The City of Mirrors: A Novel (Book Three of The Passage Trilogy)

by Justin Cronin

  This account also explained, at least partly, the oddness of their relationship. What else but shared history could bond two people who possessed such fundamentally incompatible temperaments, such divergent visions of life? The more I grew to know them both, the more I came to understand how truly different they were. That they had traveled in the same social circles as children, attended virtually interchangeable country day and boarding schools, and been able to navigate the New York subway system, the Paris Métro, and the London tube by the time they were twelve said nothing about who they really were as people. It is possible for the same circumstances that draw two souls together to keep them forever at arm’s length. Herein lies the truth of love, and the essence of all tragedy. I was not yet wise enough to understand this, nor would I be, until many years had passed. Yet I believe that from the start I sensed this, and that it was the source of my affinity, the force that pulled me to her.

  The day of the party arrived. The daylight hours were all desultory preamble; I got nothing done. Was I nervous? How does the bull feel when he is marched into the ring and notices the cheering crowds and the man with his cape and sword? Jonas had gone off for the day—I didn’t know where—and as the clock neared eight, the appointed hour, he had yet to show himself. The midwesterner in me was forever disturbed by the regional differences in what was and was not considered late, and by nine-thirty, when I decided to dress (I had entertained the girlish fantasy that Jonas and I would do this together), my anxiety was such that it verged on anger. It seemed likely that his promise had been forgotten and I would spend the evening like a jilted groom, watching TV in a tuxedo.

  The other difficulty lay in the fact that I did not know how to tie a bow tie. Probably I couldn’t have accomplished this in any event; my hands were actually shaking. Managing the studs and cuff links felt like trying to thread a needle with a hammer. It took me ten full minutes of cursing like a longshoreman to lodge them in their proper holes, and by the time I was done, my face was damp with sweat. I mopped it away with a bad-smelling towel and examined myself in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, hoping for some encouragement. I was an unremarkable-looking sort of boy, neither one thing nor the other; although naturally slender, and without significant blemishes, I had always felt my nose was too big for my face, my arms too long for my body, my hair too bulky for the head it sat atop. Yet the face and figure I beheld in the mirror did not look so unpromising to me. The sleek black suit and shiny shoes and starch-hardened shirt—even, against my expectations, the pink cummerbund—did not appear unnatural on me. Instantly I regretted the powder-blue getup I’d worn to prom; who knew that something as simple as a black suit could gentrify one’s appearance so thoroughly? For the first time, I dared to think that I, this plain boy from the provinces, might pass through the doors of the Spee Club without an alarm going off.

  The door sailed open; Jonas charged into the outer room. “Fuck, what time is it?” He marched straight past me to the bathroom and turned on the shower. I followed him to the door.

  “Where have you been?” I said, realizing too late how peevish this sounded. “No big deal, but it’s almost ten.”

  “I had a lab due.” He was peeling off his shirt. “This thing doesn’t really get going until eleven. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, sorry.”

  “How do you tie a bow tie?”

  He had stripped to his boxers. “Hell if I know. Mine’s a clip-on.”

  I retreated to the outer room. Jonas called out over the water, “Has Liz been here?”

  “Nobody’s been here.”

  “She was supposed to meet us.”

  My anxiety had now focused entirely on the matter of my tie. I returned to the mirror and withdrew it from my pocket. The gist, I’d heard, was to tie it like a pair of shoes. How much harder could it be? I’d been tying my own shoes since I was two.

  The answer was: a lot harder. Nothing I did made the ends come out even close to the same length. It was as if the silk were possessed.

  “Now, don’t you look spiffy.”

  Liz had come in through the open door. Or, rather, a woman who resembled Liz; in her place stood a creature of pure understated glamour. She was wearing a slender black cocktail dress scooped low at the neck and high-heeled shoes of shiny red leather; she had added something to her hair, making it full and rich, and exchanged her glasses for contacts. A long string of pearls, no doubt real, dangled deep into her décolletage.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “And that,” she said, tossing her clutch on the sofa, “is the very syllable that every woman longs to hear.” A cloud of complex scent had followed her into the room. “Having some troubles with your neckwear, I see?”

