When Tyler awoke, he expected to find himself in his bedroom. But it was someone else’s room, a girl’s room with a floral pink bedspread, magazine photos of rock stars from the early 1960s encircling a framed photo of Elvis. Light poured through a tear in the curtains, blinding him until he turned his face.
A dresser showcased photos of the family, including one of his mother as a girl. Was this once her room? Rather, was this the room of the his alternate mother, the one who died young, unlike the mother in his world who had time to grow old and bitter?
Tyler sat upright, pondering the previous evening with Vi and Carmen. A dinner of enchiladas reminded him he’d been starving all along. Carmen appreciated his voracious appetite, although she later protested Vi’s decision to offer her daughter’s room to Tyler. It was something of a shrine, the one room off limits to the woman who still loved the daughter’s husband; and Carmen was still hoping to share that husband’s bed. Now, she couldn’t.
Carmen showed Tyler where to find the bedroom, but Tyler made no promises. He was exhausted and would have fallen asleep in the downstairs armchair if Vi hadn’t walked him upstairs.
The clock read 10:34. How long had he been asleep?
Finding his pants, shirt and jacket draped neatly over a wooden chair, he dressed himself, wishing he had a change of clothing. He tried one door, finding it was locked. The other door opened out to the hallway, greeting Tyler with the smell of bacon. He realized he was still famished. It was just like the Sunday mornings he remembered as a child, his grandmother anticipating his arrival with a hot plate of bacon, eggs and toast. Tyler couldn’t descend the staircase fast enough.
Sure enough, Grandma Vi was busy at the stove, an apron protecting her baby blue dress.
“I hope you still have an appetite,” she remarked without turning her back. He’d entered the room noiselessly and yet she knew he was there.
Tyler said nothing as he took knife and fork to his plate, gorging himself on flavors that only Grandma Vi could produce.
He imagined himself as a boy of ten, small arms protruding from pajama sleeves and hands half the size of his adult hands. It wasn’t the home he shared with Grandma Vi, with its cramped kitchen that couldn’t accommodate a table. It was better; and to think this was what Sunday mornings must have been like for his mother, the dinner table close enough to the stovetop to fully savor every scent.
Tyler’s hands were indeed as small as he imagined them to be. They were boy’s hands, but he didn’t care. Life was simpler as a boy, his sole purpose to keep from getting bored; and he had only to step outside to find his friend, the one who looked like him and who did all the things Tyler wished he had the nerve to do.
Might stepping into the rear yard bring Magus back from prison? Did it merely require a hopeful frame of mind, one unblemished by the disappointment of relentless years?
“I know I can’t keep you here,” said Vi, turning to face him as she dried her hands with a cloth. “But you can stay as long as you like.”
Tyler remembered his quest, but wished he’d forgotten. Perhaps his quest was to find his grandmother. And now that he’d found her, he could live out his childhood again, this time without losing her.
But he could lose his other. In fact, she was already gone, along with his father.
“I was looking for someone, but I don’t know how to find her,” he answered, his voice that of a young boy. It was reassuring because boyhood was what he wanted, and boyhood was where he’d remain.
“You’re a man and you don’t even realize it,” noted Vi.
“I can be happy here,” he replied, his voice still that of a boy, and his hands still small as they eased the knife into the eggs and toast.
“But you can’t forget who you are.”
“I can be what I want,” he answered, realizing it was true.
“And become nothing at all,” she countered, grabbing his hand. It was his adult hand she squeezed.
He wasn’t a boy. He was a man who’d committed himself to an ill-considered plan he had yet had to see through. How long would he give himself to find Laurel? What would people think when he failed to return calls, and didn’t even bothering spending the night at his apartment? Would he be missed?
The thought made Tyler chuckle. No one would miss him, although they might be irked to find him unavailable when they needed him.
“How might I find someone?” asked Tyler.
“Depends who you’re looking for.”
“Murdoch,” he answered, remembering the name.
His grandmother stood up, turning to the sink.
