The conversation stalls.
She glances back at the register.
Wanting to get back to her book probably.
Having most likely made an appraisal of my faded, thrift-store jeans and hand-me-down button-down and realized I’m unlikely to buy anything.
“Is this your gallery?” I ask, though I know the answer.
Just wanting to hear her talk.
To make this moment last as long as it possibly can.
“It’s actually a co-op, but since my work is hanging this month, I’m on deck to hold down the fort.”
She smiles.
Only politely.
Begins to drift away.
“If there’s anything else I can—”
“I just think you’re so talented.”
“Oh, that’s really nice of you to say. Thank you.”
“My wife is an artist.”
“Local?”
“Yep.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s um, well, you probably wouldn’t know it, and we’re not really together anymore, so…”
“Sorry to hear that.”
I reach down and touch the frayed thread that’s still, against all odds, tied around my ring finger.
“It’s not that we’re not together. It’s just…”
I don’t finish the thought, because I want her to ask me to finish it. To show a shred of interest, stop looking at me like a stranger, because we are not strangers.
We’ve made a life together.
We have a son.
I’ve kissed every inch of your body.
I’ve cried with you and laughed with you.
How can something so powerful in one world not bleed through into this one?
I stare into Daniela’s eyes, but there’s no love or recognition or familiarity coming back.
She just looks mildly uncomfortable.
Like she’s hoping I’ll leave.
“Do you want to get a cup of coffee?” I ask.
She smiles.
Now severely uncomfortable.
“I mean after you get off, whenever that is.”
If she says yes, Amanda will kill me. I’m already late meeting her back at the hotel. We’re supposed to return to the box this afternoon.
But Daniela isn’t going to say yes.
She’s biting her lip like she always does when she’s nervous, no doubt trying to come up with some reason beyond a blanket, ego-destroying “no,” but I can see she’s drawing a blank, that she’s working up the nerve to drop the hammer on my foundering ass.
“You know what?” I say. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’ve put you on the spot.”
Fuck.
I’m dying.
It’s one thing to get shot down by a total stranger.
Another entirely to crash and burn with the mother of your child.
“I’m just going to go now.”
I head for the door.
She doesn’t try to stop me.
AMPOULES REMAINING: 16
Every Chicago we’ve stepped into this last week, the trees are looking more and more skeletal, their leaves stripped and rain-pasted to the pavement. I sit on the bench across the street from my brownstone, bundled up against the bitter morning cold in a thrift-store coat I bought yesterday for $12 with currency from another world. It smells like an old man’s closet—mothballs and analgesic cream.
Back at the hotel, I left Amanda scribbling away in a notebook of her own.
I lied, told her I was going out for a walk to clear my head and get a cup of coffee.
I see myself step out the front door and move quickly down the steps and onto the sidewalk, heading for the El station, where I’ll take the Purple Line to the Lakemont campus in Evanston. I’m wearing noise-canceling headphones, probably listening to a podcast—some science lecture or an episode of This American Life.
It’s October 30 according to the front page of the Tribune, a little less than a month since the night I was taken at gunpoint and ripped out of my world.
Feels like I’ve been traveling in the box for years.
I don’t know how many Chicagos we’ve connected to so far.
They’re all beginning to blend.
This one is the closest yet, but it still isn’t mine. Charlie attends a charter school, and Daniela works out of the house as a graphic designer.
Sitting here, I realize I’ve always looked at Charlie’s birth and my choice to make a life with Daniela as the threshold event that caused the trajectory of our lives to swing away from success in our careers.
But that’s an oversimplification.
Yes, Jason2 walked away from Daniela and Charlie and subsequently had the breakthrough. But there are a million Jasons who walked away and didn’t invent the box.
Worlds where I left Daniela and our careers still amounted to nothing.
Or where I left and we both found moderate levels of success, but failed to set the world on fire.
And inversely, there are worlds where I stayed and we had Charlie, which branched into less-than-perfect timelines.
Where our relationship deteriorated.
Where I decided to leave our marriage.
Or Daniela did.
Or we struggled and suffered along in a loveless and broken state, toughing it out for the sake of our son.
If I represent the pinnacle of family success for all the Jason Dessens, Jason2 represents the professional and creative apex. We’re opposite poles of the same man, and I suppose it isn’t a coincidence that Jason2 sought out my life from the infinite possibilities available.
Though he’d experienced complete professional success, total fulfillment as a family man was as foreign to him as his life was to me.
It all points to the fact that my identity isn’t binary.
It’s multifaceted.
And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn’t just the inverse of who I am. It’s an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life between the extremes of me and Jason2.
