The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

Peter understood. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  A silent moment, each of them acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation.

  “I know you don’t want to believe me,” Alicia said. “Hell, I wouldn’t. But I’m telling you the truth.”

  Peter said nothing.

  “We were friends, Peter. All those years, you were the one person I could always rely on. We stood for each other.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Just tell me that still counts for something.”

  As he looked at her, his mind went back to the night when they had said goodbye to each other at the Colorado garrison, so many years ago—the night before he had ridden up the mountain with Amy. How young they’d been. Standing outside the soldiers’ barracks, the cold wind lancing through them, he had loved Alicia fiercely, as he had never loved anyone in his life—not his parents or Auntie or even his brother Theo: no one. It was not the love of a man for a woman, or a brother for a sister, but something leaner, pared to its essence: a binding, subatomic energy that had no words to name it. Peter could no longer recall what they’d said to one another; only the impression remained, like footprints in snow. It was one of those moments when it had still seemed possible to understand life and what was meant by living one—he had been young enough to still believe that such a thing was possible—and the recollection carried a striking vividness of emotion, as if three decades had not passed since that cold and distant hour in which he had stood in the sheltering light of Alicia’s courage. But then he blinked the memory away, his mind returned to the present, and what remained was only a great weight of sadness at the center of his chest. Two hundred thousand souls gone, and Alicia at the center of it all.

  “Yes,” he said. “It counts. But I’m afraid it doesn’t change a thing.”

  He gave three hard bags on the door. Tumblers turned and the guard appeared.

  “Don’t be dumb, Peter. Fanning’s everything I say he is. I don’t know what you’re planning, but don’t.”

  “Thank you,” he said to the guard. “I’m finished here.”

  The chain attaching Alicia to the wall rattled as she yanked on it. “Listen to me, goddamnit! It’s no good, fighting him!”

  But these words barely reached his ears; Peter was already striding down the hall.

  61

  And now, my Alicia, you reside among them.

  How do I know this? I know it as I know everything; I am a million minds, a million histories, a million roving pairs of eyes. I am everywhere, my Alicia, watching you. I have watched you since the beginning, taking measure and stock. Would it be too much to say that I felt your arrival on the day you were born into this world—a wet, squealing nugget, the hot blood of protest already pouring through your veins? Impossible, of course; yet it seems so. Such is the bewitching way of providence: all seems ordained, all known, both in forward and reverse.

  What an entrance you made! With what bold declaration, what showmanship, what authoritative poise did you step into the city’s lights and stake your claim! How could the occupants of the besieged metropolis fail to swoon under your spell, enchanted by the drama of your arrival? I am Alicia Donadio, captain of the Expeditionary! Forgive, Alicia, these windy flights; my mood is grandiose. Not since the great Achilles stood without the battlements of mighty Troy has our pocket of creation seen the likes of you. Within those walls, no doubt, a great parliament commences. Debates, edicts, threats and counterthreats—the customary swordplay of a city under siege. Do we fight? Do we run? Earnest and admirable, yet—and you must pardon the analogy—these discussions are to the outcome what splashing is to drowning: they only make the whole thing go faster.

