The City of Mirrors

So, the years. Fanning said time was different for their kind, and it was. The days’ ceaselessly melding, season into season, year into year. What were they to each other? He was kind. He understood her. We have traveled the same road, he said. Stay with me, Lish. Stay with me, and all of it is ended. Did she believe him? There were times when he seemed to know the deepest truths of her. What to say, what to ask, when to listen and for how long. Tell me about her. How soft his voice was, how gentle. It was like no voice she had ever heard; it felt like floating in a bath of tears. Tell me about your Rose.

Yet there was another part of him, veiled, impenetrable. His long, brooding silences disturbed her, as did instances of a slightly off-key cheerfulness that seemed wholly manufactured. He began to venture out at night, something he had not done in years. He made no announcement; he would simply be gone. Alicia decided to follow him. For three nights he wandered without apparent destination, a forlorn figure haunting the streets; then, on the fourth night, he surprised her. With deliberate strides he made his way downtown, into the West Village, and halted before a nondescript residential building, five stories tall, with a flight of steps connecting the front door to the street. Alicia concealed herself behind a rooftop parapet at the top of the block. Several minutes passed, Fanning studying the building’s face. Suddenly it came to her: Fanning had lived here once. Something seemed to click inside him, and he marched up to the door, forced it with his shoulder, and disappeared inside.

He was gone for a long while. An hour, then two. Alicia began to be concerned. Unless Fanning appeared soon, there would not be time for him to return to the station before sunrise. Finally he emerged. At the bottom of the steps, he stopped. As if sensing her presence, he cast his eyes around the street, then looked straight toward her. Alicia ducked below the parapet and pressed her body to the rooftop.

“I know you’re there, Alicia. But it’s all right.”

When she looked again, the street was empty.

—

He made no mention of the night’s events, and Alicia did not press. She had glimpsed something, a clue, but its meaning eluded her. Why, after all this time, would he make such a pilgrimage?

He never left again.

What was going to happen next, Fanning must have anticipated; Alicia was obviously meant to do it. The building was a wreck on the inside. Black spatters of mold scaled the walls, and the floors were soft underfoot. In the stairwell, water dripped from a leak in the ceiling, high above. She ascended to the second floor, where a door stood open in invitation. The interior of the apartment had been largely spared the destruction. The furniture, though caked with dust, was all neatly arranged; books and magazines and various decorative objects still occupied their places, just as, Alicia supposed, they had been in the final hours of Fanning’s human life. As she moved through the fastidious rooms she became aware of what she was feeling. Fanning wanted her to know the man he’d been. A new, deeper intimacy had been offered her.

She entered the bedroom. It seemed different from the other spaces of the apartment, possessing an intangible sense of more recent occupation. The furniture was simple: a desk, a dresser, an upholstered chair by the window, a bed, neatly made. Bisecting the center of the mattress was a depression of distinctly human dimensions. A similar divot marked the pillow.

A pair of eyeglasses rested on the bedside table. Alicia knew whom they’d belonged to; they were part of the story. She gently picked them up. They were petite, with wire frames. The cratered bed, the linens, the glasses within reach. Fanning had lain here. And he had left all of this for her to see.

To see, she thought. What did he want her to see?

She lay on the bed. The mattress was formless beneath her, its internal structure long collapsed. Then she put on the glasses.

—

She could never explain it; the moment she had looked through the lenses, it was as if she had become him. The past poured through her, the pain. The truth hit her heart like voltage. Of course. Of course.

Daybreak found her at the bridge. Her fear of the churning waters, though strong, seemed trivial; she pushed it aside. The sun cast its long, golden rays behind her. Upon Soldier’s back she made her way across, following her shadow.

* * *

32

They found Bill in the retaining pool at the bottom of the spillway. The night before, he’d slipped out of the hospital, taking his clothes and shoes. After that, the trail went cold. Someone said they had seen him at the tables, although the man demurred; he could be thinking of a different night, he said. Bill was always at the tables. It would have been more remarkable if he weren’t.