For the first time, Tyler suspected he was dead. How else could he explain seeing his dead grandmother?
She looked younger than he remembered, and couldn't have been any older than he was; perhaps even younger. His grandmother reminded him of the idealized 1950's housewife; although he remembered how the truth was never what it seemed when it came to Grandma Vi.
Tyler mounted the front steps, unsure what to say.
"Don't I get a kiss?" asked his grandmother. Her voice was so familiar it gave him a chill. She'd always ask him that if she hadn't seen him for a while.
Tyler leaned toward her, kissing her cheek. It was warm to the touch.
Carmen stepped past him, her hand to the screen door.
"It might be safer inside," she reminded Tyler's grandmother Vi, holding the door open for Vi and Tyler.
"Of course," answered Vi, nervously gazing across the street as she ushered Tyler into the house.
As the door closed behind him, Carmen took him by the hand, giving him an affectionate squeeze before turning and walking toward the back rooms.
"Now make yourself at home," insisted Vi as she locked the door behind her.
Tyler remembered the exterior from old photographs, but he'd never seen photos of the interior, light filtering through stained glass windows to reveal a clutter of antique furniture arranged haphazardly through the front rooms.
Grandma Vi had always been something of a hoarder, but what she collected were ornate trinkets and other delicate knickknacks, all of which came with surprising stories. Tyler was sure that every piece of antique furniture had a story too.
In one room, dusty books lay in heaps near fully stocked shelves. Tyler remembered none of the items in the home he shared with Vi. Whatever happened to all the furnishings? Perhaps everything got destroyed along with the rest of Bunker Hill back in the early 60s.
Vi removed some books from a sofa before patting the leather surface. But Tyler wasn't interested in sitting. Stepping out of the room, past the stairwell, he found another room full of old photographs and unused furniture, much of it unvarnished and dilapidated.
"He would have restored these too if he hadn't died."
"Who?" asked Tyler.
"Your grandfather, of course," she answered. He remembered her stories about him, and how he went swimming far off the Santa Monica coast, never to return. It was said he disappeared and would one day return. He never did. Truth was, grandpa suffered from severe depression, though Vi preferred never to mention it. Tyler had always suspected grandpa swam out to sea with the express purpose of dying.
"I didn't know he restored antiques," noted Tyler, remembering that he was talking to his dead grandmother. How was it possible, unless he were dead like her?
"He fixed watches too," she answered, turning to a photograph of her husband, his hair whispy and his cheeks slightly gaunt. "So meticulous."
"Why am I here?" he asked, bracing himself for the frightful truth; although how could he be dead if he'd voluntarily entered Two Cities.
"Carmen brought you. I'm so glad she found you."
"But how are you here?" he asked.
"I don't remember being anywhere else. I grew up in his town, and not many can say that."
"This town being …" he began, hoping for her to finish the sentence with either 'Los Angeles' or 'Two Cities.'
"The only home I'll know."
"You're my grandmother," he said, awaiting her confirmation. She smiled.
"But you're younger than me. Does that make any sense?"
"This is why you should stop worrying about little things. So much like your mother, demanding an explanation for everything."
"What am I supposed to think?" he asked, losing patience.
"That anything's possible," she answered, still smiling, her hand to his.
"I'm serious," he yelled. "Just tell me if I'm dead or not."
"You've never been more alive, Tyler."
"But I saw you die. I remember."
When he awoke after the accident, he remembered his grandmother's bloodied face on the steering wheel. He thought she was hurt, and that she needed his help. He didn't understand she'd died until his mother explained she wasn't coming back and that it was best to forget.
Vi drew her arms about him. There were tears in his eyes, and as he returned the embrace, he could feel them coursing down his cheeks.
He wanted to speak but he couldn't articulate the words.
"I wish you hadn't seen that," she answered.
"Then you ARE dead," he surmised, wiping the tears from his cheeks.