Reaching into my pocket, I take out the prepaid mobile phone that cost $50, money that could have fed Amanda and me for a day, or put us up in a cheap motel for another night.
With my fingerless gloves, I uncrumple the torn-out sheet of yellow paper from the D section of the Chicago Metro phone book and dial the circled number.
There’s something horribly lonely about a place that’s almost home.
From where I sit, I can see the room on the second floor that I assume serves as Daniela’s in-home office. The blinds are open and she’s seated with her back to me, facing a giant monitor.
I see her lift a cordless handset and stare at the display.
Not recognizing the number.
Please answer.
She shelves the phone.
My voice: “You’ve reached the Dessens. We can’t take your call, but if you—”
I hang up before the beep.
Call again.
This time, she picks up and answers before the second ring, “Hello?”
For a moment, I don’t say anything.
Because I can’t find my voice.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“What number are you calling from?”
I suspected she would ask this right off the bat.
I say, “My phone’s dead, so I borrowed one off this woman on the train.”
“Is everything okay?”
“How’s your morning going?” I ask.
“Fine. I just saw you, silly.”
“I know.”
She spins around on the swivel chair at her desk, says, “So you just wanted to talk to me so badly that you borrowed a stranger’s phone?”
“I did, actually.”
“You’re sweet.”
I just sit there, absorbing her voice.
“Dan
iela?”
“Yes?”
“I really miss you.”
“What’s wrong, Jason?”
“Nothing.”
“You sound weird. Talk to me.”
“I was walking to the El, and it just hit me.”
“What did?”
“I take so many moments with you for granted. I walk out the door to work, and I’m already thinking about my day, about the lecture I have to give, whatever, and I just…I had a moment of clarity getting on the train about how much I love you. How much you mean to me. Because you never know.”
“Never know what?”
“When it could all be taken away. Anyway, I tried to call you, but my phone was dead.”
For a long moment, there’s just silence on the other end of the line.
“Daniela?”
“I’m here. And I feel the same way about you. You know that, right?”
I close my eyes against the emotion.
Thinking, I could cross the street right now and come inside and tell you everything.
I am so lost, my love.
Daniela steps down off her chair and walks over to the window. She’s wearing a long, cream-colored sweater over yoga pants. Her hair is up, and she’s holding a mug of what I suspect is tea from a local shop.
She cradles her belly, which is rounded with child.
Charlie is going to be a big brother.
I smile through the tears, wondering what he thinks of that.
It’s something my Charlie missed.
“Jason, are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Positive.”
“Well, look, I’m on a deadline for this client, so…”
“You have to go.”
“I do.”
I don’t want her to. I need to keep hearing her voice.
“Jason?”
“Yes?”
“I love you very much.”
“I love you too. You have no idea.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
No, you’ll see a very lucky version of me who has no clue how good he has it.
She hangs up.
Goes back to her desk.
I return the phone to my pocket, shivering, my thoughts running in mad directions, toward dark fantasies.
I see the train I’m riding into work derailing.
My body mangled beyond recognition.
Or never found.
I see myself stepping into this life.
It isn’t mine exactly, but maybe it’s close enough.
—
In the evening, I’m still sitting on the bench on Eleanor Street across from the brownstone that isn’t mine, watching our neighbors arrive home from work and school.
What a miracle it is to have people to come home to every day.
To be loved.
To be expected.
I thought I appreciated every moment, but sitting here in the cold, I know I took it all for granted. And how could I not? Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.
The sky darkens.
Up and down the block, the houses light up.
Jason comes home.
I’m in a bad way.
Haven’t eaten all day.
Water hasn’t touched my lips since morning.
Amanda must be losing her mind wondering where I am, but I can’t drag myself away. My life, or at least a devastating approximation of it, is unfolding right across the street.
—
It’s long after midnight when I unlock the door to our hotel room.
The lights are on, the television blaring.
Amanda climbs out of bed, wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.
I close the door softly behind me.
I say, “I’m sorry.”
“You asshole.”
“I had a bad day.”
“You had a bad day.”
“Amanda—”
Charging toward me, she shoves me with both hands as hard as she can, sending me crashing back into the door.
She says, “I thought you’d left me. Then I thought something had happened to you. I had no way to get in touch with you. I started calling hospitals, giving them your physical description.”
“I would never just leave you.”
“How am I supposed to know that? You scared me!”
“I’m sorry, Amanda.”
“Where have you been?”
She has me boxed in against the door.
“I just sat on this bench across the street from my house all day.”
“All day? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t your house, Jason. That isn’t your family.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“I also followed Daniela and Jason on a date.”
“What do you mean you followed them?”
“I stood outside the restaurant where they ate.”
