The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  Sometime later, I awoke. I looked at my watch: it was nearly two A.M. I went to Liz and placed my palm to her forehead. She felt cool, and I believed that the worst had passed.

  Her eyes opened. She looked around cautiously, as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer right away. Her voice was very soft. “Better, I think. Sorry to scare you.”

  “That’s perfectly all right.”

  “It happens sometimes like that, but it goes away. Until sometime when it doesn’t, I guess.”

  I had nothing to say to that. “Let me get you some water.”

  I filled a glass in the bathroom and brought it to her. She lifted her head off the pillow and sipped. “I was having the strangest dream,” she said. “The chemo is what does it. The stuff’s like LSD. I thought that was over, though.”

  A thought occurred to me. “I have a present for you.”

  “You do?”

  “Wait here.”

  I kept her glasses in my desk. I returned to the bedroom and placed them in her hand. She studied them for a long moment.

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to giving these back.”

  “I like to put them on sometimes.”

  “And here I didn’t get you anything. I’m just appalling.” She was crying, just a little. She looked up, meeting my eye. “You’re not the only one who blew it you know.”

  “Liz?”

  She reached out her hand touched my cheek. “It’s funny. You can live your whole life and then suddenly know that you didn’t do it right at all.”

  I wrapped her fingers with my own. Outside, the snow fell upon the sleeping city.

  “You should kiss me,” she said.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “I think that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”

  I did. I brought my mouth to hers. It was a soft, quiet kiss—peaceful would be the word—the kind that obliterates the world and makes all time turn around it. Infinity in a moment, the hem of creation brushing the face of the waters.

  “I should stop,” I said.

  “No, you shouldn’t.” She began to unbutton her blouse. “Just please be careful with me. I’m kind of breakable, you know.”

  21

  We became lovers. I don’t think I’d ever truly understood the word. I don’t mean just sex, though there was that—unhurried, meticulous, a form of passion I had never known existed. I mean that we lived as richly as two people ever could, with a feeling of absolute rightness. We left the apartment only to walk. A deep cold had followed the snow, sealing the city in whiteness. Jonas’s name was never mentioned. It wasn’t a subject we were avoiding. It had simply ceased to matter.

  We both knew she would have to return eventually; she could not simply step out of her life. Nor could I imagine the two of us being apart for one minute of the time she had left. I believed she felt the same. I wanted to be there when it happened. I wanted to be touching her, holding her hand, telling her how much I loved her as she faded away.

  One morning the week after Christmas, I awoke in bed alone. I found her in the kitchen, sipping tea, and knew what she was about to tell me.

  “I have to go back.”

  “I know,” I said. “Where?”

  “Greenwich first. My mother must be worried. Then Boston, I suppose.” She didn’t have to say more; her meaning was plain. Jonas would be home soon.

  “I understand,” I said.

  We took a cab to Grand Central. Few words had been spoken since her announcement. I felt like I was being taken to face a firing squad. Be brave, I told myself. Be the sort of man who stands tall with his eyes open, waiting for the guns’ report.

  Her train was called. We walked to the platform where it awaited. She put her arms around me and began to cry. “I don’t want to do this,” she said.

  “Then don’t. Don’t get on the train.”

  I felt her hesitancy. Not just the words; I felt it in her body. She couldn’t make herself let go.

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  People were hurrying past. The customary announcement crackled overhead: All aboard for New Haven, Bridgeport, Westport, New Canaan, Greenwich … A door was closing; soon it would be sealed.

  “Then come back. Do what you have to do, and then come back. We can go someplace.”

  “Where?”

  “Italy, Greece. An island in the Pacific. It doesn’t matter. Somewhere nobody can find us.”

  “I want to.”

  “Say yes.”

  A frozen moment; then she nodded against me. “Yes.”

  My heart soared. “How long do you need to tie things up?”

  “A week. No, two.”

  “Make it ten days. Meet me here, under the clock. I’ll have everything ready.”

  “I love you,” she said. “I think I did from the start.”

  “I loved you even before that.”

  A last kiss, she stepped toward the train, then turned and embraced me again.

  “Ten days,” she said.

  I made ready. There were things I needed to do. I composed a hasty email to my dean, requesting a leave of absence. I wouldn’t be around to know if it had been accepted, but I hardly cared. I could imagine no life beyond the next six months.

  I called a friend who was an oncologist. I explained the situation, and he told me what would happen. Yes, there would be pain, but mostly a slow receding.

  “It’s not something you should manage on your own,” he said. When I didn’t reply, he sighed. “I’ll phone in a prescription.”

  “For what?”

  “Morphine. It will help.” He paused. “At the end, you know, a lot of people take more than they should, strictly speaking.”

  I said I understood and thanked him. Where should we go? I had read an article in the Times about an island in the Aegean where half the population lived to be a hundred. There was no valid scientific explanation; the residents, most of whom were goat herders, took it as a fact of life. A man was quoted in the article as saying, “Time is different here.” I bought two first-class tickets to Athens and found a ferry schedule online. A boat traveled to the island only once a week. We would have to wait two days in Athens, but there were worse places. We would visit the temples, the great, indestructible monuments of a lost world, then vanish.

