A Hundred Thousand Worlds

by Bob Proehl

  “Did you just get here?” the Idea Man asks. “Has Lawrence offered you anything?”

  “Louis,” corrects Louis. The Idea Man hasn’t looked at Louis since he made his entrance, and his botching Louis’s name is a funny little routine between them, played out, Alex thinks, largely for Alex’s amusement. He enjoys it, but not as much as he did a year ago, and now his enjoyment is tinged with the tolerance of a child who knows he’s being condescended to, if only a little, and sweetly.

  The Idea Man grabs Alex under the armpits and sweeps him up into an embrace with surprisingly easy strength. Alex grips the Idea Man’s neck. He thinks of the Idea Man as being so fragile, but he is perhaps the most physically solid person in Alex’s life. Alex’s mother says that before he became a television director, the Idea Man was a surfer, and even now, when he’s neither, his body retains its old muscles, as if some rogue wave could hit his castle in Greenpoint any day, and better to be ready.

  “We’re fine,” Alex’s mother says to Louis, who is standing by, ready to cater to their every desire.

  “I’ll have a ginger ale,” says Alex, still in the Idea Man’s hug, which is beginning now to feel too long.

  “Lance,” says the Idea Man, holding Alex out at arm’s length and a few feet above the ground as if to appraise him, “a ginger ale.”

  “I don’t think we have any ginger ale,” says Louis.

  “It’s lucky, then, that we live in the most civilized city in the universe,” says the Idea Man. “Get the boy a ginger ale.” Without another word, Louis leaves. Alex wonders why anyone would be so mean to someone who helps him. Again he thinks of his dedulya barking orders at Babu in his hoarse and whispery shout, and how there was some kind of love in his unkindness and some other kind of love in her enduring it.

  “So Alex,” says the Idea Man, settling into the large and very old chair where he likes to sit, the one the windows cast a light across in the afternoon, “tell me about your trip.”

  Alex considers this. “I don’t know anything about it yet,” he says, “since we haven’t even left.”

  “But you know the plan,” says the Idea Man. “You know where you’ll be going.”

  “I was thinking about that,” says Alex, “but I’ve been reading this book where the character thinks he’s going to a regular high school, but it turns out to be a high school for magicians. So maybe it’s not a good idea to think you know where you’re going until after you’ve been there.”

  The Idea Man is smiling and nodding at him, but a look of confusion is starting to spread down his face. “A high school for magicians,” he says absently. “Val, is that one of mine?”

  “I hope not,” says Alex’s mother. “If it is, you didn’t get paid enough for it. It’s a book series. Adam Anti. You must have read at least one of them.”

  “I can’t read books anymore,” says the Idea Man. Alex looks around the room, which is lined with bookshelves not full but overfull, stacked two deep in places.

  “You and I must be the last people who haven’t read them,” says Alex’s mother. “There are more copies of it on the subway than there are rats. Even some of the rats are reading it.”

  For some reason, the popularity of the Adam Anti books had convinced Alex’s mother she shouldn’t let him read them. The girl working in the bookstore in Park Slope had to persuade her it was age appropriate. Of all the stories Alex consumes—plays, movies, TV—his mother is most protective when it comes to books. This makes sense to Alex, because books make you create something in your head, which means the bad stuff is even worse. He’s on to the second one now, although he’s a little overwhelmed that there are seven books altogether. It’s almost too much of one story. Like if you ate candy bars all day.

  The door creaks open and Louis returns, holding a can of ginger ale out like he’s recovered a treasure.

  “That took long enough,” says the Idea Man. Alex walks across the room and takes the can, and as he turns, he sees his mother giving him the face and turns back.

  “Thank you, Louis,” he says, then opens the can, marveling at how much it sounds like saying “kiss,” inviting you to put your lips up to it.

  “Louis,” she says, “have you read the Adam Anti books?”

  “I’m not sure,” says Louis. “Is that something we’re allowed to admit in public yet?”