  I held out the villainous article. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Let’s have a look.” She stepped toward me and took it from my hand. “Ah,” she said, examining it, “here’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a bow tie!” She laughed. “As it so happens, you’ve come to the right person. I do this for my father all the time. Hold still.”

  She draped the tie around my neck and positioned it under the collar. In her heels, she was nearly as tall as I was; our faces were inches apart. With her eyes intently focused on the base of my throat, she engaged in her mysterious business. I had never been so close to a woman I was not about to kiss. My gaze instinctively went to her lips, which looked soft and warm, then downward, following the path of the pearls. The effect was like a low-voltage current passing through each cell of my body.

  “Eyes up here, buster.”

  I knew I was blushing. I looked away. “Sorry.”

  “You’re a man, what can you do? You’re like pull toys. It must be awful.” A final adjustment; then she stepped back. That heat in her cheeks: was she blushing, too? “There you go. Have a look.”

  She retrieved a compact from her clutch and gave it to me. It was made of a material that was smooth to the touch, like polished bone; it felt warm in my hand, as if it were radiating a pure, womanly energy. I opened it, revealing its bay of flesh-toned powder and small round mirror, in which my face looked back at me, floating above the flawlessly knotted pink bow tie.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  The shower shut off with a groan, widening my awareness. I had forgotten all about my roommate.

  “Jonas,” Liz called, “we’re late!”

  He bounded into the room, clutching a towel around his waist. I had the feeling of being caught doing something I shouldn’t have.

  “So, are you two going to stand around and watch me dress? Unless—” Looking at Liz, he gave his towel a suggestive jostle, like an exotic dancer teasing an audience. “Ça te donne du plaisir, mademoiselle?”

  “Just hurry it up. We’re late.”

  “But I asked in French!”

  “You’ll want to work on your accent. We’ll meet you outside, thank you very much.” She gripped me by the arm, steering me toward the door. “Come on, Tim.”

  We took the stairs to the courtyard. A college campus on a Saturday night follows principles of its own: it awakens just as the rest of the world is readying for slumber. Music came from everywhere, pouring out of the windows; laughing figures moved through the darkness; voices lit the night from all directions. As we stepped through the breezeway, a girl hurried past, holding the hem of her dress with one hand, a bottle of champagne in the other.

  “You’ll do fine,” Liz assured me.

  We were standing just beyond the gate. “Do I look worried?” Though, of course, I was.

  “All you have to do is act like you belong. That’s really the whole point. Of most things, actually.”

  Away from Jonas, she had become somebody slightly different: more philosophical, even a little world-weary. I sensed that this was closer to the truth of her.

  “I forgot to mention,” Liz said, “I’ve got somebody I’d like you to meet
. She’ll be at the party.”

  I wasn’t sure what I thought of this.

  “We’re cousins,” she went on. “Well, second cousins. She goes to B.U.”

  The offer was disorienting. I had to remind myself that what had transpired upstairs had been an innocent flirtation, nothing more—that she was somebody else’s girlfriend.

  “Okay.”

  “Try not to sound too excited.”

  “What makes you think we’d hit it off?”

  The remark came off too blunt, even a little resentful. But if she took offense, she didn’t show it. “Just don’t let her drink too much.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  She shrugged. “Steph can be a bit of a party girl, if you know what I mean. That’s her name, Stephanie.”

  Jonas caught up with us, all grins and apologies. We made our way to the party, which was just three blocks away. Previously, he had pointed out the Spee Club building to me, a brick townhouse with a walled side garden I had passed a thousand times. A college party is usually a loud affair, belching out a wide perimeter of sound, but not this one. There was no evidence that anything was going on inside, and for a second I thought Jonas might have gotten the night wrong. He stepped up to the door and withdrew a single key on a fob from the pocket of his tux. I had seen this key before, lying on his bureau, but had not connected it to anything until now. The fob was in the form of a bear’s head, the symbol of the Spee.