“You know him?” asked Tyler.
“He’s the reason they’ll be tearing these buildings down,” she answered as she dried more dishes with a towel, “because there’s no money in keeping them. And the Coucil wants the same future he does, a future of clear winners and losers.”
It was inevitable, realized Tyler. There was no preserving the old Bunker Hill if it was destined to become something else. At least Tyler thought of it as destiny, and destiny could never be altered.
“I lived here since I was a girl,” she continued, visibly tensed. “Parents, husband, daughter, all came and went, but I’m still here. And I’ll stay here until they throw me out.”
“But we lived near Hancock Park, you and me, and everything would be good again.”
“They want me to forget, Tyler. That’s why they want me out. And the more I forget those I loved, the sooner I disappear, which is what they want for all of us who question the leadership of our illustrious General and the fools who do his bidding.”
“You won’t forget anything,” answered Tyler. “I won’t let you.”
Vi took Tyler’s hands in his, squeezing them.
“Changes are afoot and there’s no resisting them. And if the prophecies are true, Ozymandias will return and set things to right.”
“What’s all this talk of Ozymandias?” asked Tyler.
“An idea of justice, one we all believe in.”
“But who is he?”
“As I said, it’s an idea. Whether someone acts on that idea is the question you should be asking.”
“And what is the injustice he will fix?”
“That this world belongs to those who care for it the least,” she answered. “Manipulating fear to take all they can and destroying all who opposed them.”
“You describe my own world,” answered Tyler, wishing he could be as much of an idealist as his grandmother; but he had few expectations of anything ever changing, not until human nature itself could refuse the lure of power.
“And what do they do about it there?”
“Nothing. What can you do?”
“It was never like you, Tyler, to say things like that” noted Grandma Vi, his words like a slap in the face.
“That was a different Tyler,” he answered. Why did she speak of him as if he were her grandson when it was Magus who was her grandson?
“You’re both the same only you don’t realize it.”
“If we were the same, I’d be in jail too,” he answered, regretting the words the moment he uttered them.
Grandma Vi shifted her gaze to the floor.
“I’m sorry. I suppose I deserved to be there, not him,” said Tyler.
“You’re meant to be here, Tyler.”
“And do what?” asked Carmen who was leaning comfortably against the kitchen door as if she’d been listening to the conversation for some time. She was wearing a man’s dress shirt, and perhaps nothing else underneath.
Vi closed her eyes, shaking her head as if Carmen were something to be endured. Tyler figured Carmen was wearing one of his father’s shirts.
“You think he belongs to you?” continued Carmen, glowering.
“He’s not West, my dear,” said Vi, turning to Carmen. “You know that.”
“You never believed he’d come back,” answered Carmen, crossing her arms.
“You think a better tomorrow hinges on West returning?” asked Vi.
“It’s more likely than Ozymandias returning from the grave and righting the wrongs,” answered Carmen acrimoniously.
“How quickly you forget your promise to fight for justice. They took your father, but they never took West. He was never one to stay and fight.”
Tyler wondered if he had the nerve to stay and fight.
“You never liked him,” said Carmen.
“He left my daughter and now she’s dead,” said Vi, her voice shaking. “And he’s all you care about when there’s a world of people to care about.”
“I deserve to be happy,” replied Carmen, after some hesitation, her voice softened. “You said that.”
“Are you happy waiting for him?” asked Vi. “I don’t know why I encourage your delusions and let you stay.”
Carmen turned to Tyler as if for confirmation that he was indeed the man she suspected him to be.
Tyler turned away before standing. This could never be his home if someone believed he was someone else.
“Does it matter who I am?” he asked aloud, not expecting a response. He would have been relieved to be someone else, if only for a little while; but it should have been his choice, no one else’s.
“No,” said Carmen, taking his hand in his. “I don’t care anymore. Whoever you are.”
Tyler turned to Carmen, her beauty only magnified by the sadness in her eyes.