  “You were only out there for five minutes, Lucas,” says the Idea Man. “Did you catch some sort of hipster credibility virus?” As he says this, the Idea Man’s face crumples, not like before, when the confused look started at the top and dribbled down like wax off the sides of a candle, but like a soda can crushed underfoot, like his eyebrows are trying to jump into his mouth. “A serial killer,” says the Idea Man. “A hipster serial killer.”

  “Hold on a second,” says Louis, rushing out of the room.

  “Hurry,” says the Idea Man. “Fucking hurry.” He’s beginning to twitch, as if an electric current is running through him. In a way, Alex thinks, it is. The Idea Man only gets like this when an idea is coming to him, like a broadcast only he can pick up. Louis rushes back into the room with a notebook exactly like the one Alex brought with him, only this one is black, not green, and this one is the Book, where Louis writes down the Idea Man’s ideas as they come. People from television and the movies pay a lot to come and pick one page out of the Book. Part of Louis’s job is to make sure they only ever use the one idea they’ve paid for. Sometimes when Alex and his mom are watching TV, which isn’t often, she’ll say, “That’s one of Tim’s,” even though the Idea Man’s name never appears anywhere in the credits.

  “A hipster serial killer,” the Idea Man repeats. He looks as if he’s trying to remember something. “He targets the inauthentic. Poseurs. Fakers. Liars. Storytellers.” The Idea Man’s head shakes back and forth. “He’s hunting novelists in Brooklyn. He’s hunting anyone who creates fictions.”

  The Idea Man’s expression is becoming pained.

  “This,” says Alex’s mother, “seems like not a great idea.”

  “You’re right,” says the Idea Man, his face opening up again like a bloom. “Did you start a page?” he asks Louis.

  “Yes.”

  “Tear it out.”

  Louis tears out the page, crumples it into a ball, and makes it disappear into a pocket. Alex wonders how many times a day this happens and if at night Louis empties dozens of abandoned ideas out of his pants.

  “I’ve read them all,” Louis says, as though the last few minutes never happened. “Most of them twice.”

  “So you know how it ends?” Alex asks.

  “I do,” says Louis. “You want to know?”

  Alex panics for a second; then he realizes Louis has no intention of spoiling the ending of the books for him and is, in fact, messing with him. Louis has never messed with Alex before. He’s not sure he likes it; it feels like being mean. Alex thinks it must have something to do with how the Idea Man is mean to Louis, but he can’t figure out how the two things relate.

  “So are you ready for your trip?” Louis asks Alex’s mom. Alex is tempted to answer, because he’s been thinking a lot about the trip and about readiness. This will be the first time he’s left New York since he and his mother moved here six years ago, which he knows but doesn’t remember. And California is about as far away from New York as you can get, even if it is where Alex was born. He remembers nothing about it and feels unprepared for it. He wonders how he could be ready and worries he isn’t, that he doesn’t even know how to start getting ready and wouldn’t know when he’d arrived at readiness, a state that seems nearly as far as California.

  His mother answers for him.

  “We’re as ready as we’re liable to get, which probably isn’t ready enough.”

  This is a good way to put it, so Alex takes another swig of ginger ale.

  “I talked to the woman
at the correctional facility in Lincoln,” says Louis. “It’s about two hours outside of Chicago.” Louis is apparently more prepared for their trip than they are.

  “I know where Lincoln Correctional is,” says Alex’s mother in that sharp tone Alex knows means she doesn’t want to talk about whatever is being discussed. “My mom lives forty minutes from there.”

  “The warden’s name is Iris something or other. They’re ready for your visit. She said she’d rather you came to the parole hearing, but—”

  “That’s enough,” says the Idea Man. “No talking about the middle before the beginning. In a minute there is time for decisions or revisions which a minute will reverse.”

  “You’re quoting ‘Prufrock’ now?” asks Alex’s mother. Alex imagines how a proof rock might work. Either you put your hand on it and it tells if you are telling the truth, or it records evidence somehow: sounds and voices that it can play back.

