CHAPTER 4: LAW OF RELATIVE TRUTH
"Every statement is true in one sense, false in one sense, and meaningless in one sense."
September 30th, 1978—Carl's POV
He still feels it.
Carl had held it earlier that day. Before school, before sunrise, while his brothers were still asleep—he had sneaked out of bed, pulled up one of the many broken floorboards, and removed the red leather bound volume that lay beneath. He carefully smuggled the book out the doorway and into the hall.
His preference of where to read it would have been the kitchen, perhaps search through the forever barren cupboards for a bite to eat. But he could already hear the sounds of early morning bickering between his father and mother, which would soon escalate in volume enough to rouse the rest of the house. Not willing to risk the front door squeaking, he reentered his room and exited through his window.
It was a cold morning, frosty, probably would have snowed if there had been any moisture, and an almost surreal silence hung in the air. At around four am in the winter months the city was as peaceful as it would ever be. And in his hands, the book was a solid weight.
He'd found himself handling the thing more and more.
The book looked to be exactly like the one that kid—Tommy, Carl's memory fought for the name; his name was Tom—had dropped. An exact duplicate even.
And then Tom had started babbling—Carl still wasn't sure what that had been about.
'Wizard?' Did he say Wizard? I think he said Wizard...
Carl remembered when he had first found the book, a week before he met Tom. He'd asked his little brother Lauro what the title was.
"A Wizard's Companion," the twelve-year-old had read out loud, slowly, syllable by syllable, looking up to Carl when he finished, wide-eyes anxious for approval, but with a touch of sadness in them too.
"I could have read it if I wanted to!" Carl had snarled, snatching the book back from small hands.
He could read, that wasn't the reason he was failing his classes...
Wizards, what rubbish!
Magic and fairy tales had died with his grandfather when he was six. Before that even, if he was honest. If Magic did exist, then where was it the first time he wanted to sink into the floor when his teacher called him stupid in front of the whole class? What about when Anthony was crying and Carl had to worry about getting them to bed and fed because there was nobody else there?
Carl forcibly shook off those thoughts. If Carl was smart, he would just chuck the book into the sewers to end up with the rest of NYC's trash in the Hudson. And maybe he'd throw himself in for good measure.
The door behind him slammed open and his father stomped past with such fuming gusto he misses Carl entirely. It was then Carl knew that another day at the Romeo Residence had begun.
Later he would decide to ditch his classes all together with the rest of his "gang." They would head into lower Manhattan for the day to check out the "Suits" and see if there were any pickings to be had.
It was a ways away but well worth the trip, for in Time Square there were always tourists for easy targets.
He was a thief and a pickpocket and after missing out on breakfast he could really use a lunch...
Breaking off briefly from his so-called "friends," he dodges taxis while crossing the street. They've already made the police officers, uniform and covert, in the area and it's much easier to remain inconspicuous in turn if they blend into the crowd rather than staying as a collective group.
Up ahead he spots the ideal Suit—money—well-dressed, nicely-groomed, and trying to juggle a suitcase while buying a chilidog from an impatient vendor. Seeing a hand slip around to a back pocket and pull out a fat wallet, Carl hurries forward. He doesn't want anyone else to zoom in on this chump change before he gets there.
The man fumbles with the money, eventually handing over a few bills, and taking the chili-dog with nodded thanks.
Carl makes his move.
Casually walking too fast, head bent low, he purposefully crashes into the unsuspecting stranger.
The man goes tumbling...
...only it isn't a man at all.
Staring up at him, in the same way as only a few days ago, is a boy...
Tom.
Carl gulps. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't recognize him.
And maybe pigs would fly.
The best course of action would be to run, except...
"Carl! Wow! Imagine running into you here!" Tom attempts to rise and brush himself off, but instead becomes hopelessly entangled with his bag's straps. "What a coincidence, huh? And the actually running into part—get it? Don't worry, it's probably my fault again. I'm such a klutz..."
Move, move, move, Carl's mind chants at him angrily. But the rest of him won't listen. He's frozen again, effectively held as captive as before...
