A Hundred Thousand Worlds (34 page)

T
he city made up of things is ending. His parents argue about visitation, about him coming to New York for holidays, and how many days, and how many weeks. His father says “agreement” a lot, and his mother says a number of times that she is Alex’s mother, as if this could be what they’re arguing about. Alex thinks that maybe this argument has been saved up, held like air in a balloon with the neck pinched by their separation, and now it’s all rushing out in one long stream. But what he thinks is that all these years, their silence has acted like a shout, one long, deafening shout across an entire country, from one side to the other. One continuous scream of
no
.
No
is a powerful word, he thinks, and not always bad. Not always bad and sometimes magic.

They are walking the streets of the city made up of things, streets that are coming apart, breaking down into space. Vendors who have already dismantled displays of four-colored stories and pixelated dreams fold up tables, and one aisle widens to swallow the next. It feels like Alex and his parents are leaving nothingness in their wake as they stalk through the city this last time, his parents taking strides so long that Alex now and then has to run to keep up.

His father’s face is red, and his mother’s eyes are red.
Angry and sad,
Alex thinks. He suspects they think they are determining who will win and who will lose. But that’s because they think they’re telling the story of them, when it’s his story. It has been all along.

Once there was a boy who was born in Los Angeles. He had a mother and a father, like everybody else. There was a man who was like a grandpa,
maybe, or an uncle, who told amazing stories, and a woman who painted, and took care of the boy sometimes. But something bad happened and the woman who painted died, and the boy and his mother had to run away. They ran for years and years, so even when they were standing still they were running. And then it was time to stop running, so they came back.

This could be Alex’s story. He knows only part of this story, and there are gaps and inconsistencies. If this was going to be his story, it would be one someone would tell to him, and it would be different depending on who told it. He would have to dig for facts, and then maybe that would be his story, a story about a boy who goes searching for clues about where he came from. He thinks about what the Idea Man said: that sometimes the way to end a story is to return, to go back. But even that isn’t as simple as it looks. Where you go back to depends on where you started.

Once there was a boy who lived in New York with his mother. They went to the park on days it was sunny and ice-skated in the winter or stayed by the heater in their little apartment, telling each other stories. They rode the subways, sometimes not even to go anywhere but because the boy liked moving through the earth like that, and the idea that people a hundred years ago had dug these tunnels and laid these tracks and crisscrossed underneath the whole city without ever breaking the skin. They visited his friend, who lived in a castle because he was hurt. They went to plays and to movies and to bookstores, and they practiced math and did science experiments. One day they decided to take a trip that would take them all the way across the country. They started out in a car, and then they were in a van, and then they were in a train. The boy got lost in the woods and found his way back. He met a friend, and together they figured out a story. They made a story. The boy met his father, and if it wasn’t the first time, it felt like it was, which matters just as much. Then they were all together, everyone, in a city that was dreams and stories everywhere.

That was another story, and it could be Alex’s, too. Then the ending would take him back to New York, because he’d started the story there. This is part of what Alex wants. It’s the
where
of the ending he wants, but
there are things that can’t fit into that
where,
and he still wants them. It’s the trouble with writing stories. Everyone deserves to get everything they want, but it can’t work like that. It should, but even if you’re writing the story, there are rules you can’t change. They’re there before you start, and they have to be there at the end. Even if the story doesn’t end, the rules are still there; they go on as long as the story does.

Alex and his mother and his father stand together as the city disintegrates. Parts of the city dissolve like a sugar cube in water, becoming gradually less there until they are gone. Others break apart like ice floes, large chunks coming loose and drifting away. Still others are carefully deconstructed and packed in an exact reversal of how they were assembled, so that the process can be repeated somewhere else and later. People take off their masks and are only themselves again; fairies and robots and dozens of alien species vacate the room. Screens that were windows to other planets go dark, and the apparatuses of a thousand dreams and fantasies are loaded into trucks and vans that will disperse them into the larger world, where they are needed. If Alex stands here long enough, it will all be gone, and he and his mother and his father will be in a cave, bare but brightly lit, walls of concrete that would toss back at them anything they said, if they said anything at all.

This is the first time this has ever happened. Firsts are always powerful, always magic. A story when it starts can go anywhere it wants, and that is a powerful thing. The problem, he’s realized, is that he’s been thinking of this moment as an ending, and endings are inert, spent things. They are stories that have gotten tired of their own telling. So this is the first part of the magic he does: he turns an ending into a beginning. This is not the last time they will all be together; it is the first.

The next part is harder, because the next part is the trick itself, and requires the magic words. If he’s off by one sound, one syllable, it will fall apart and become an ending again. He can’t rush it, because he has to get it right, but whoever speaks first, it’ll be their magic that works, so he has to hurry. He will have to be brave right now.