  “I grow old,” says the Idea Man. “I grow old.”

  “Don’t be maudlin, Tim,” says Alex’s mother. He grins at her. When he smiles, he doesn’t look old at all.

  “I’ve been too much indoors,” he says. “Eliot’s like Whitman’s asthmatic little brother. But lately I find my thoughts drawn to him.”

  “Why don’t you and Alex go read for a bit?” says Alex’s mother, addressing both of them like they’re children. “Since you won’t be seeing each other for a while. Give Louis and me a chance to talk some things out.”

  The Idea Man springs from the couch and plucks Alex out of the chair with arms like taut cables of wire.

  “Let us go then, you and I,” he says in a weird British accent. He tucks Alex under his arm like a giggling briefcase and whisks him away. Once they are in the hallway and Alex is set properly on his feet, Alex heads toward the reading room, a sunny and spacious spot in the back of the apartment where he and the Idea Man have spent hours sharing the adventures of the Ferret, the Astounding Family, OuterGirl, and dozens of other brightly costumed heroes. But this time the Idea Man calls for him to wait, and Alex stops in front of a door halfway down the hall, the only one in the house that is perpetually closed. The Idea Man moves Alex a little off to the side and pulls the keys out of his pocket.

  “Have I ever shown you what’s in here?” the Idea Man asks. He hasn’t, but Alex has always wondered.

  The Idea Man opens the door. “It’s a time machine,” he says. Alex steps in.

  On the inside, it’s bigger than Alex would have predicted, or even thought possible. The ceilings are higher than anywhere else in the apartment, and bookcases and file cabinets climb up all of the walls, so high the bookcases have ladders on runners that slide across them and some of the file cabinets have other ladders propped against them.

  “The present’s nearest the ceiling,” says the Idea Man, pointing up, “and the past is closer to the floor. Comics in the file cabinets, books and photos on the shelves. It should probably be the other way, so the past is harder to get to, but usually it’s the past I’m in here looking for.”

  Alex puts his hand on the handle of one of the file cabinets and gives it a tentative pull, testing its give.

  “Go ahead,” says the Idea Man. Alex yanks the drawer open. It makes a metallic scraping noise, very different from the wood-on-wood sound of the Idea Man’s front door. Inside, as promised, are dozens of very old comic books. The Visigoth. The Blue Torch. The Astounding Family. The Idea Man has offered him issues at random over the years, but here they are meticulously sorted and cataloged, month by month. The thing that’s strange to Alex is that all of them were once new, when the Idea Man was young. The thought of their newness implies a time before they existed, before they were made, and times before are always troubling to Alex.

  “You should take a couple with you,” says the Idea Man. “You’re traveling into a foreign country, and it’s good to have some sense of the language.” Alex isn’t sure what this means. They are going to Cleveland. They are going to Chicago. They are going to Los Angeles. All of them well inside the United States. “Besides,” says the Idea Man, “it’ll be a while before we get to read together again.”

  “It’s only three weeks,” says Alex, delicately turning the pages of Captain Wonder, one of the Idea Man’s favorite characters. Alex looks up from the comic to see the Idea Man staring at him as if Alex has fallen and bruised his knee.

  “It could be a while longer than that,” says the Idea Man. “California’s a long ways away.”

  He’s not sure what the Idea Man means by this, but then sometimes the things the Idea Man says don’t make a lot of sense. Alex has checked and done the math: you can drive from New York to Los Angeles in two days, if you drive all day and all night. But there are so many things to see between here and there, Alex can imagine the trip taking longer, their path back across the country strange and snaking. They can take all the time they need.

  “I’m coming back,” he says, surprised how small his voice sounds in the big room.

  “You’re going back,” says the Idea Man. “California’s where you’re from, after all. But that doesn’t make it your home. Only you can decide where your home is. And every good story is about finding your way there.”

  Alex thinks about all the stories that end up with the main character arriving home, and how there’s something disappointing about the story ending where it began, but how there’s something satisfying about it, too.