"Anyways, what are you doing here? In this part of the city too? I mean, my God, there's millions here and I run into you... what are the odds?"
My sentiments exactly, Carl thinks.
"Hey!" Tom's eyes finally traveled from Carl's terrified expression to his hand. "That's my wallet! I probably dropped it when I fell. Thanks for—oh." He trails off weakly as realization of what Carl's actually doing there dawns on him.
Innocent, Carl thinks in despair, he's so innocent! Why'd it hafta be him?!
"CJ!" Someone yells at him, he can barely make it out over the din. They're being watched then; the others are waiting...
He gulps again, not knowing what to do.
Tom's look is almost thoughtful. His eyes, however, narrow.
This is it, Carl knows. He'll scream this time—and who could blame him?
The thought makes him angry. But it's an irrational anger, because he knows Tom would be justified in doing it. Carl would do the same in his situation.
Somewhere he sees a beat cop round the corner and fear replaces the anger. People won't continue to bustle past them like they were for much longer, someone will stop, ask what's going on—
"Help me up," Tom says finally, reaching for him.
Carl can do nothing but comply.
When his fingers wrap around Tom's though, he feels something cool and hard being pressed into them.
Tom gives his best blindingly cheerful smile while his hand covers Carl's grip on whatever it was he now held.
"I knew we'd meet again," Tom murmurs, and somehow through all the yelling and the honking horns and the stampeding crowds, Carl hears him perfectly.
"It was great to see you Carl, until next time..." One last squeeze and Tom pulls away, picks up his suitcase, and effortlessly melts into the throng.
Carl stands there, dumbstruck.
"CJ!" Mike, his co-leader of their group, appeared beside him. "What was that all about?"
"I—have no idea," he answers truthfully.
"Well, what did you get?" Mike demands, before stopping abruptly. "Oh my God—"
Carl looks down. There, in his hand, glinting up at him innocently, was by all intents and appearances, a gold Rolex watch.
"Shit, that's gotta be worth—a couple hundred at least! Maybe a thousand if it's real and—Christ, he didn't even notice you nicking that?!" Mike looks around apprehensively, "Jesus man, let's get out of here before he realizes anything and pawn that sucker!"
Carl lets himself be led away in a daze. It's a few steps further before he realizes something else.
His other hand is empty.
Tom had taken his wallet back...
Tom had picked his pockets!
Holy…the thought astounds him. Clever kid.
Present Day—Nita's POV
"And before I begin another lengthy bit," Carl looked up from the Manual he'd been holding, "Since we skipped breakfast and it's not quite lunch yet, anyone up for brunch?"
"Something simple," Tom added, "I'm thinking eggs and bacon. And yes, I know you're a vegetarian Nita, so we'll have some fresh fruit and toast too."
"All of the above sounds good to me," said Carl, getting up and hurrying to the kitchen.
Nita rose to help but Tom motioned her to stay seated. They waited in silence, though Nita didn't know what for. She found out soon enough when they heard the sound of pots and pans clang noisily as they fell to the floor. Tom and Nita both winced.
"I think I'll go give him a hand," Tom volunteered, "Nita, will you set the table?"
"Of course," she replied, still looking nervously at the source of the racket, where a good deal of cursing was going on.
"Don't worry," Tom smiled at her mildly, "I'll talk to him."
As Tom walked away Nita headed for the china cabinets, pulling out some napkins and table place-mats from the drawer. She really didn't mean to eavesdrop but she couldn't help but catch some of the furiously whispered phrases.
"I know you hate this," drifted Tom's voice, "But you have to keep going."
Carl said something she couldn't hear.
"I'm so sorry Carl…"
Another few words passed between them.
"And whose fault is that Tom?"
"Mine, but I have no regrets. You know very well why I did it now."
"Yeah, but what will Nita think?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Are you sure you're flipping that bacon right? Shouldn't you have waited longer?"
"Tom, I know what I'm doing!"
Nita sighed, hopelessly lost.