  We followed him inside. We were in an empty foyer, the floor painted in alternating black and white squares, like a chessboard. I did not feel as if I were going to a party—parachuting at night into an alien country was more like it. The spaces I could see were dark and masculine and, for a building inhabited by college students, remarkably neat. A clack of ivory: nearby, someone was playing pool. On a pedestal in the corner stood a large stuffed bear—not a teddy bear, an actual bear. It was rearing up on its hind legs, clawed hands reaching forward as if it were going to maul some invisible attacker. (That, or play the piano.) From overhead came a swell of liquor-loosened voices.

  “Come on,” Jonas said.

  He led us back to a flight of stairs. Seen from the street, the building had appeared deceptively modest in its dimensions, but not inside. We ascended toward the noise and heat of the crowd, which had spilled from two large rooms onto the landing.

  “Jo-man!”

  As we made our entry, Jonas’s neck was clamped in the elbow of a large, red-haired man in a white dinner jacket. He had the florid complexion and thickened waist of an athlete gone to seed.

  “Jo-man, Jo-Jo, the big Jo-ster.” Unaccountably, he gave Jonas a big smooch on the cheek. “And Liz, may I say you are looking especially tasty tonight.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So noted.”

  “Does she love me? I’m asking, does this girl just love me?” With his arm still draped around Jonas, he looked at me with an expression of startled concern: “Sweet Jesus, Jonas, tell me this isn’t the guy.”

  “Tim, meet Alcott Spence. He’s our president.”

  “And roaring drunk, too. So tell me, Tim, you’re not gay, are you? Because, no offense, you look a little gay in that tie.”

  I was caught totally off guard. “Um—”

  “Kidding!” He roared with laughter. We were being pressed on all sides now, as more partygoers ascended the stairs behind us. “Seriously, I’m just messing with you. Half the guys in here are huge fags. I myself am what you call a sexual omnivore. Isn’t that right, Jonas?”

  He grinned, playing along. “It’s true.”

  “Jonas here is one of my most special friends. Very special. So you just go ahead and be as gay as you feel you need to be.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not gay.”

  “Which is also totally fine! That’s what I’m saying! Listen to this guy. We’re not the Porcellian, you know. Seriously, those guys cannot stop fucking each other.”

  How much did I want a drink at that moment? Very, very much.

  “Well, I’ve enjoyed our little chat,” Alcott merrily continued, “but I must be off. Hot date in the sauna with a certain sophomore from the University of Loose Morals and some cocaina más excelente. You kids run along and have fun.”

  He faded into the throng. I turned to Jonas. “Is everybody here like that?”

  “Actually, no. A lot of them can come on pretty strong.”

  I looked at Liz. “Don’t you dare leave me.”

  She laughed wryly. “Are you kidding?”

  We fought our way to the bar. No lukewarm keg beer here: behind a long table, a white-shirted bartender was frantically mixing drinks and passing out bottles of Heineken. As he shoveled ice into my vodka tonic—I’d learned my freshman year to stick to clear liquor when I could—I had the urge to send him some clandestine message of Marxist-inspired fellowship. “I’m actually from Ohio,” I might have told him. “I shelve books at the library. I don’t belong here any more than you do.” (“P.S. Stand ready! The Glorious Workers’ Revolution commences at the stroke of midnight!”)

  Yet as he placed the drink in my hand, a new feeling came upon me. Perhaps it was the way he did it—automatically, like a high-speed robot, his attention already focused to the next partygoer in line—but the thought occurred to me that I’d done it. I’d passed. I had successfully snuck into the other world, the hidden world. This was where I had been headed, all along. I gave myself a moment to soak in the sensation. Joining the Spee: what I had believed utterly impossible just moments before suddenly seemed like a fait accompli, a thing of destiny. I would take my place among its membership, because Jonas Lear would pave the way. How else to explain the extraordinary coincidence of our second meeting? Fate had put him in my path for a reason, and here it was, in the rich atmosphere of privilege that radiated from everywhere around me. It was like some new form of oxygen, one I’d been waiting all my life to breathe, and it made me feel weirdly alive.