  The day arrived. I packed my bags; we would be going straight from the station to the airport for a ten P.M. flight. I could barely think straight; my emotions were an indescribable jumble. Joy and sadness had fused together in my heart. Foolishly, I had planned nothing else for the day and was forced to sit idly in my apartment until late afternoon. I had no food on hand, having cleaned out the refrigerator, but doubted I could have eaten anyway.

  I took a cab to the station. Five o’clock was, once again, the appointed hour. Liz would be taking an Amtrak train to Stamford, to see her mother, in Greenwich, one last time, then a local to Grand Central. With each passing block my feelings annealed into a pure sense of purpose. I knew, as few men did, why I had been born in the first place; everything in my life had called me forward to this moment. I paid the cabbie and went inside to wait. It was a Saturday, the crowds light. The opalescent clock faces read 4:36. Liz’s train was due in twenty minutes.

  My pulse quickened as the announcement came over the speakers: Now arriving at track 16 … I considered going to the platform to head her off, but we might lose each other in the crowd. Passengers surged into the main hall. Soon it became clear that Liz was not among them. Perhaps she had taken a later train; the New Haven line ran every thirty minutes. I checked my phone, but there were no messages. The next train came, and still no Liz. I began to worry that something had happened. It did not occur to me yet that she had changed her mind, though the idea was waiting in the wings. At six o’clock I called her cell, but it went straight to voicemail. Had she
shut it off?

  Train by train, my panic grew. It was now obvious that Liz would not be coming, and yet I continued to wait, to hope. I was hanging by my fingertips over an abyss. Time and again I tried her cell, with the same result. This is Elizabeth Lear. I’m not available to take your call. The clocks’ hands mocked me with their turning. It was nine, then ten. I had waited five hours. What a fool I’d been.

  I left the station and began to walk. The air was cruel; the city seemed like a huge dead thing, some monstrous joke. I did not button my coat or put on my gloves, preferring to feel the pain of the wind. Sometime later I looked up to find I was on Broadway, near the Flatiron. I realized I had left my suitcase at the station. I thought to go back and retrieve it—surely somebody would have turned it in—but the flame of this impulse quickly extinguished itself. A suitcase—who cared? Of course there was the morphine to consider. Perhaps whoever found it would enjoy themselves.

  Drinking myself blind seemed like the next logical step. I entered the first restaurant I came to, in the lobby of an office building—sleek and upscale, full of chrome and stone. A few couples were still eating, though it was after midnight. I took a place at the bar, ordered a Scotch, finished it before the bartender had returned the bottle to the rack, and requested a refill.

  “Excuse me. You’re Professor Fanning, aren’t you?”

  I turned to the woman sitting a few stools away. She was young, a little heavy but quite striking, Indian or Middle Eastern, with raven-black hair, full cheeks, and a bow-shaped mouth. Above her generically sexy black skirt she wore a filmy top the color of cream. A glass of something with fruit in it sat on the bar in front of her, its rim stained with crescents of rust-colored lipstick.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She smiled. “I guess you don’t remember me.” When I didn’t reply, she added, “Molecular Biology 100? Spring 2002?”

  “You were my student.”

  She laughed. “Not much of one. You gave me a C minus.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  “Trust me, no offense taken. The human race has a lot to thank you for, actually. Many people are alive today because I didn’t go to med school.”

  I had no recollection of her; hundreds of young women like her came and went from my classes. It is also not the same thing to see someone from the distance of a podium at eight o’clock in the morning, wearing sweatpants and furiously tapping a laptop, as to find them sitting three stools away in a bar, dressed for a night of adventure.

  “So, where did you end up?” A dull remark; I was simply looking for something to say, since conversation was now inevitable.

  “Publishing, where else?” She leveled her gaze at me. “You know, I had the biggest crush on you. I’m talking major. A lot of the girls did.”

  I realized she was drunk, making such a confession without even telling me her name.

  “Miss—?”

  She moved to the stool next to mine and extended her hand. Her nails were perfectly manicured, painted to match her lips. “Nicole.”

  “It’s been a long night for me, Nicole.”

  “I could sort of tell, the way you put away that Scotch.” She touched her hair for no reason. “What do you say, Professor? Buy a girl a drink? It’s your chance to make up for that C.”

  She was plainly amusing herself, a woman who knew what she had, what it could do. I glanced past her; just a handful of other people were in the room. “Aren’t you—?”

  “With anyone?” She gave a little laugh. “Like, did my date step out for a smoke?”

  I felt suddenly flustered; I hadn’t meant the question as a come-on. “I mean, a pretty girl like you. I just assumed.”

  “Well, you assumed wrong.” With the tips of her fingers she picked a cherry from her glass and raised it slowly to her lips. Her eyes locked onto my face; she placed it on her tongue, balancing it there for a half second before popping the stem and curling the red meat it into her mouth. It was the hokiest thing I’d ever seen.

  “Don’t you know, Professor? Tonight I’m all yours.”