About ten minutes later, a cheerful Tom came out with a platter of scrambled eggs and crisp bacon, followed by Carl with a bowl of a mixed fruits which looked to Nita to have every type of fruit imaginable.
"Wow," Nita said, impressed in spite of herself, her mouth watering. "Where did all this come from?"
"Carl went over to meet with the West Coast Advisories a few days ago and came back with a fruit basket as a parting gift."
"Yeah, but how can all this fruit be in season?"
"It's not, but Wizards…"
"Can make things happen." Carl finished. "Shall we?"
A little while later, everyone was full and ready to hear the story anew.
Carl began…
Past—Carl's POV
Carl was gone, so wrapped up in the visions he could no longer hear Peach. No matter, as long as the revelations kept coming—and as long as these eventually led to Tom—his Tom—he didn't care.
October 5th, 1978—Carl's POV
Carl has a badly wrapped hand injury he's trying to hide beneath the many folds of a worn trench coat. His other hand, the left, is a white-knuckled grip around the bus holding pole. His lips are a tight line of pain. Anyone who looks at him could clearly see he's suffering. But of course, nobody looked in this city.
Suddenly there's screeching and a frontal force of pull. Carl almost loses his balance as the bus skids to a halt. As the bus turns to leave, he realizes this is his stop. He's dizzy and practically falling over himself, but he takes it.
It's just a block away to the hospital from here.
He makes it somehow, struggling up the few stairs to the clinic, and is almost unable to get the heavy door open with his remaining hand.
Carl staggers through the entrance and falls to one knee on the cracked marble floor. As he accidentally reaches out with his bad hand to catch himself, he collapses.
Nobody looks up.
Then a young man in a white coat hurriedly crosses the room. He gives a tight squeeze to both of Carl's shoulders and hoists him onto his feet in a fluid motion.
Carl sags against this Good Samaritan, hoping the other can take his bulk.
As the steadying hands move to grip his waist, Carl tilts his head back to get a good look at his savior—
It's Tom and that infuriating grin of his.
"Fancy finding you here stranger," Tom says.
Carl groans and lets himself be led into an empty hallway and made to sit on a bench, half-wondering how Tom manages to hold most of his weight. Tom is as tall as Carl, but nowhere near as strong.
"Whaddya mean 'stranger'?" A slightly buzzed Carl asks.
Tom, who has knelt carefully before Carl, is working to gently pull away the makeshift bandage. He looks up in shock, as if this is the first time in minutes that Carl has said anything—which it probably is—and then laughs.
"Well, at least you haven't lost your sparkling sense of humor," Tom says, trying to look stern or annoyed at him. However the 'Tommy smile,' Carl now dubbed, ruins the effect.
"If you had I'd be worried. What happened to you anyway? How'd you get it sliced open so deep? Lean back." Tom slowly helps to lower Carl to lie on the bench. Once he is certain that Carl won't try to get away, Tom clambers up into the seat next to him. The gaze he directs at Carl a curious one and nonjudgmental.
"Well, there was a fight..."
Tom's eyebrows rose as he gave Carl a 'no duh' sort of look.
"...and there were knives involved. I grabbed the knife to save my life."
Mike, in a drug-induced haze, had actually come at him several times before Carl had managed to wrestle the knife away.
At least there weren't any guns involved this time.
Tom shakes his head mock-scornfully. "You don't say. Well, I knew you were a trouble maker at once—spotted it right off the start. I know your kind and there'll be no more sharp objects for you mister. Not for a while at least. Wonder when the other guy's going to stumble in here—should I alert the ER?"
From somewhere Carl can't see, Tom pulls out a clipboard and pen. Within the last minute he's also donned a pair of thick lens glasses that make him look older than he is but, in Carl's opinion, don't suit him at all.
"Well," Tom continues "you've stopped bleeding enough by now that you'll last a few minutes for me to sign you in and then I'll find someone to stitch you right back up."
Carl must have looked at him quizzically because Tom laughs again.
