae on sheets of paper which the Mortcypedia called REXES. The gunslinger didn't know the word. He supposed he could have consulted further on the matter, but didn't bother. He knew what he needed, and a quick look into the Mortcypedia told him where in the store he could get it.
He strode down one of the aisles toward a high counter with the words PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED over it.
14
The Katz who had opened Katz's Pharmacy and Soda Fountain (Sundries and Notions for Misses and Misters) on 49th Street in 1927 was long in his grave, and his only son looked ready for his own. Although he was only forty-six, he looked twenty years older. He was balding, yellow-skinned, and frail. He knew people said he looked like death on horseback, but none of them understood why.
Take this crotch on the phone now. Mrs. Rathbun. Ranting that she would sue him if he didn't fill her goddamned Valium prescription and right now, RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT.
What do you think, lady, I'm gonna pour a stream of blue bombers through the phone? If he did, she would at least do him a favor and shut up. She would just tip the receiver up over her mouth and open wide.
The thought raised a ghostly grin which revealed his sallow dentures.
"You don't understand, Mrs. Rathbun," he interrupted after he had listened to a minute--a full minute, timed it with the sweep second-hand of his watch--of her raving. He would like, just once, to be able to say: Stop shouting at me, you stupid crotch! Shout at your DOCTOR! He's the one who hooked you on that shit! Right. Damn quacks gave it out like it was bubblegum, and when they decided to cut off the supply, who got hit with the shit? The sawbones? Oh, no! He did!
"What do you mean, I don't understand?" The voice in his ear was like an angry wasp buzzing in a jar. "I understand I do a lot of business at your tacky drugstore, I understand I've been a loyal customer all these years, I understand--"
"You'll have to speak to--" He glanced at the crotch's Rolodex card through his half-glasses again. "--Dr. Brumhall, Mrs. Rathbun. Your prescription has expired. It's a Federal crime to dispense Valium without a prescription." And it ought to be one to perscribe it in the first place . . . unless you're going to give the patient you're perscribing it for your unlisted number with it, that is, he thought.
"It was an oversight!" the woman screamed. Now there was a raw edge of panic in her voice. Eddie would have recognized that tone at once: it was the call of the wild Junk-Bird.
"Then call him and ask him to rectify it," Katz said. "He has my number." Yes. They all had his number. That was precisely the trouble. He looked like a dying man at forty-six because of the fershlugginer doctors.
And all I have to do to guarantee that the last thin edge of profit I am somehow holding onto in this place will melt away is tell a few of these junkie bitches to go fuck themselves. That's all.
"I CAN'T CALL HIM!" she screamed. Her voice drilled painfully into his ear. "HIM AND HIS FAG BOY-FRIEND ARE ON VACATION SOMEPLACE AND NO ONE WILL TELL ME WHERE!"
Katz felt acid seeping into his stomach. He had two ulcers, one healed, the other currently bleeding, and women like this bitch were the reason why. He closed his eyes. Thus he did not see his assistant stare at the man in the blue suit and the gold-rimmed glasses approaching the prescription counter, nor did he see Ralph, the fat old security guard (Katz paid the man a pittance but still bitterly resented the expense; his father had never needed a security guard, but his father, God rot him, had lived in a time when New York had been a city instead of a toilet-bowl) suddenly come out of his usual dim daze and reach for the gun on his hip. He heard a woman scream, but thought it was because she had just discovered all the Revlon was on sale, he'd been forced to put the Revlon on sale because that putz Dollentz up the street was undercutting him.
He was thinking of nothing but Dollentz and this bitch on the phone as the gunslinger approached like fated doom, thinking of how wonderful the two of them would look naked save for a coating of honey and staked out over anthills in the burning desert sun. HIS and HERS anthills, wonderful. He was thinking this was the worst it could get, the absolute worst. His father had been so determined that his only son follow in his footsteps that he had refused to pay for anything but a degree in pharmacology, and so he had followed in his father's footsteps, and God rot his father, for this was surely the lowest moment in a life that had been full of low moments, a life which had made him old before his time.
This was the absolute nadir.
Or so he thought with his eyes closed.
"If you come by, Mrs. Rathbun, I could give you a dozen five milligram Valium. Would that be all right?"
"The man sees reason! Thank God, the man sees reason!" And she hung up. Just like that. Not a word of thanks. But when she saw the walking rectum that called itself a doctor again, she would just about fall down and polish the tips of his Gucci loafers with her nose, she would give him a blowjob, she would--
"Mr. Katz," his assistant said in a voice that sounded strangely winded. "I think we have a prob--"
There was another scream. It was followed by the crash of a gun, startling him so badly he thought for a moment his heart was simply going to utter one monstrous clap in his chest and then stop forever.