  “Is New York your home?”

  “No,” says the Idea Man. “California’s my home at the end of the day.” He has taken a picture off the shelf and is looking at it, wearing that same expression he gets before an idea comes to him, his almost remembering face. Alex can see the picture: in it are the Idea Man, Alex’s mom and dad, and another lady Alex doesn’t recognize. They’re wearing tuxedos and fancy dresses. His mom and the Idea Man are holding up gold statues and they all look very happy. “This is a nice place to hide, but I have the Pacific in my blood. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”

  “Are there mermaids in California?”

  “The realest mermaids I know.”

  Alex has not until now thought about the Pacific, but he’s heard that it’s the blue color of oceans in picture books. He thinks about the ocean you can see at Coney Island, which is gray like the railing out in the stairwell, and how his mother took him to the Mermaid Parade there one year, where not many of the mermaids had tails at all, just turquoise skirts and no tops. He wonders what realer mermaids look like, but before he can imagine one, he hears his mom calling from the next room.

  “Sounds like they’re done plotting and scheming,” says the Idea Man. He opens another drawer and skims through, extracting a comic. He gets up on a short stepladder and opens a different, more recent drawer to get another. He does this a half-dozen times, flitting about the room, then straightens them into a stack and hands them to Alex. “Basic vocabulary,” he says. “Dónde está la cabina telefónica? With great power comes great responsibility. To be continued.”

  Alex and the Idea Man go back to the living room, where Alex’s mom and Louis are standing near enough to the doorway to indicate it is time to go. But Alex doesn’t want to go. The Idea Man is the last thing they’ve scheduled to say goodbye to in New York, but what about the Alice in Wonderland statue, or the Whispering Gallery in Grand Central? What about Elizabeth at Peas n’ Pickles, who sneaks him candy while his mom shops for groceries, or the Brooklyn Heights Promenade? There was no last pizza at Frankie’s, no final ride on the Staten Island Ferry to wave goodbye to the statue. Alex wants to mention these things, to list them off to his mother as things they need to do before they can leave. But something about the way she’s been worrying keeps him from sharing his worries with her.

  “When will you leave?” the Idea Man asks Alex’s mother.

  “Tomorrow,” she says, and all Alex can think is tha
t he is not ready. “How long does it take to drive to Cleveland?”

  “I should know this?” says the Idea Man. “Who ever has to drive to Cleveland? Leonard. How long does it take to drive to Cleveland?”

  “I’ve never driven to Cleveland,” says Louis.

  “No one’s ever driven to Cleveland,” replies the Idea Man. “But there must be some way to calculate it or something.”

  Alex’s mother intervenes in this argument by pulling the Idea Man away and into a hug. “It’ll take how long it takes,” she tells him. “You’ll take care of him?” she says to Louis, turning her back to the Idea Man.

  “As best I can,” Louis says, as if she has asked him to juggle chainsaws while on a unicycle.

  “You’re fantastic and he loves you dearly,” she tells Louis. He bows his head. Louis gets embarrassed whenever anyone says something nice to him, probably because it happens so rarely.

  “Alex,” the Idea Man says, shaking Alex’s hand up and down sternly, “it was very good to see you.”

  “It was nice to see you, too,” says Alex. He pauses. He is deciding something, and after a moment he decides yes. “Can I have one?” he asks.

  The Idea Man, who bent over a little to shake Alex’s hand, straightens up and strokes his chin. “Hmm. People usually have to pay.”

  “I don’t have any money,” says Alex, although this is not entirely true. His mom makes sure he has ten dollars in his pocket at all times, for emergencies. It’s been the same ten-dollar bill for two years, and Alex has come to think of this money as talismanic rather than spendable.

  “Tell you what,” the Idea Man says. “I’ll give you one, but if you make a story out of it, you have to tell it to me when it’s done.”

  “I thought you didn’t like stories,” says Alex.

  “I like stories very much,” the Idea Man says. “I just can’t come up with them anymore.”