A Hundred Thousand Worlds (27 page)

A
lex scuttles on toes and fingertips, nimble and insectile. His tailbone points skyward, his backpack adds to the spidery look of him as he scurries, star to star, between tourists and other passersby. Some stars he skips and others he stops at; there is no indication why some warrant attention. The pauses are the only thing allowing Val to keep up.

“Ee-taf el-Kubra,” he says to one star.

“Dub toe-bah.”

“Iz-ed zan-rah.”

Then off to another, nearly toppling midwesterners as he goes. Under normal circumstances, Val wouldn’t allow him to crawl on the ground like this, being convinced that “when we are in public we walk on our feet” is a solid parental baseline for behavior, even if Alex doesn’t always see it that way. But she’s not going to spend their last few hours chastising him, and she has to admit that, for what he’s trying to do, this down-facing, water-strider method is better suited than the chin-to-chest, eyes-to-pavement posture of everyone else on the sidewalk, who constantly bump into one another and mutter apologies.

“Mom,” he says, his head swiveled back toward her, “who’s Marlene Die-trick?”

“She was an actress in the fifties,” she says. “She was very pretty.”

“Oh,” he says and scampers to another star.

“Mom,” he says, “who’s Nat King Cole?”

“He was a singer,” she says. “Your babu loves him.”

“Was he a king?”

“No, that’s just what people called him.”

“Oh.”

At the corner of La Brea and Hollywood, Val feels they’re coming up on an event horizon, a last moment when their destination can still be changed—the nature of this outing, these last hours together, altered or salvaged. It’s two hours still before the car Andrew’s sending—and how like Andrew is it to send a car rather than show up himself—will pull up in front of the convention center to snatch Alex away. They could catch a cab down to the Tar Pits; Alex would love it, and the model elephant, half-submerged in the muck, trumpeting her plight to her family on the shore, would serve as a good parting image. She could remember their splitting like a sinking into blackness, tusks and trunk flailing ineffectively upward even as the bulk of the body is pulled down against its own striving—indeed, because of it. As she thinks this, she understands they are not approaching an event horizon but past it, falling toward their destination, pulled inescapably down.

“Take a right up here, Rabbit,” she calls. It’s only a couple of steps before she rounds the corner herself and Alex is in sight again. So is the theater, casting its shadow across the boulevard like a fork. Seeing it now, Val is sure she’s doing the right thing, or at least the wrong thing for the right reasons. She’s thought of what happened here as part of her story, the Story of Val and Andrew, which ended years ago. But it’s Alex’s story, too. His life was changed here as much as hers, and he deserves to know. More now and here than ever before, Val needs to explain herself to Alex, to be understood by him. He has an understanding of her, but she needs him to have
this
one, the one that grows out of this place and what happened. She wants to apologize to him for what she did and the way his life had to change as a result.

Then there’s the other part, the part that’s easier to explain to herself but harder to admit. She wants to warn him, to ready him to protect himself. She needs to tell him that Andrew never gave a fuck about anyone but himself, and people have been hurt as a result. People have died, right here.
She needs to know that Alex will be constantly on his guard, will see Andrew as a potential threat, or at least a vector by which harm might come. She needs him to know what happened here so she can feel he’s safe.

“Mom, it’s a pagoda,” he says, pointing at the theater. “It even has dragons.” Before she can comment, he’s discovered the footprints and handprints in the concrete and is busy comparing the size of his own hands to those of the celebrities commemorated here on the forecourt.

“Rabbit,” she calls, “can you come sit with me a minute?” He bounds over to a bench and climbs into her lap. She thinks of the way zoo animals raised by humans sometimes fail to realize they’re full-grown and accidentally injure their trainers by applying their adult strength to childlike gestures. What gestures will be unavailable to them in two years, and in what ways will she no longer be able to hold him, even if he’s willing?

“I wanted to talk to you about your dad,” she says, and she feels his body tense. There is a part of Alex they’ve never spoken about that wants a father, even if it’s an absent one. That part may even
need
a father so that Alex can understand himself and how he fits into the world. Without Andrew there, Alex has constructed him, insubstantial but in a basic way good, a goodness born out of Alex’s sense of himself as good. If told about the things Andrew has done, there’s a risk Alex will do exactly what Val did years ago and take that badness into himself, constructing culpability out of connection. What does it say about her that she was married to a man like that? Val has spent years wondering this. For Alex, it’s the reverse: What does it say about Alex that Andrew, this new, terrible Andrew that Val is about to give him, is part of him?