  In your absence, Alicia, I have, so to speak, taken a page from your book. Night after night the dark beckons me; my feet cast me wandering anew into the streets of mighty Gotham. Summer has come at last upon this isle of exile. In the branches the songbirds twitter; the trees and flowers clutter the breeze with their airborne sexual excreta; newborn creatures of every ilk undertake their first uncertain adventures in the grass. (Last night, recalling your concerns for my strength, I devoured a litter of six young bunnies in your honor.) What is this new restlessness inside me? Adrift among Manhattan’s maze of glass and steel and stone, I feel closer to you, yes, but something else as well: a sense of the past so glowingly intense it is practically hallucinatory. It was in summer, after all, when I traveled to New York for my friend Lucessi’s funeral, when this city first laid its hand of love upon me. I close my eyes and there I am, with her, my Liz, the woman and the place indelible, one and the same. The appointed hour at the clock, and then our exit into the moist human heat of the season’s early rush; the abrupt encapsulation of the taxi, with its cracked vinyl bench and feeling of a million prior occupants; the parade of heaving humanity clogging the streets and sidewalks; the impatiently perfunctory honking of horns and the catlike mating shrieks of sirens; the majestic towers of midtown, glazed and shining with the hour’s exhausted light; my bright, almost painful awareness of everything, a rush of undifferentiated data to my brain, all of it permanently inseparable from the beloved and eternal her. Her shining, sun-blessed shoulders. The faint, womanly aroma of her perspiration in the sealed space of the taxi. Her wan, expressive face, with its touch of mortality, and her myopic gaze, always peering deeper into things. The perfection of her hand in my own as we wandered the dark streets together, alone among millions. It has been said that in ancient times there was only one gender; in that blissful state, humankind existed until, as punishment, the gods divided each of us in two, a cruel mitosis that sent each half forever spinning across the earth in search of its mate, so that it could be whole again.

  That was how her hand felt in my own, Alicia: as if, of all men upon the earth, I had found that one.

  Did she kiss me that night as I was sleeping? Was it a dream? Is there a difference? That is my New York, as it was once so many’s: the kiss one dreams of.

  All lost, all gone—as is the city of your love, Alicia, the city of your Rose. Call Fanning, my friend Lucessi wrote. Call Fanning to tell him that love is all there is, and love is pain, and love is taken away. How many hours did he hang there? How many days and nights did my mother linger, floating in a sea of agony? And where was I? What fools we are. What fools we mortals be.

  Thus does the hour of reckoning approach. Unto God I issue my just complaint; ’twas he who cruelly dangled love before our eyes, like a brightly colored toy above a baby’s crib. From nothing he made this world of woe; to nothing it shall return.

  I know she’s here, you said. I can hear it in your voice.

  And I in yours, my Alicia. I in yours.

  62

  Two soldiers, rifles dangling, stood at the end of the walkway. As Peter approached, they stiffened, popping quick salutes.

  “All quiet here?” Peter asked.

  “Dr. Wilson went in a while ago.”

  “Anyone else?” He wondered if Gunnar had visited, or maybe Greer.

  “Not since we came on duty.”

  The door open as he mounted the porch: Sara, carrying her small leather satchel of instruments. Their eyes met in a way that Peter understood. He embraced her and backed away.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Peter began. Her hair was damp and pressed to her forehead, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. “We all loved her.”

  “Thank you, Peter.” Her words were flat, without emotion. “Is it true about Alicia?”

  He nodded.

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “I don’t know at this point. She’s in the stockade.”

  Sara didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. Her face said it all. We trusted her; now look.

  “How’s Amy?” Peter asked.

  Sara heaved a sigh. “You can see for yourself. I’m a little out of my depth here, but as far as I can tell, she’s fine. Fine as in human. A little malnourished, and she’s very weak, but the fever’s gone. If you
brought her in here and didn’t tell me who she was, I’d say she was a perfectly healthy woman in her mid-twenties who’d just come off a bad bout of the flu. Somebody please explain this to me.”

  As compactly as he could, Peter related the story: the Bergensfjord, Greer’s vision, Amy’s transformation.

  “What are you going to do?” Sara said.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Sara seemed dazed; the information had begun to sink in. “I guess maybe I owe Michael an apology. Funny to think about that at a time like this.”

  “There’s a meeting in my office at oh-seven-thirty. I need you there.”

  “Why me?”

  There were lots of reasons; he went with the simplest. “Because you’ve been part of this from the beginning.”

  “And now part of the end,” Sara said grimly.

  “Let’s hope not.”

  She fell silent, then said, “A woman came into the hospital yesterday in labor. Early stages, we might have just sent her home, but she and her husband were there when the horn went off. Along about three A.M. she decides to have her baby. A baby, in the middle of all this.” Sara looked at Peter squarely. “Know what I wanted to tell her?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t.”