The shame hits me as I say the words.
I push past Amanda into the room, take a seat on the end of my bed.
She comes over and stands in front of me.
I say, “They went to a movie after. I followed them inside. Sat behind them in the theater.”
“Oh, Jason.”
“I did something else stupid.”
“What?”
“I used some of our money to buy a phone.”
“Why did you need a phone?”
“So I could call Daniela and pretend to be her Jason.”
I brace for Amanda to lose it again, but instead she steps toward me and cradles my neck and kisses the top of my head.
“Stand,” she says.
“Why?”
“Just do what you’re told.”
I rise.
She unzips my jacket and helps slide my arms out of the sleeves. Then she pushes me back onto the bed and kneels.
Unlaces my boots.
Pries them off my feet and tosses them into the corner.
I say, “For the first time, I think I understand how the Jason you knew might have done what he did to me. I’m having some fucked-up thoughts.”
“Our minds aren’t built to handle this. Seeing all these different versions of your wife—I can’t even imagine.”
“He must have followed me for weeks. To work. On date nights with Daniela. He probably sat on that same bench and watched us moving through our house at night, imagining me out of the picture. Do you know what I almost did tonight?”
“What?” She looks scared to hear.
“I figure they probably keep their spare key in the same place we keep it. I left the movie early. I was going to find the key and let myself inside the house. I wanted to hide in a closet and watch their life. Watch them sleep. It’s sick, I know. And I know your Jason was probably in my house multiple times before the night he finally worked up the nerve to steal my life.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“No.”
“Because you’re a decent man.”
“I don’t feel very decent right now.”
I fall back onto the mattress and stare up at the ceiling of this hotel room that, in all its inconsequential permutations, has become our home away from the box.
Amanda crawls onto the bed beside me.
“This isn’t working, Jason.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re just spinning our wheels.”
“I don’t agree. Look where we started. Remember that first world we stepped into, with the buildings crashing down all around us?”
“I’ve lost count of how many Chicagos we’ve been to.”
“We’re getting closer to my—”
“We’re not getting closer, Jason. The world you’re looking for is a grain of sand on an infinite beach.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’ve seen your wife murdered. Die of a horrible disease. You’ve seen her not recognize you. Marrie
d to other men. Married to multiple versions of you. How much more of this can you take before you suffer a psychotic break? It’s not that far off from your current mental state.”
“It’s not about what I can or can’t take. It’s about finding my Daniela.”
“Really? That’s what you were doing sitting on a bench all day? Looking for your wife? Look at me. We have sixteen ampoules left. We’re running out of chances.”
My head is pounding.
Spinning.
“Jason.” I feel her hands on my face now. “You know what the definition of insanity is?”
“What?”
“Doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.”
“Next time—”
“What? Next time we’ll find your home? How? You going to fill another notebook tonight? Would it make a difference if you did?” She lays her hand on my chest. “Your heart is going crazy. You have to calm down.”
Rolling over, she turns off the lamp on the table between the beds.
Lies down beside me, but there’s nothing sexual about her touch.
My head feels better with the lights off.
The only illumination in the room is the blue neon light from the sign outside the window, and it’s late enough that the passing cars on the street below are few and far between.
Sleep is riding in. Mercifully.
I shut my eyes, thinking of the five notebooks stacked on my bedside table. Almost every page is filled with my increasingly manic scrawl. I keep thinking if I write enough, if I’m specific enough, that I’ll capture a full-enough picture of my world to finally take me home.
But it’s not happening.
Amanda isn’t wrong.
I’m looking for a grain of sand on an infinite beach.
In the morning, Amanda is no longer beside me. I lie on my side, watching the sunlight push through the blinds, listening to the noise of traffic humming through the walls. The clock is behind me on the bedside table. I can’t see the time, but it feels late. We’ve slept in.
I sit up, throw back the covers, look over at Amanda’s bed.
It’s empty.
“Amanda?”
I start quickly toward the bathroom to see if she’s in there, but what I see on top of the dresser makes me stop.
Some cash.
A few coins.
Eight ampoules.
And a piece of paper ripped out of a notebook, covered in Amanda’s handwriting.
Jason. After last night, it was clear to me that you’ve made a decision to go down a path I can’t follow. I struggled with this all night. As your friend, as a therapist, I want to help you. I want to fix you. But I can’t. And I can’t keep watching you fall down. Especially if I’m part of the reason you keep falling down. To what extent is our collective subconscious driving our connections to these worlds? It’s not that I don’t want you to get back to your wife. I want nothing more. But we’ve been together now for weeks. It’s hard not to get attached, especially under these circumstances, when you’re all I have.