"What do you know about death?" she asked, holding him at arm's length as she once did when addressing something important. It felt like he was ten years old again.
"I know it's the end," he explained, still wiping his face.
"But what if there are many lives and only one death?" she suggested.
"I don't understand," he answered, finding an upturned chair and turning it over, only to discover it hadn't been upholstered.
"Here," said Vi, pulling a wooden chair from behind a hollowed-out dresser. He sat down.
"There are possibilities you don't understand," she continued.
"Like this place?"
Vi kneeled before him, a hand to his knee. "This place has always been here. I've always been here. I died in that car but that doesn't mean I had to die here too. I didn't want to die. I wanted to see you again. There was so much to tell you. But things happen and opportunities are lost … for a time anyway."
"It wasn't the same when you were gone," he began, opting not to reference her death. He wanted to believe her, and believe that she'd never died at all. He'd always been right to trust her. She was never wrong. How different his life might have been if he hadn't lost her.
"It was never my plan to leave you."
"But you were here. You could have …"
"Crossing worlds isn't that simple," she explained, cutting him short. "Impossible when you no longer exist in one of them."
"I did it. I came here. Through the speakeasy."
"Because there were two of you, or the appearance of two, I should say."
Tyler felt a twinge of guilt for having forgotten Magus. Then it occurred to Tyler that if he needed Magus to enter this world, would he need his help to leave?
"How's this?" said Carmen, who appeared at the open door, her thick raven hair draped over her shoulders. She gestured to a floral print dress that barely concealed her thighs, although the neckline was high enough conceal her cleavage. The dress offered a kaleidoscope of reds, purples and pinks, something reminiscent of the late sixties. On her feet were sandals.
"Beautiful," he uttered, almost to himself, before remembering his tearful face and turning away.
Tyler felt Carmen's fingers on his cheeks. Turning his face to hers, she kissed him, her soft lips lingering over his.
"Mi amor," she said, "you're so sweet."
Carmen pulled away. "Who's hungry?" she asked.
Tyler felt no hunger and yet it had been at least a day since he'd eaten anything.
"I can fix supper," countered Vi.
"No. No. It's the least I can do," replied Carmen with her winsome grin before leaping outside.
A few moments of silence passed before Vi sighed. "It's a shame about her," she said, her voice barely audible.
"What do you mean?" asked Tyler.
"Her mind. She's losing hold. It happens to so many here. Once they find a pattern they like, they follow that pattern until they see nothing else; one possibility eliminating all the rest."
"The Olvidados," muttered Tyler.
"Then you already know. And you could see it in her eyes. She never did get over your father; but the cheek he had coming here with her after he left your mother. He disappeared and she decided to call it home because she couldn't stop thinking about him and figured she'd wait until he returned. I didn't have the heart to kick her out, poor girl."
"He left my mother for her?" he said as soon as the thought occurred to him. He wished he didn't find Carmen so attractive.
"He left her long before he met Carmen. He was always trying to find a way to be happy. Not sure if he ever figured it out."
"Where is he?"
"Coming or going," she answered with a smirk. "Who knows which?"
"If he's still alive, I need to know."
"He should have come to see you," mused Vi.
Tyler felt hollow, as he did whenever he thought of his father, wondering if he would ever return.
"Is he here?" demanded Tyler, standing up.
"The last I saw him, he was looking for his other self."
"Did he find him?" asked Tyler.
Vi grinned "West came here just as you did. But as far as I know he never figured out a way back. He said he was trapped."
How could his stomach feel so hollow, thought Tyler, and his head so heavy? He didn't know whether to welcome the thought of meeting his father, or dread it.
"So there's only one of him now?" asked Tyler.
"If there is, then he was right about being trapped."
Tyler panicked, remembering how he'd lost Magus who was taken to Twin Towers.
"What happens when one of those selves gets imprisoned?" he asked her, dreading the answer.
"Might as well be dead. That's where they turn you to nothing."