"What? You didn't think I'd do the sewing, did you? In my first year of pre-med? I currently can't even sew a sweater together, much less human flesh..." Tom chuckled. "They don't trust me with the anything pointier than a pen around here yet I'm afraid. Not that they should, mind you, as I have no clue what I'm doing here or why I'm in this program in the first place. I mean, I fainted—actually fainted—every time at the sight of blood the first few weeks I was here. I gotta get out of here soon before I kill someone."
Carl shifts uneasily.
Tom snorts. "Oh, not you!
"Don't worry," he says, patting Carl's arm comfortingly, "They've still got eight years to see sense and kick me out before I get that chance. Right now I've just got this part time job in admissions. Strictly paperwork. And I wouldn't have gotten that much if my father and the university didn't have some standing. It helps that I'm a volunteer who 'needs the experience' and they don't have to pay me. Not a job then really, is it? Which reminds me, what is your name and when were you born? I'm going to need last names this time Carl..."
Carl blinks at the rapid change of topic.
"Um… Carl J. Romeo. September 29th, 1955."
Tom writes it all down, chewing his bottom lip slightly while the pen scratches the paper's surface.
"Romeo huh? Nothing embarrassing about that, I'm not sure why you wouldn't tell me before—and Carl J—I guess that explains 'CJ' then. No worries, I'm not exactly fond of my middle name either—Bernard, can you believe it? Named for my grandfather—something I'll never thank him for, or my mother for that matter, since I'm pretty sure she had some kind of say in it. And we met on your birthday? Wow! What a coincidence. Okay, city of birth and current address?"
"Look, Tom, I—I don't have any medical insurance—or much money…"
"Spent it all in one place then, did you?"
Carl, cheeks burning, digs around in his pockets, finally pulling out the expensive trinket Tom referred to. "That's—that's kind of what the fight was about. See, Mike had seen me 'steal' it and he wanted to pawn it off—to eat, you know? Or maybe for drugs, probably for drugs..."
Carl sees Tom grimace and hurries on, "Not for me, mind you, for him. It's too expensive a habit to get into when you can't even feed your family. But some dealers had offered him some for free; you know how they do that to get you hooked, right? And he'd taken it—and apparently liked it—and wanted more and..."
He offers it back to Tom.
Tom takes the watch sadly. "I'm so sorry Carl. I had no idea it would cause you so much trouble—I honestly thought you'd just sell it." He hands it back.
"Wait, you mean I can have it?"
"Of course you can have it, I gave it to you didn't I? It's real too, 18 carat gold at the least, with a few diamonds set on the dial, see there? My father's going to be very angry that I 'lost it.' He got it for me when I got into MIT and Columbia. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I tell him—it'll be almost as good as the one he gave me when I chose NYU over Harvard. Now that was classic!" Tom's look is feral. He shakes it off and glances at Carl.
"Look, you can do what you want with it. Toss it into the Hudson if you like. But it's yours."
"Thank you," Carl whispers, subdued. "I don't deserve it."
Tom shrugs. "Who does? Call it my good deed of the month."
Tom leans forward on both his knees, seeming to take great interest in scanning the hallways...
Carl gapes openly at Tom, then closes his mouth and grits his teeth. Anger rises in him, overwhelming him and making him forget any previous kindness from Tom, and he snaps. "So that's what this is—what I am—your charity case? I am one of that 'kind'? Well forget it! I don't want any good deeds."
Carl's struggles to rise, fed up with Tom.
Tom stops his search and looks back at him, visibly stunned. "That's not it at all," he says quietly, passive. He's embarrassed, Carl realizes. "When you first came in I thought—I'm so sorry for what I thought then—but you're not just some 'charity case.' Honest you're not—not to me, anyway."
And for some inexplicable reason, the apology is enough. The anger isn't there. One moment it is and the next it may as well have never existed. His emotions have never been this mercurial before but… Carl believes him.
Suddenly Carl clenches in on himself. Without his negative emotions as a distraction the physical pain of his body doubles him over. "Ugh, my stomach!"