His mother and father are opening their mouths. Alex is not sure he has the words, and he has spent all this time trying to find them, but here now there is no time—there is a fraction of a second to step into between the ending and the beginning.

Alex closes his eyes and opens them again, and he knows in the way sometimes he knows things that the trick is going to work. The story starts here.

When this book was still a rickety draft, my wife Heather sat me down and told me it was time to quit my job at the bookstore and focus on my writing. “Take a year,” she said. “We’ll be okay.” It is a rare kind of bravery and generosity, and I am beyond lucky to be on the receiving end of it. Thank you also to Alex and Story for putting up with my times of (physical and mental) absence while working, and for understanding that I am in fact working, even on days I don’t necessarily leave the house.

This book was lucky enough to find a brilliant advocate in my agent, Seth Fishman. That he occasionally appears to have Jedi powers is only evidence of the fact that he’s worked tirelessly on my behalf, and I can’t thank him enough.

Andrea Schulz is the kind of editor one dreams about finding, one who will call you out on every lazy bullshit line in the book until it is the best possible book it can be. She is a savvy reader who is quick with the scalpel, and has extended amazing trust to me as an author to fix problems once she’s spotted them. I am exceedingly grateful that she took the book on, that she has helped me distill it down until its true heart shone through, and that she brought me with her when she became a Viking.

This book was drafted in residency at the Constance Saltonstall Colony for the Arts, and I’ve returned there multiple times to work on revisions. Thank you to the Foundation, to its amazing Executive Director Lesley Williamson, and to Connie’s spirit, which resides and resonates in the upstairs writer’s apartment.

Without the support of the New York Foundation for the Arts, I
would still be schlepping books for a living. Their fellowship program provided not only necessary financial support, but vitally changed my estimation of myself as a writer. And look: public support of the arts pays off. For real!

I am indebted to Aaron Kuder, a gifted comic book artist who repeatedly made himself available for pestering “how does that work?” questions about the comics industry. Likewise to a gifted actor, Karl Gregory, who walked me through what an actor does to prepare and basically wrote the “Secret Origin of Valerie Torrey” chapter for me over the phone.

This book didn’t have a lot of readers in draft, but those who read it provided invaluable assistance and advice. They include Heather, Stephen Frug, Rob Costello, Sarah Jefferis, Scott Brown, Aimee Lehman, Billy Cote, Nancy Gossett, Scrap Wren, and Jim Rutman. Thank you all for your time and comments.

Everyone at Viking, and at PRH has been fantastic, and their enthusiasm has filled me with renewed faith about the state and future of publishing. I’m certain I will forget people here, but: publisher Brian Tart has been thoughtful and generous, and when you see the amazing endpaper illustrations in this book, please note that was his idea. When I was simultaneously searching for a title for the book and a name for my daughter, Emily Wunderlich swooped in and saved the day (with the former). She also offers to take the blame when I forget to do things like write the acknowledgments, and occasionally braves the northlands to attend David Bowie-themed dance parties. I generally consider myself pretty sharp on grammar, but Beena Kamlani’s editing at times made me cringe at my own idiocy. Everyone in publicity and marketing has been inspired in coming up with ideas for how to get the book into your hands, and they’ve been incredible to work with. Also thanks to Andy Dudley, who I have known since ages ago and has put the elbow on the other folks in sales to read this thing.

Thanks to the folks at Gernert Co. who have helped me navigate the waters of being a first-time author. Andy and Flora, thank you for making
sure my family didn’t starve due to my inability to, say, correctly transcribe an account number.

Thank you to my dad, who stopped off at the comic book store every Wednesday on his way home from work with my little Post-it notes of the floppies I “needed” that week, and to my mom, who never threw any of my comics away. Even the ones that I left in a garbage bag by the back door that time. Seriously, those can go.

Last off, thank you to an impossibly long list of comic book writers and artists. This book is, among other things, a love-letter to a medium that’s been dear to my heart since I was a kid, and now stands at a cliff’s edge. From here, it can stand, safe in the fading dreams of life-long readers like me, or it can leap forward to give vast and diverse new audiences the thrill, hope, and solace it’s given me. I have no doubt that if it takes that leap, it will fly.

Bob Proehl
grew up in Buffalo, New York, where his local comics shop was Queen City Bookstore. He has worked as a bookseller and programming director for Buffalo Street Books, a DJ, a record store owner, and a bartender. He was a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a 2013 resident at the Saltonstall Arts Colony. He has written for the 33⅓ book series and worked as a columnist and reviewer for the arts and culture web site PopMatters. Proehl currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife, stepson, and daughter.

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