“Are you sai Aaron Deepneau’s daughter?” he asked her. “Surely not, you’re too young. His granddaughter?”
Her smile faded. “Aaron never had children, Mr. Deschain. I’m the granddaughter of his older brother, but my own parents and grandfather died young. Airy was the one who mostly raised me.”
“Did you call him so? Airy?” Roland was charmed.
“As a child I did, and it just kind of stuck.” She held out a hand, her smile returning. “Nancy Deepneau. And I am so pleased to meet you. A little frightened, but pleased.”
Roland shook her hand, but the gesture was perfunctory, hardly more than a touch. Then, with considerably more feeling (for this was the ritual he had grown up with, the one he understood), he placed his fist against his forehead and made a leg. “Long days and pleasant nights, Nancy Deepneau.”
Her smile widened into a cheerful grin. “And may you have twice the number, Roland of Gilead! May you have twice the number.”
The ele-vaydor came, they got on, and it was to the ninety-ninth floor that they went.
EIGHT
The doors opened on a large round foyer. The floor was carpeted in a dusky pink shade that exactly matched the hue of the rose. Across from the ele-vaydor was a glass door with THE TET CORPORATION lettered on it. Beyond, Roland saw another, smaller lobby where a woman sat at a desk, apparently talking to herself. To the right of the outer lobby door were two men wearing business suits. They were chatting to each other, hands in pockets, seemingly relaxed, but Roland saw they were anything but. And they were armed. The coats of their suits were well-tailored, but a man who knows how to look for a gun usually sees one, if a gun is there. These two fellows would stand in this foyer for an hour, maybe two (it was difficult for even good men to remain totally alert for much longer), falling into their little just-chatting routine each time the ele-vaydor came, ready to move instantly if they smelled something wrong. Roland approved.
He didn’t spend much time looking at the guards, however. Once he had identified them for what they were, he let his gaze go where it had wanted to be from the moment the ele-vaydor doors opened. There was a large black-and-white picture on the wall to his left. This was a photograph (he had originally thought the word was
“The Founding Fathers,” Nancy said. She sounded both amused and sad. “That photo was taken on an executive retreat in 1986. Taos, New Mexico. Three city boys in cow country, how about that. And don’t they look like they’re having the time of their lives?”
“You say true,” Roland said.
“Do you know all three?”
Roland nodded. He knew them, all right, although he had never met Moses Carver, the man in the middle. Dan Holmes’s partner, Odetta Holmes’s godfather. In the picture he looked to be a robust and healthy seventy, but surely by 1986 he had to be closer to eighty. Perhaps eighty-five. Of course, Roland reminded himself, there was a wild card here: the marvelous thing he’d just seen in the lobby of this building. The rose was no more a fountain of youth than the turtle in the little pocket park across the street was the real Maturin, but did he think it had certain beneficent qualities? Yes he did. Certain healing qualities? Yes he did. Did he believe that the nine years of life Aaron Deepneau had gotten between 1977 and the taking of this picture in 1986 had just been a matter of the
“When did they die?” he asked Nancy Deepneau.