He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of the gunslinger. Katz dropped his gaze and saw the pistol in the man's fist. He looked left and saw Ralph the guard nursing one hand and staring at the thief with eyes that seemed to be bugging out of his face. Ralph's own gun, the .38 which he had toted dutifully through eighteen years as a police officer (and which he had only fired from the line of the 23rd Precinct's basement target range; he said he had drawn it twice in the line of duty . . . but who knew?), was now a wreck in the corner.
"I want Keflex," the man with the bullshooter eyes said expressionlessly. "I want a lot. Now. And never mind the REX."
For a moment Katz could only look at him, his mouth open, his heart struggling in his chest, his stomach a sickly boiling pot of acid.
Had he th
ought he had hit rock bottom?
Had he really?
15
"You don't understand," Katz managed at last. His voice sounded strange to himself, and there was really nothing very odd about that, since his mouth felt like a flannel shirt and his tongue like a strip of cotton batting. "There is no cocaine here. It is not a drug which is dispensed under any cir--"
"I did not say cocaine," the man in the blue suit and the gold-rimmed glasses said. "I said Keflex."
That's what I thought you said, Katz almost told this crazy momser, and then decided that might provoke him. He had heard of drug stores getting held up for speed, for Bennies, for half a dozen other things (including Mrs. Rathbun's precious Valium), but he thought this might be the first penicillin robbery in history.
The voice of his father (God rot the old bastard) told him to stop dithering and gawping and do something.
But he could think of nothing to do.
The man with the gun supplied him with something.
"Move," the man with the gun said. "I'm in a hurry."
"H-How much do you want?" Katz asked. His eyes flicked momentarily over the robber's shoulder, and he saw something he could hardly believe. Not in this city. But it looked like it was happening, anyway. Good luck? Katz actually has some good luck? That you could put in The Guinness Book of World Records!
"I don't know," the man with the gun said. "As much as you can put in a bag. A big bag." And with no warning at all, he whirled and the gun in his fist crashed again. A man bellowed. Plate glass blew onto the sidewalk and the street in a sparkle of shards and splinters. Several passing pedestrians were cut, but none seriously. Inside Katz's drugstore, women (and not a few men) screamed. The burglar alarm began its own hoarse bellow. The customers panicked and stampeded toward and out the door. The man with the gun turned back to Katz and his expression had not changed at all: his face wore the same look of frightening (but not inexhaustible) patience that it had worn from the first. "Do as I say rapidly. I'm in a hurry."
Katz gulped.
"Yes, sir," he said.
16
The gunslinger had seen and admired the curved mirror in the upper left corner of the shop while he was still halfway to the counter behind which they kept the powerful potions. The creation of such a curved mirror was beyond the ability of any craftsman in his own world as things were now, although there had been a time when such things--and many of the others he saw in Eddie and Odetta's world--might have been made. He had seen the remains of some in the tunnel under the mountains, and he had seen them in other places as well . . . relics as ancient and mysterious as the Druit stones that sometimes stood in the places where demons came.
He also understood the mirror's purpose.
He had been a bit late seeing the guard's move--he was still discovering how disastrously the lenses Mort wore over his eyes restricted his peripheral vision--but he'd still time to turn and shoot the gun out of the guard's hand. It was a shot Roland thought as nothing more than routine, although he'd needed to hurry a little. The guard, however, had a different opinion. Ralph Lennox would swear to the end of his days that the guy had made an impossible shot . . . except, maybe, on those old kiddie Western shows like Annie Oakley.
Thanks to the mirror, which had obviously been placed where it was to detect thieves, Roland was quicker dealing with the other one.
He had seen the alchemist's eyes flick up and over his shoulder for a moment, and the gunslinger's own eyes had immediately gone to the mirror. In it he saw a man in a leather jacket moving up the center aisle behind him. There was a long knife in his hand and, no doubt, visions of glory in his head.
The gunslinger turned and fired a single shot, dropping the gun to his hip, aware that he might miss with the first shot because of his unfamiliarity with this weapon, but unwilling to injure any of the customers standing frozen behind the would-be hero. Better to have to shoot twice from the hip, firing slugs that would do the job while travelling on an upward angle that would protect the bystanders than to perhaps kill some lady whose only crime had been picking the wrong day to shop for perfume.
The gun had been well cared for. Its aim was true. Remembering the podgy, underexercised looks of the gunslingers he had taken these weapons from, it seemed that they cared better for the weapons they wore than for the weapons they were. It seemed a strange way to behave, but of course this was a strange world and Roland could not judge; had no time to judge, come to that.
The shot was a good one, chopping through the man's knife at the base of the blade, leaving him holding nothing but the hilt.
Roland stared evenly at the man in the leather coat, and something in his gaze must have made the would-be hero remember a pressing appointment elsewhere, for he whirled, dropped the remains of the knife, and joined the general exodus.