“I’m not here for myself,” he said, the moment he remembered. “I came to find someone, and this Murdoch knows where she is.”
The quest had little to do with Laurel, a woman he barely knew, and more with his determination for accomplishment. Motivation mattered little. But finding Laurel was Tyler’s purpose and that was enough.
He wanted Carmen, but he couldn’t love her without feeling like he was reinforcing a deception.
“I know how to find him,” said Carmen, nodding as she walked from the room.
“She’ll do anything to keep you,” explained Vi.
“Do you know where to find him?” she asked Vi.
“His homes are easy to find,” she answered, removing her apron and hanging it up on a hook. “As to which one …”
“Do you have a map?”
“This world changes too quickly for maps to be much good.”
“Then I need Carmen,” he insisted.
“You don’t need help finding Murdoch. You just need help getting there safe.”
“How could you help?” he asked, wishing he weren’t angry with his grandmother but frustrated that she didn’t speak plain. He suspected she was concealing something important.
“I can’t. But there are people who can, and I can pay them for you. But finding her won’t fix everything. Any change you make, they’ll know. And they don’t want any changes because they’re convinced everything is as it should be, which it isn’t.”
“So you don’t think I should bother?” he asked, surprised by what appeared to be an uncharacteristic lack of idealism.
“I think you should. But don’t think you get to walk out of here afterwards. What you set in motion could take years to see through.”
“I’m setting nothing in motion, just taking back what doesn’t belong here.”
“I told you, Tyler. If it’s here, it’s meant to be here.”
That meant Tyler was meant to be in Two Cities, but what was his purpose if it wasn’t to find Laurel and take her back home?
“And when my purpose is done, I leave,” he affirmed decisively.
Grandma Vi shook her head, an expression of disapproval that was rare for her. Most of his memories were of her unrelenting smile and readiness to lend encouragement to even the most preposterous of proposals; like when he told her he was going to build a time machine so she could see her husband again.
Long-forgotten memories were flooding his brain. How happy he’d been living with her; and it was because everything seemed possible. There would be no fear of those possibilities now, good or ill.
But he still needed Magus, just as he did when he was a boy. There was no leaving Two Cities without him; or so it was claimed.
The mistake, concluded Tyler, was believing anyone. If people discouraged him, they did it for their own selfish reasons. Was grandma Vi any different? She was sitting at the table with her eyes closed as if there was nothing more to say; and perhaps there was nothing to say that could get him any closer to achieving his purpose.
“I will see it through,” he told her, “whatever you think will happen.”
“I know,” she answered with a nod, an almost imperceptible smile turning her lips upward.
He walked outside, his hand once again claimed by Carmen.
“You need a guide,” she whispered, as if it were a secret.
“We can take a taxi,” he suggested.
“We went east but you don’t go west without official permission from the Council.. They don’t let just anyon out to the new city.”
“Really? I took Rex’s car the other night.”
“Rex is one of them. I never everything they were planning just by watching his coming and going. Besides, the club is still old city. We want new city and you don’t just go to new city whenever you feel like it.”
“So where do I find a guardian?” he asked.
“You already found her,” she replied, pressing her body close. Her breath was warm on his neck.
“What’s so difficult about it?” he asked as she guided him to her room near the back of the house.
“Nothing difficult with me, mi amor,” she replied.
Tyler knew Los Angeles. Two Cities couldn’t be much different. What need was there for a guide?
Carmen was proving difficult to resist, his thoughts of little else. He wanted to taste her, explore her skin, but it wasn’t his purpose; unless of course she was his purpose only he couldn’t see yet.
But resistance was weakening. He wasn’t surprised to find himself sprawled on her bed, her body wedged under his and her mouth on his lips. They kissed as he’d imagined kissing her ever since he met her.
He knew she may have loved him under false pretenses, assuming she still believed he was his father, but Tyler no longer cared. He didn’t remember wanting someone this desperately, his passion soon proving a match for hers as they shed their clothes, their bodies becoming one.