"It's your hand, look we've got to elevate your feet, put them on the bench's rail for now and...Maria!"
A handsome looking Puerto Rican woman rounds the corner and looks up from her charts.
"Yes Thomas?" She says, her words heavily accented but clear.
Tom makes a face, forgetting himself, "You know I hate that name."
She smiles at him before turning to study Carl, glancing from his pale drawn face, down to his hand, and back again.
Carl gulps. Blushing, he introduces himself, "Carl Romeo, senorita."
Her smile widens, "My name is Maria Chavez. Nice to meet you Carl. Where are you from?"
"I live here, in Brooklyn."
Tom clears his throat, feeling out of the loop.
"So how'd this happen, Carl?"
For the first time since his arrival, Carl averts his eyes in shame. "I fell," he mumbles lamely.
He hears a sigh hover somewhere above him and then Tom drops a soothing hand on Carl's shoulder.
"I see," she says, voice neutral.
"Please, Maria," Carl can't see his face, but Tom's tone is pleading, and Maria visibly softens at it. Carl doesn't blame her. "Really, he's just terrible at making turkey sandwiches! If I promise to keep him away from the kitchen from now on, will you fix him?"
She stays serious a moment longer, then laughs, "Oh Thomas! So he's a friend of yours, yes?"
"Yeah—wait, you mean that as in 'I can't believe you finally made one,' don't you?"
Maria smiles, pleased. "Well, boys will be boys and all that I guess... how about I just fix you up Carl and it'll be our little secret? You'd like that?"
"Yes ma'am, thank you." Carl mutters in appreciation, silently in awe of Tom.
"Yes, thank you ma'am." Tom echoes him teasingly.
"Oh, enough of that you," Maria ruffles Tom's mousey hair fondly, "You're hard to resist when you want to be, you know that? I bet you do. All right, I'll go get some supplies—and they'll have to just mysteriously vanish from the hospital inventory."
As soon as she's gone from sight, Tom smiles at Carl triumphantly, tearing off and crumbling the page he'd been filling out on his clipboard.
"See, Carl? I told you there'd be nothing to worry about. I'll take good care of you. I can talk my way into or out of anything, can't you tell?"
"Thanks Tommy." And Carl messes Tom's brown hair with his good hand as Maria had done.
Tom sticks out his tongue, "Tommy again, huh? Maybe I'll just have to start calling you 'Carly'—or something like that." Maria returns with needle and sutures in hand.
Briskly, she wraps her tools in a sanitized cloth and sets them down on the wooden bench. She then adopts her best take-charge attitude. "You'll just need to eat foods high in iron when you get home, drink lots of water, and rest for a few days. And don't move for at least half an hour after I finish this. Tom, I need you to push down on the pressure point for the brachial artery—"
"That's here, right?" Carl watches him reach up and with practiced purpose firmly pinch the inside of Carl's right arm between elbow and armpit.
Carl hisses in pain.
"Sorry," Tom glances at him apologetically but is careful not to let up.
"Yes, good, now hold that while I clean..."
Awhile later Tom runs to catch up with Carl who is leaving the hospital.
"Carl, wait!" Tom says.
Carl turns towards him, still baffled yet intrigued by this boy he keeps encountering.
"How is it," Carl asks seriously, "that we keep running into each other like this?"
Tom shrugs, "Maybe it's fate."
Carl doesn't believe in such a thing.
Tom smiles, as if he can tell what Carl's thinking. "Or maybe you're stalking me, I'm not sure which."
"I'm stalking you?" Carl asks incredulously. "I think it's the other way around."
"Hey, who walked into my hospital?"
"It was the closest!"
Tom laughs.
"What's so funny?"
Tom smiles at him, "If we don't want to leave our meetings to fate anymore, let's get together ourselves. I'm free at noon…"
Past—Carl's POV
Carl is still in a trance, completely unaware of his surroundings.
But neither Peach, nor the dogs, nor the koi wake him. They simply keep watch.
They know this is too important.