  The bedroom door was ajar; Peter paused at the threshold. The drapes were shut, bathing the room in a thin, yellowish light. Amy was turned on her side—eyes closed, face relaxed, one arm tucked beneath the pillow. He was about to retreat when her eyes fluttered open.

  “Hey.” Her voice was very soft.

  “It’s okay, go back to sleep. I just wanted to check on you.”

  “No, stay.” She cast her eyes groggily around the room. “What time is it?”

  “I’m not sure. Early.”

  “Sara was here.”

  “I know. I saw her leave. How are you feeling?”

  She frowned pensively. “I don’t … know.” Then, eyes widening as if the idea surprised her: “Hungry?”

  Such an ordinary want; Peter nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  In the kitchen he lit the kerosene stove—he hadn’t used it in months—then went outside to tell the soldiers what he needed. While he waited, he washed up; by the time they returned, carrying a small basket, the fire was ready to go. Buttermilk, eggs, a potato, a loaf of dense, dark bread, and mixed-berry jam in a jar sealed with wax. He set to work, happy to have this small chore to take his mind from other things. In a cast-iron pan he fried the potatoes and then the eggs; the bread he cut into thick slices and smeared with jam. How long since he’d cooked a meal for another person? Probably for Caleb, as a boy. Years ago.

  He arranged Amy’s breakfast on a tray, added a glass of buttermilk, and carried it all to the bedroom. He’d wondered if she’d fall asleep again in his absence; instead he found her alert and sitting up. She had pulled the drapes aside; evidently the light had ceased to trouble her. A smile blossomed at the sight of him, standing in the doorway like a waiter with his tray.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Peter placed the tray on her lap. “I’m not much of a cook.”

  Amy was staring at the food as if she were a prisoner released from years in jail. “I don’t even know where to start. The potatoes? The bread?” She smiled decisively. “No, the milk.”

  She drained the glass and set to work on the rest, jabbing the food with her fork like a field hand.

  Peter dragged a chair to the bedside. “Maybe you should slow down.”

  She glanced up, speaking around a mouthful of eggs. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  He was famished but enjoyed watching her. “I’ll get something later.”

  Peter went to the kitchen to refill her glass; by the time he returned, her plate was empty. He handed her the buttermilk and watched her polish it off. A healthy color had flowed back into her cheeks.

  “Come sit by me,” she said.

  Peter cleared her tray and perched on the edge of the bed. Amy slipped her hand into his. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  It felt so unreal, to be sitting here, talking to her. “I’m sorry I got old.”

  “Oh, I think I’ve got you beat there.”

  He almost laughed. There was so much he wanted to say, to tell her. She looked just as she did in his dreams; the short hair was the only difference. Her eyes, the warmth of her smile, the sound of her voice—all were the same.

  “What was it like, in the ship?”

  She dropped her face; her thumb moved gently over the top of his hand. “Lonely. Strange. But Lucius took care of me.” She looked at him again. “I’m sorry, Peter. You couldn’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted you to live your life. To be … happy. I heard Caleb call you ‘Dad.’ I’m glad, for both of you.”

  “He’s married, you know. His wife is Pim.”

  “Pim,” Amy repeated, and smiled.

  “They have a son, too. They named him Theo.”

  She gently squeezed his hand. “So there’s a life, right there. What else made you happy? I want to know.”

  You did, he thought. You made me happy. I’ve been with you every night since you were gone. I’ve lived a whole life with you, Amy. But he could not find the words to say this.

  “That night in Iowa,” he began. “That was real, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure I even know what real is anymore.”

  “I mean, it happened. It wasn’t a dream.”

  Amy nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why did you come to me?”

  Amy’s eyes darted away, as if the memory pained her. “I’m not sure I know. I was confused, the change had happened so fast. Probably I shouldn’t have done it. I was so ashamed of what I was.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I was a monster, Peter.”