Tyler could feel his body shake. Would he never return home?
"And how do you get someone out?"
Vi leaned close, a hand to his head.
"Did they take him?" she asked, no longer smiling. Something weighed on her mind.
"They took him to Twin Towers. The Blue whatever, saying people like me don't belong here. And I don't belong here, do I?"
Tyler didn't know what else to say. But the thought of being trapped was too much. "
Tell me I'm not stuck here," he demanded, his hands to her shoulders. "Tell me I can leave. Tell me we'll find a way."
"We'll find a way," answered Vi, smiling reassuringly as she turned abruptly and stepped out of the room.
Tyler returned to the chair, hands to his face as the tears returned. He hadn't cried like this since he realized he'd never see Grandma Vi again. Yet, here she was; in the flesh, or so it seemed.
Tears of loss became tears of gratitude until there was nothing more to feel. Cleaning his face, he stood up and walked to the open door.
Tyler found Vi rearranging dead flowers in a vase.
"Did you know when she died? Your other self?"
"You know when you dream about dying, and it's the same dream over and over? I knew something was lost."
"And my mother? Is she here too?"
Grandma Vi shook her head.
"The dream was about her too. I knew when I'd lost her. I didn't know for certain until the Blue Knights arrived. You were in the car. You saw her die. So joyful and spirited as a boy, but you … well, your other self … lost faith after that."
What tragedy had Magus known growing up here in Two Cities? Had he lost his mother just as Tyler lost his Vi?
"He calls himself Magus. But that's not his name."
"His name was Tyler?"
"Yes," she answered, "but he grew up here and you grew up out there."
"I remember him," confided Tyler.
"He learned how to straddle worlds. I barely saw him for a while. I expect he was with you much of the time."
His imaginary boyhood friend wasn't as imaginary as his mother led him to believe.
"He brought me here, and now he's gone."
"Not yet," she assured him. "No prison can contain that boy."
"But there's no bringing my mother back."
"Not in this world. Only in yours does she still exist."
"So I lived with you?" he asked, still unclear how there were the same people in two different worlds, some dying in one world only to survive in the other.
"Your grandmother in your world, not this one. Not me."
"And you're Magus' grandmother in this world?"
"He never got over your mother's death. I tried to give you a sense of home, but I don't think you, well he, ever felt home anywhere. Just like his father, I suppose."
Tyler contemplated Carmen's unwavering conviction that he was West not Tyler. Did he and his father really look so much alike?
"I look like him?" asked Tyler. "Like my father?"
"Enough like him to fool some, but you're nothing like him."
"Carmen thinks I'm him."
"I would have expected that. And there'll be no correcting her. She won't believe you if you tell her otherwise - stubborn as a pack horse. But you'll have no choice but to leave her and there'll be the usual crying and tears but she'll be fine. "
"When I go home?" he asked.
"Whenever you set out to do whatever brought you here in the first place," she corrected.
"I'm looking for someone who doesn't belong here."
"No one comes here who doesn't have good reason."
"Well, I need to find her."
"Why?"
"Because she asked me to find her," he replied, realizing that he barely knew the woman and that he was really under no obligation to find her; and yet he risked his sanity to follow her. Was it curiosity or a dangerous lapse of judgment?
Tyler's grandmother smiled. "I see why there are two. What one can't, the other can."
"Hmmn?"
"You have clear purpose. That's why you're here."
"I don't know what I'm doing."
Vi held a hand to Tyler's chin. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't."
"I'm here. What difference does it make?"
"Now you sound like your father," replied Vi as she walked away. "I don't think he ever hit upon his purpose, though I could be wrong."
As Vi disappeared behind a door, Tyler slumped in a chair, a rising cloud of dust inducing a fit of coughing.
His father. Was it possible? He felt as if he knew him already; hated and loved him.
Whatever quest he'd begun, it was changing. There were other people to find, questions to ask. His purpose was clear. If only he knew what he was doing