Leonard’s handwriting had always been bad, largely indecipherable bumps and polka dots, but Alice was amazed to see how much more legible it had been. She could make it out clearly enough: Marriott Marquis, Bway + 45th St., Room 1422, with the phone number scrawled underneath. Both Sam and Tommy insisted on coming with her, even though Alice thought it would be better to go by herself, but they’d stood in the kitchen staring at her, unwilling to leave, and so off they all went. The house was a disaster, but it would still be a disaster when she got home, and Alice could clean up then. The night was clear, and the 2 train came quickly, whirring into the station with its metallic birdsong. Tommy grasped Alice’s hand when they sat down, and nestled their shared fist in between their touching thighs. Things were already different.
Manhattan was best at two things: daytime and nighttime. The reasons were the same: the streets were always alive, always moving, always busy. Even when one felt lonely, it was nearly impossible to be alone in New York City. During rainstorms, there was always someone else dashing through puddles with a broken umbrella to toss in the trash can, a stranger whose pain and struggle were the same as your own, at least for a few minutes. The subway system was slow and filthy and Alice loved it anyway. The 2/3—which Leonard still called the IRT—was narrow, with long skinny cars, which made it terrible during rush hour, when Wall Street brokers would pack in on the Upper West Side and there was no hope of sitting down until just before the train crossed under the river into Brooklyn, and someone was always getting too close on purpose. It was lively at night, though, crossing from Harlem to midtown and then to 14th Street and below. Theatergoers, club kids, everyone rode the train. Sam was sitting on one side of Alice, and Tommy on the other. They could have been going anywhere—to the movies, to a party, to Madison Square Garden. Alice leaned her head against Sam’s, and then against Tommy’s. She closed her eyes and thought about falling asleep, just for a few minutes, but then she thought about waking up without talking to her father and she sat up straight.
“You were right, Sam. As usual,” Alice said. “I should have just canceled the party. I shouldn’t even have let him go. Like, what actually matters?”
“I’m always right,” Sam said.
* * *
? ? ?
The hotel was enormous—nearly a whole city block, just north of Times Square, with a driveway cut through down the middle for taxis, and three revolving doors for everyone going in and out. On the train, Alice had tried to warn Sam and Tommy about what they were about to see, but their jaws dropped anyway.
Science fiction and fantasy conventions had guest speakers like Leonard, and Barry, and other famous writers and actors and movie directors and animators, but that’s not who the conventions were for—conventions were for the fans. Conventions were for the most devoted, the most faithful—the people who spent their days and nights on message boards, arguing with each other over whether Han Solo shot first or which Doctor Who was the best, adults who had closets full of elaborate costumes and friends whom they’d met at other hotels in other years. Fans for whom normal life was insufficient. Tommy slowed to a complete stop.
Darth Vader was standing outside, smoking through a small hole in his mask. A woman with blond extensions and a glorified Playboy bunny costume with a giant fake gun strapped to her thigh joined him.
“Is she supposed to be, like, Army Barbie?” Sam asked.
“That’s Barb Wire,” Tommy said. “You know, Pamela Anderson?”
“That was fast,” Alice said.
“Sorry,” he said, blushing. “I liked Baywatch.”
“Come on,” Alice said, leading both Tommy and Sam by the hands through one of the main nonrevolving doors. There were clumps of costumed people in the lobby, hordes of people moving around the space. Young people, old people, people of every color. Fandom knew no bounds. There were enormous vinyl signs hanging from every available surface, pointing one direction or another, to one ballroom or another. It was more nerds than Alice had seen in her entire life, all in one place, and all so, so happy to be arguing with each other about minute details that no one else in their lives took seriously.
Leonard always said that he hated conventions, and Alice believed that he hated his usual part, which was sitting at a folding table with a cheap tablecloth and signing autograph after autograph after autograph. Every third person who approached would ask a complicated question about Time Brothers television lore, to which Leonard would respond, “I didn’t write the TV show, and I think that’s a very good question.” He had written some episodes, though, which they knew, and so then he might reluctantly answer their original question, even though it pained him. Every tenth person would ask a question about the novel, and Leonard would answer those more cheerfully. Often people would take photos. He was paid to attend, and deep down, he enjoyed it, too, and would have gone anyway, just to see his friends who had flown in from out of town.
The hotel bar was the epicenter, especially after the official programming had finished for the day.
“I feel like I’m actually in the Mos Eisley Cantina,” Tommy said. “Only I never thought it would be really over-air-conditioned.”
“How nerdy are you, actually?” Sam asked, with a note of appreciation in her voice.
“Here,” Alice said. Two handsome men—brutally handsome for the science fiction crowd, which meant that in the regular world, they were slightly above average—held court, both in leather jackets. One, who was white haired with a trim white beard, saw Alice and slapped a hand dramatically over his stout chest. The people assembled before him turned to look.
“Alice, darling,” the man said. He was Gordon Hampshire, the Australian author of many, many books about elves and fairies who had a lot of sex. He was sixty and round of tummy, but still, if one looked through a certain science fiction convention filter, bore a passing resemblance to an older, hirsute Tom Cruise. Alice knew from her father that Gordon had slept with every woman he knew, actual scores of women—his friends, his fans, his friends’ wives, other writers, countless hotel employees and cocktail waitresses. He was incapable of speaking to women without flirting.
“Hi, Gordon,” Alice said, letting him pull her in for a hug.
“This is Alice Stern, daughter of Leonard Stern, the author of the incomparable and life-altering Time Brothers!” Gordon announced. The assembled crowd oohed, as cued.
The younger man in the leather jacket, who had been Gordon’s performative conversation partner, nodded. “I love your dad. I’m Guillermo Montaldan, I wrote—”
“The Foxhole!” Tommy said from behind her. “I love that book, man! The part where the Fox—he’s not really a fox, he’s, like, a space thief—breaks into the soul vault and all the souls escape and he’s surrounded, I love that! So fucking sick, man!”
Guillermo placed a hand on his heart and bowed slightly. “Muchas gracias.”
“Gordon, have you seen my dad? Is he in his room?” Alice checked around the bar. She saw a few other writers she recognized, and Princess Leia, and a man with a glued-on push-broom mustache talking to Barry Ford, who scowled at the imposter from beneath his own real one.
“Yes, I believe he is,” Gordon said. “You want me to take you up? Lot of escalators and elevator banks in this place, it’s a maze.”
The surrounding crowd looked apoplectic. “No,” Alice said. Tommy was deep in conversation with Guillermo, and Sam waved her on. “Go ahead, Al, we’ll be down here if you need us.”
33