Here, where her past brushes closest to her present, where there will always be shots firing and Tim screaming and Rachel bleeding out in Val’s arms, it should be easiest to slip the poison in. But even here, she can’t do it.

“Your dad,” she says. “Sometimes he has trouble thinking about other people. Because he was alone for so long and only had to take care of himself. I think, Rabbit, you’re going to need to take care of yourself more than you’re used to.”

She wonders how poorly she’s prepared him for this, how taking care of him as best she could might in the end have done him harm.

Without looking up at her, he says, “It’s all right, Mom. I can do anything if I have to. Even if I haven’t before, I still can.”

“I know you can, Rabbit,” she says.

“I can take care of myself. And you. And maybe even my dad, if he lets me. I don’t know how yet, but I know I can do it.”

As was the case last night, his sureness and her desire to believe him, her wanting him to be right, come together, and everything will be all right, if only because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

“We should go back,” he says. “It’s almost time.” He stands up and takes her hand and leads her, because he’s the stronger of the two of them now, if he hasn’t been all along.

I
t’s a half-hour drive to Hollywood Hills, which really are hills. You can look back and see the city below you, guarded by power lines. They turn into a neighborhood of big houses, one of which must be his dad’s. As the car approaches the house, Alex is worried there’s been a crime. Trucks and vans clog the narrow street, and on the vast lawn, people bustle back and forth. A woman, sharply dressed and tiny, not any taller than Alex, is coming toward the limo, attempting to wave them off. She comes up to the driver’s window, her face level with it, and he rolls it down.

“You can’t get through here,” she says, louder than she needs to. Alex is impressed someone so small can be that loud. He doesn’t think he could do it, although he’s never tried. “All the development residents were told we would be shooting tonight. All the waivers have been signed.” She clicks both of these off on her fingers, which are also small. “Who’s back there?” she asks, trying to stick her head in the window. “What’s their name?”

“His name is Alex,” says the driver. “He’s here to see Mr. Rhodes.” Even though they’ve hardly spoken, Alex has decided there’s something protective about the driver. Maybe it’s his size that leads Alex to believe he’d be a good protector, if one was needed.

“Oh my God, it’s Andy’s kid,” she says, mostly to herself. “Well, let him out,” she tells the driver, a little snappish. “I’ll take him from here.” The driver puts the car in park, then gets out and opens Alex’s door for him. Pulling his backpack onto his shoulder, Alex climbs out of the car.

“Thanks for the ride,” Alex says.

“You going to be okay?” says the driver. Alex isn’t sure if it’s a question or a statement. So he shrugs.

“Where are his things?” the little woman asks the driver. “Are his bags in the back?”

“I’ve just got my backpack,” says Alex.

“But where are your
things
?” she asks him, turning the same intensity she focused on the driver toward Alex. He knew he should have brought more stuff.

“My things are at home,” he says quietly. The driver is looking at her as if to say,
Hey, lady, lay off the kid,
which Alex appreciates, and the little woman, noticing the look, appears stricken. Much to Alex’s surprise, she swoops him into a hug.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” she says. “These night shoots bring out the fascist in me.” Alex doesn’t know what the fashion in her has to do with anything, but he is pleasantly overwhelmed by the hug. He has been in need of one, without knowing it. She releases him and steps back, examining Alex for the first time. “My God, you look just like Andy,” she says. Alex has never thought of himself as looking like anyone, even his mother, so this is a weird thing to hear. “Come on,” the little woman says. “He’s going to be so happy to see you.”

She grabs Alex’s hand and they head off toward the well-lit house. Alex looks back and sees the limo reversing, and it’s worse than when the limo pulled away with him in it. That seemed like it could be undone, but this is final. Alex is here now, with no way to go back.

“Have I even introduced myself?” the woman says. “I’m Mandy. I work with your father. And I have heard an awful lot about you.” Alex doesn’t think there are even an awful lot of things to know about him, but he knows this is something adults sometimes say to people they don’t know an awful lot about. “I’m sorry things are in such a state at the moment. Peter, our director, insisted he needed exterior night shots right away. Tonight. So of course everyone has to snap to.”

“Is this my dad’s house?” Alex asks. It’s a big house, not so much tall as wide. There aren’t houses like this in New York; there wouldn’t be room. But still, it looks familiar.