  We were in a taxi. I was very drunk. The cab was bouncing through narrow streets and we were kissing like teenagers, drinking each other’s mouths in furious gulps. I appeared to have lost all volition; things were simply happening of their own accord. There was something I wanted, I didn’t know what. One of my hands had found its way up her skirt, lost in a feminine country of skin and lace; the other was lifting her buttocks toward me, pulling our hips together. She unlatched my trousers and eased me free, then dropped her head to my lap. The cabbie glanced back, said nothing. Up and down she went, my fingers entwined in the lush mane of her hair. My head was spinning, I could hardly breathe.

  The taxi halted. “Twenty-seven fifty,” the driver said.

  It was like being splashed by cold water. I hurriedly rearranged myself and paid. When I exited the car, the girl—Natalie? Nadine?—was already waiting on the steps to her building, smoothing down the front of her skirt. Something loud and large was rattling overhead; I thought we might be in Brooklyn, near the Manhattan Bridge overpass. More grappling at the door and she pushed me away.

  “Wait here.” Her face was flushed; she was breathing very fast. “I have something to take care of. I’ll buzz you in.”

  She was gone before I could object. Standing on the sidewalk, I tried to reassemble the order of the night’s events. Grand Central, the hours of hopeless waiting. My desolate walk through the icy streets. The warm oasis of the bar, and the girl—Nicole, that was it—smiling and moving closer and putting her hand on my knee and the two of us making our hasty, inevitable exit. I could remember these things, yet none of them seemed completely real. Abandoned in the cold, I felt a rush of panic. I did not want to be alone with my thoughts. How could she have done it? How could Liz have left me standing there, train after train? If the door didn’t buzz soon, I knew, I would literally detonate.

  A few agonizing minutes passed. I heard the door open and turned in time to see a woman emerge from the building. She was older, heavyset, perhaps Hispanic. Her body, buried in a bunchy down coat, was hunched against the wind. She had failed to notice me standing in the shadows; I slid behind her and grabbed the door just before it closed.

  The lobby encased me with its sudden warmth. I scanned the mailboxes. Nicole Forood, apartment zero. I descended the stairs to the basement, where a single door awaited. I knocked with my knuckles, then, when no one responded, with my fist. My frustration was indescribable. My feelings had annealed to a pure desperation, almost like anger. My fist was raised again when I heard footsteps inside. The complicated unlocking of a New York apartment door commenced; then it opened just enough for me to see the girl’s face on the other side of the chain. She had taken off her makeup, revealing an otherwise plain face, flawed by traces of acne. Another man would have understood the meaning, but my agitation was such that my brain could not compute the data.

  “Why did you leave me?”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea. You should go.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Her face was as rigid as a blind man’s. “Something’s come up. I’m sorry.”

  How could this be the same girl who had laid siege to me in the bar? Was this some kind of game? I wanted to blow the chain off its anchors and burst through the door. Maybe that was what she wanted me to do. She sort of seemed the type.

  “It’s late. I shouldn’t have left you out there, but I’m going to shut the door now.”

  “Please, just let me warm up for a minute. I promise I’ll go after that.”

  “I’m sorry, Tim. I had a good time. Maybe we can do it again sometime. But I really have to go.”

  I’ll admit it: part of my mind was computing the strength of the chain that held the door. “You don’t trust me, is that the reason?”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s just—” She didn’t finish.

  “I swear I’ll behave. Whatever you want.” I offer
ed a sheepish smile. “The truth is, I’m still a little drunk. I really need to sober up.”

  I could see the indecision in her face. My appeal was doing its work.

  “Please,” I said. “It’s freezing out there.”

  A moment passed; her face relaxed. “Just a few minutes, okay? I have to be up early.”

  I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  She closed the door, undid the chain, and opened it again. Disappointingly, the skirt and filmy top had been replaced by a robe and a shapeless flannel nightgown. She stepped aside to let me enter.

  “I’ll put on some coffee.”

  The apartment had a dingy look: a small living area with high-set windows facing the street, a galley kitchen with dishes teetering in the sink, a narrow hallway that led, presumably, to the bedroom. The couch, which faced an old tube-style television, was heaped with laundry. There were few books in sight, nothing on the walls except a couple of cheap museum posters of water lilies and ballerinas.

  “Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said, and waved at the sofa. “Just shove that stuff aside if you want.”

  Nicole’s back was to me. She filled a pot at the tap and began to pour the water into a stained coffee machine. Something peculiar was happening to me. I can only describe it as a kind of astral projection. It was as if I were a character in a movie, observing myself from a distance. In this divided state, I watched myself approach her from behind. She was sifting ground beans into the machine. I was about to put my arms around her when she sensed my presence and spun toward me.

  “What are you doing?”

  My body was pressing her against the counter. I began to kiss her neck. “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Tim, stop. I mean it.”

  I was burning from within. My senses were swarming. “God, you smell so good.” I was licking, tasting. I wanted to drink her.

  “You’re scaring me. I need you to leave.”

  “Say you’re her.” Where were these words coming from? Who was talking? Was it me? “Say it. Tell me how sorry you are.”