  So caught up was I in this new line of thought that I failed to notice Liz standing right in front of me. With her was a new person, a girl.

  “Tim!” she yelled over the music that had erupted in the room behind us. “This is Steph!”

  “Pleased to meet you!”

  “Likewise!” She was short, hazel-eyed, with a spray of freckles and glossy brown hair. Unremarkable compared to Liz, but pretty in her own way—cute would be the word—and smiling at me in a manner that told me Liz had laid the groundwork. She was holding a nearly empty glass of something clear. Mine was empty, too. Was it my first or my second?

  “Liz says you go to B.U.!”

  “Yeah!” Because the music was so loud, we were standing very close. She smelled like roses and gin.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s okay! You’re a biochem major, right?”

  I nodded. The most banal conversation in history, but it had to be done. “What about you?”

  “Poli-sci! Hey, do you want to dance?”

  I was an awful dancer, but who wasn’t? We made our way to the light-confettied ballroom and began our awkward attempt to perform this intimate act, pretending we hadn’t met each other thirty seconds ago. The dance floor was already full, the music having been strategically withheld until everybody was adequately liquored; I glanced around for Liz but didn’t find her. I supposed she was too cool to make a fool of herself in this way and hoped she didn’t see me. Stephanie, not to my surprise, was an enthusiastic dancer; what I hadn’t banked on was that she’d be so good at it. Whereas my moves were an ungainly mimicry of actual dancing, wholly unrelated to this song or any other, hers possessed a lithe expressiveness that verged on actual grace. She spun, twirled, gyrated. She did things with her hips that elsewise might have looked indecent but under the circumstances seemed ordained by a different, less constricted morality. She also managed to keep her attention on me the whole time, wearing a warmly seductive smile, her eyes focused like lasers. What had Liz called her? A “party girl”? I was begin
ning to see the advantages.

  We broke after the third song for yet another drink, slung them back like sailors on leave, and returned to the floor. I’d eaten no dinner, and the booze was doing its work. The evening dissolved into a haze. At some point I found myself talking to Jonas, who was introducing me to other members of the club, and then playing pool with Alcott, who was not such a bad fellow after all. Everything I did and said seemed charmed. More time passed, and then Stephanie, whom I’d briefly lost track of, was pulling me by the hand back toward the music, which pumped without ceasing like the night’s own heartbeat. I had no idea what time it was and didn’t care. More fast dancing, the song downshifted, and she wrapped her arms around my neck. We’d barely spoken, but now this warm, good-smelling girl was in my arms, her body pressed against mine, the tips of her fingers stroking the hairs at the back of my neck. Never had I received such an undeserved present. What was happening to my anatomy was nothing she could have missed; nor did I want her to. When the song ended, she placed her lips against my ear, her breath a sweet exhalation that made me shudder.

  “I have coke.”

  I found myself, then, sitting beside her on a deep leather couch in a room that looked like something in a hunting lodge. From her purse she produced a small packet made of notebook paper, sealed by complex folding. She used my Harvard ID to arrange the coke in two fat lines on the coffee table and rolled a dollar bill into a tube. Cocaine was an aspect of college life that I had not experienced but did not see the harm of. She bent to the table, sucked the powder deep into her sinuses with a delicate, girlish snort, and passed me the bill so that I might do the same.

  It wasn’t bad at all. It was, in fact, very good. Within seconds of the powder’s purchase, I experienced a Roman-candle rush of well-being that seemed not a departure from reality but a deeper entry into truth. The world was a fine place full of wonderful people, an enchanted existence worthy of the utmost enthusiasm. I looked at Stephanie, who was quite beautiful now that I had eyes to see, and sought the words to explain this revelation on a night of many.