“Oh, no, no,” Mandy says. “It’s Ted Kammen’s house. Your dad’s character on the show.”

“I’ve seen the show,” says Alex. Mandy looks horrified.

“Your mother let you watch the show?”

Alex nods. “To see my dad,” he says.

“Well, that’s . . . nice,” says Mandy, although she clearly does not think it’s nice at all. “This is the house we use for exteriors,” she says. “The inside shots are all on a soundstage. I’m sure Andy will bring you by the set sometime soon.”

Alex has the feeling he sometimes gets when they go to a museum and his mother insists they take the tour. Even when the tour guides are super nice and explain lots of things, there’s a sense they’re also keeping you from something, whether it’s secret things in the museum regular people aren’t allowed to see or the opportunity to run around the museum really fast.

“Where’s my dad?” he asks.

“He’s in the trailer getting made up,” says Mandy, which Alex thinks is funny. Even now, when his dad’s about to become real to him for the first time since Alex can remember, he’s still going to be made up. “We probably shouldn’t interrupt him. He’s getting into character.”

Alex wonders if he might be more comfortable meeting his dad in character than out. After all, he’s known Ted Kammen for three seasons.

“Can I watch them shoot?” he asks.

Mandy squirms. “I don’t think so,” she says. “The scene they’re shooting is a little grown up.”

“Swearing grown up or sex grown up?”

“Sex grown up,” says Mandy.

“Never mind, then,” says Alex. “I’ll wait.” Mandy finds him a chair, although he’s disappointed it’s not one of those director chairs. Even though it’s nighttime, there are big bright lights everywhere, so it’s easy enough
for Alex to read his book. He wonders if they could make it bright enough to shoot a daytime scene at night, and thinks how cool it would be if, instead of lights, there were darks you could turn on so you could shoot a nighttime scene during the day. Probably in Adam Anti’s world, there are darks. Flashdarks and darkbulbs. One thing he likes about the Adam Anti books is the idea that there’s a whole world, even if the writer doesn’t tell you about all of it. You can think of other things, other stories that would happen in that world. Maybe when he’s done with the story of the boy and the robot, he’ll think of other stories in their world. He’ll continue the stories of people they met, or invent stories of people they never met, who live in one of the cities and don’t know anything about the boy or the robot but have their own place in the world, with houses and friends and maybe a cat or something. Regular lives but in this strange world.

He drifts off, thinking about this, but then someone is blocking the light in front of him. “Alex,” says the shadow. The shadow squats down and it’s his dad, who looks like on TV. Which is to say, he looks older than Alex thinks he should be, and in the dark his skin looks like cookie dough that’s been smoothed out mostly but is still lumpy. Alex realizes he and his father have the same eyes. It’s a weird thing to realize at first, like looking into a mirror and seeing someone who isn’t you but has parts of your face. But it also makes him feel connected to something where there was no connection before.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t meet you as soon as you got here,” his father says. He is squatting a few feet away from Alex, with his hands on his knees. Every now and then, one of his hands looks like it might reach out toward Alex, but then it goes back to gripping one of his knees. Alex feels like maybe he ought to stand, but he doesn’t.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Mandy explained everything.”

“I’m going to wash up real quick,” his father says. “Then I was thinking we could grab a burger. Have you ever been to an In-N-Out Burger? Best burgers in the world.”

“I like Shake Shack,” Alex says, not to dismiss his father’s claim about
In-N-Out Burger, but because those are the burgers he likes. It’s not easy to find something you like, and when you find it, you should stick with it.

“I don’t think we have those around here,” his father says.

“There’s lots of them,” says Alex. “But the good one’s the actual shack one in Madison Square Park.”

“Well, you’ll have to try In-N-Out before you judge.”

“Okay,” says Alex. Just because you already know what you like doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new things, he supposes. But he’s skeptical.

“So we’ll get you fed,” says his father, “then get you home. How’s that sound, champ?”

Alex doesn’t like being called
champ,
and imagines that over the next few days there will be more of these attempts to fix a nickname on him. He anticipates
pal, tiger,
and maybe even worse things, like
scooter
or
skipper
. He thinks about telling his dad his nickname is Rabbit, but he doesn’t want anyone else calling him that, ever. Even if it means no one ever calls him Rabbit again. More important, Alex doesn’t like referring to wherever they’re going as
home
. But there’s no reason to be difficult; it won’t fix anything.

“Fine,” says Alex.