No polite little knocks on the bathroom door now; this was a hammering fist. The passengers are out, Eddie thought. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Oh shit.
“Come on out, my friend! I’m done asking!”
“Yank it!” the gunslinger growled.
Eddie grabbed a thick tab of strapping tape in each hand and yanked as hard as he could. It hurt, hurt like hell. Stop bellyaching, he thought. Things could be worse. You could be hairy-chested, like Henry.
He looked down and saw a red band of irritated skin about seven inches wide across his sternum. Just above the solar plexus was the place where he had poked himself. Blood welled in a dimple and ran down to his navel in a scarlet runnel. Beneath his armpits, the bags of dope now dangled like badly tied saddlebags.
“Okay,” the muffled voice beyond the bathroom door said to someone else. “Let’s d—”
Eddie lost the rest of it in the unexpected riptide of pain across his back as the gunslinger unceremoniously tore the rest of the girdle from him.
He bit down against a scream.
“Put your shirt on,” the gunslinger said. His face, which Eddie had thought as pallid as the face of a living man could become, was now the color of ancient ashes. He held the girdle of tape （now sticking to itself in a meaningless tangle, the big bags of white stuff looking like strange cocoons） in his left hand, then tossed it aside. Eddie saw fresh blood seeping through the makeshift bandage on the gunslinger’s right hand. “Do it fast.”
There was a thudding sound. This wasn’t someone pounding for admittance. Eddie looked up in time to see the bathroom door shudder, to see the lights in there flicker. They were trying to break it in.
He picked his shirt up with fingers that suddenly seemed too large, too clumsy. The left sleeve was turned inside out. He tried to stuff it back through the hole, got his hand stuck for a moment, then yanked it out so hard he pulled the sleeve back again with it.
Thud, and the bathroom door shivered again.
“Gods, how can you be so clumsy?” the gunslinger moaned, and rammed his own fist into the left sleeve of Eddie’s shirt. Eddie grabbed the cuff as the gunslinger pulled back. Now the gunslinger held the shirt for him as a butler might hold a coat for his master. Eddie put it on and groped for the lowest button.
“Not yet!” the gunslinger barked, and tore another piece away from his own diminishing shirt. “Wipe your gut!”
Eddie did the best he could. The dimple where the knife had actually pierced his skin was still welling blood. The blade was sharp, all right. Sharp enough.
He dropped the bloody wad of the gunslinger’s shirt on the sand and buttoned his shirt.
Thud. This time the door did more than shudder; it buckled in its frame. Looking through the doorway on the beach, Eddie saw the bottle of liquid soap fall from where it had been standing beside the basin. It landed on his zipper bag.
He had meant to stuff his shirt, which was now buttoned （and buttoned straight, for a wonder）， into his pants. Suddenly a better idea struck him. He unbuckled his belt instead.
“There’s no time for that!” The gunslinger realized he was trying to scream and was unable. “That door’s only got one hit left in it!”
“I know what I’m doing,” Eddie said, hoping he did, and stepped back through the doorway between the worlds, unsnapping his jeans and raking the zipper down as he went.
After one desperate, despairing moment, the gunslinger followed him, physical and full of hot physical ache at one moment, nothing but cool ka in Eddie’s head at the next.
18
“One more,” McDonald said grimly, and Deere nodded. Now that all the passengers were out of the jetway as well as the plane itself, the Customs agents had drawn their weapons.