Roland turned back and gave the alchemist his orders. Any more fucking around and blood would flow. When the alchemist turned away, Roland tapped his bony shoulderblade with the barrel of the pistol. The man made a strangled "Yeeek!" sound and turned back at once.
"Not you. You stay here. Let your 'prentice do it."
"W-Who?"
"Him." The gunslinger gestured impatiently at the aide.
"What should I do, Mr. Katz?" The remains of the aide's teenage acne stood out brilliantly on his white face.
"Do what he says, you putz! Fill the order! Keflex!"
The aide went to one of the shelves behind the counter and picked up a bottle. "Turn it so I may see the words writ upon it," the gunslinger said.
The aide did. Roland couldn't read it; too many letters were not of his alphabet. He consulted the Mortcypedia. Keflex, it confirmed, and Roland realized even checking had been a stupid waste of time. He knew he couldn't read everything in this world, but these men didn't.
"How many pills in that bottle?"
"Well, they're capsules, actually," the aide said nervously. "If it's a cillin drug in pill form you're interested in--"
"Never mind all that. How many doses?"
"Oh. Uh--" The flustered aide looked at the bottle and almost dropped it. "Two hundred."
Roland felt much as he had when he discovered how much ammunition could be purchased in this world for a trivial sum. There had been nine sample bottles of Keflex in the secret compartment of Enrico Balazar's medicine cabinet, thirty-six doses in all, and he had felt well again. If he couldn't kill the infection with two hundred doses, it couldn't be killed.
"Give it to me," the man in the blue suit said.
The aide handed it over.
The gunslinger pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, revealing Jack Mort's Rolex. "I have no money, but this may serve as adequate compensation. I hope so, anyway."
He turned, nodded toward the guard, who was still sitting on the floor by his overturned stool and staring at the gunslinger with wide eyes, and then walked out.
Simple as that.
For five seconds there was no sound in the drugstore but the bray of the alarm, which was loud enough to blank out even the babble of the people on the street.
"God in heaven, Mr. Katz, what do we do now?" the aide whispered.
Katz picked up the watch and hefted it.
Gold. Solid gold.
He couldn't believe it.
He had to believe it.
Some madman walked in off the street, shot a gun out of his guard's hand and a knife out of another's, all in order to obtain the most unlikely drug he could think of.
Keflex.
Maybe sixty dollars' worth of Keflex.
For which he had paid with a $6500 Rolex watch.
"Do?" Katz asked. "Do? The first thing you do is put that wristwatch under the counter. You never saw it." He looked at Ralph. "Neither did you."
"No sir," Ralph agreed immediately. "As long as I get my share when you sell it, I never saw that watch at all."
"They'll shoot him like a dog in the street," Katz said with unmistakable satisfaction.
&
nbsp; "Keflex! And the guy didn't even seem to have the sniffles," the aide said wonderingly.
CHAPTER 4
The Drawing
1
As the sun's bottom arc first touched the Western Sea in Roland's world, striking bright golden fire across the water to where Eddie lay trussed like a turkey, Officers O'Mearah and Delevan were coming groggily back to consciousness in the world from which Eddie had been taken.
"Let me out of these cuffs, would ya?" Fat Johnny asked in a humble voice.
"Where is he?" O'Mearah asked thickly, and groped for his holster. Gone. Holster, belt, bullets, gun. Gun.
Oh, shit.
He began thinking of the questions that might be asked by the shits in the Department of Internal Affairs, guys who had learned all they knew about the streets from Jack Webb on Dragnet, and the monetary value of his lost gun suddenly became about as important to him as the population of Ireland or the principal mineral deposits of Peru. He looked at Carl and saw Carl had also been stripped of his weapon.
Oh dear Jesus, bring on the clowns, O'Mearah thought miserably, and when Fat Johnny asked again if O'Mearah would use the key on the counter to unlock the handcuffs, O'Mearah said, "I ought to . . ." He paused, because he'd been about to say I ought to shoot you in the guts instead, but he couldn't very well shoot Fat Johnny, could he? The guns here were chained down, and the geek in the gold-rimmed glasses, the geek who had seemed so much like a solid citizen, had taken his and Carl's as easily as O'Mearah himself might take a popgun from a kid.
Instead of finishing, he got the key and unlocked the cuffs. He spotted the .357 Magnum which Roland had kicked into the corner and picked it up. It wouldn't fit in his holster, so he stuffed it in his belt.
"Hey, that's mine!" Fat Johnny bleated.
"Yeah? You want it back?" O'Mearah had to speak slowly. His head really ached. At that moment all he wanted to do was find Mr. Gold-Rimmed Specs and nail him to a handy wall. With dull nails. "I hear they like fat guys like you up in Attica, Johnny. They got a saying: 'The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin.' You sure you want it back?"