  “Not to me.”

  Their eyes met and held; her hand was warm, though not with fever; it was the warmth of life. A thousand times he’d held it, and yet this was also the first.

  “Is Alicia all right?” Amy asked.

  “Oh, she’s tougher than that. What do you want me to do with her?”

  “I don’t think that’s my decision.”

  “It’s not. But I still need to know what you think.”

  “This isn’t simple for her. She’s been with him a long time. I think there’s a lot she’s not telling us.”

  “Like what?”

  Amy thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t tell. She’s very sad. But it’s like there’s a locked box inside her. I can’t get past it.” Their eyes met again. “She needs you to trust her, Peter. I’m one side of her; Fanning’s the other. Between us, there’s you. It’s you she’s really here to see. She needs to know who she is. Not just who she is: what she is.”

  “So what is she?”

  “What she always was. Part of this, part of us. You’re her family, Peter. You have been from the start. She needs to know that you still are.”

  Peter felt the truth of her words. But knowing something was not the same thing as believing it. That was the hell of it, he thought.

  “You’re not going with her,” he said. “I can’t allow it.”

  “You may not have a choice about that. Alicia’s right, the city can’t stand indefinitely. Sooner or later, I’ll have to face him.”

  “I don’t care. I lost you once. I’m not doing it again.”

  Footsteps in the hall: Peter turned as Caleb appeared in the doorway, Pim behind him. For a moment, Peter’s son appeared dumbstruck. A warm light switched on in his eyes.

  “It’s really you,” he said.

  Amy smiled. “Caleb, I believe I would like to hug you.”

  Peter stepped back; Amy rose on her elbows as Caleb leaned over the bed and the two embraced. When at last they parted, they still held one another by the elbows, each beaming into the other’s happy face. Peter understood what he was seeing: the deep bond that Amy and his son shared
, forged in the days before Iowa, when Amy had looked after him in the orphanage.

  “You look so grown-up,” Caleb said, laughing.

  Amy laughed, too. “So do you.”

  Caleb turned to his wife, speaking and signing simultaneously. “Amy, this is Pim, my wife. Pim, Amy.”

  How do you do, Pim? Amy signed.

  Very well, thank you, Pim replied.

  Amy’s hands were moving with expert speed. It’s a beautiful name. You’re just as I pictured you.

  You, too.

  Caleb stared at the two women; only then did it occur to Peter that the exchange he had just witnessed was, technically, impossible.

  “Amy,” Caleb said, “how did you do that?”

  She frowned at her splayed fingers. “Now, I don’t think I know. I suppose the sisters must have taught me.”

  “None of them can sign.”

  She dropped her hands to her lap and looked up. “Well, somebody must have. How else could I have done it?”

  More footsteps; an atmosphere of official briskness accompanied Apgar into the bedroom.

  “Mr. President, I’m sorry for the interruption, but I thought I might find you here.” His chin lifted toward the bed. “Pardon me, ma’am. How are you feeling?”

  Amy was sitting up now, hands folded in her lap. “Much better, thank you, General.”

  He narrowed his attention on Caleb. “Lieutenant, aren’t you supposed to be in your rack?”

  “I wasn’t tired, sir.”

  “That wasn’t what I asked. And don’t look at your father—he’s not interested.”

  Caleb took Amy’s hand and gave it a final squeeze. “Get better, okay?”

  “Now, Mr. Jaxon.”

  Caleb exchanged a hasty, unreadable sign with Pim and exited the room. “If you’re done here,” Apgar said, “it’s time. People will be waiting.”

  Peter turned to Amy. “I better go.”

  Amy appeared not to have heard him; her eyes were fixed on Pim’s. The seconds stretched as the two women regarded each other with a crackling intensity, as if engaged in a private, inaudible conversation.

  “Amy?”

  She startled, breaking the circuit. It seemed to take her a moment to assemble her sense of her surroundings. Then she said, very calmly, “Of course.”