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Coincidence

Page 15

by David Ambrose


  Is it all about something else?

  Those were the last words George ever wrote.

  I wondered if he found the answer.

  Chapter 29

  Steve Coleman’s lawyers put up a great fight in his defense. I decided that if ever I had a problem, I’d want those guys in my corner. But the verdict was never in question given the weight of evidence against him, which meant that the handing down of a thirty-year sentence came to Sara not so much as a shock as a final line drawn under the whole sorry episode in her life.

  It had been traumatic, but I had been there throughout to soften the blow, to hold her hand and stop her dwelling too much on what might have been. She readjusted to reality beneath my unobtrusive guidance. The night of the verdict we slept together, but didn’t have sex till the next morning. Though neither of us put it into words, it was symbolic of the start of a new life—together. I was ready to play my part now. I had absorbed the role. You could not tell me from the real thing.

  “Do that thing you used to do,” she said suddenly, softly, through her sighs of pleasure.

  I felt a prickle of panic. Various refinements and embellishments of our current not unconventional position ran through my mind. I would have to bluff.

  “What was that?” I whispered back, kissing her, hoping I was not admitting to an ignorance of some dramatic eccentricity that nothing in his notebooks or the detritus of his life had prepared me for.

  I need not have worried. Gently taking my hand, she guided it, and placed the tip of my finger precisely where she wanted it.

  “You know…”

  She even began the movement at the rhythm she remembered.

  I was home.

  I was home.

  But I didn’t realize how true that was until we sat together at breakfast, facing each other across the kitchen table. Although this was a new experience for me, it felt somehow right—strangely right in a way I couldn’t quite explain or, for that matter, understand.

  Sara looked at me over the rim of her coffee mug with a smile in her eyes that I had never seen before. There was such a wealth of feeling in that smile, so many curious contradictions, that for a moment I felt strangely unnerved. I was used to simple emotions like fear and greed. My motives were simple and clear-cut: I wanted, so I went out and got. I had no time for uncertainty or doubt. Ambiguity of all kinds had long been banished from my life; it hindered my effectiveness. Yet there I found myself looking down into its spiral depths and feeling dizzy, afraid almost that I might fall.

  Quite suddenly and impulsively, she reached across the table and placed her hand on mine. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  I did not know what to reply, yet felt I should say something. “For what?”

  “For everything. I’ve been very foolish, haven’t I?”

  Her eyes had still not left mine, and I too felt unable to look away. I shook my head. “Foolish people never take risks,” I said. “You do. That’s good.”

  I watched as she got up from her chair and came around the table to where I sat. She put her arms around my shoulders and rested her face gently on the top of my head.

  “Thank you,” she said after a while. “Thank you for loving me.”

  My voice cracked oddly when I tried to speak, probably because I had no idea what to say. I was rapidly becoming lost in a complex and confusing situation. I cleared my throat and tried again, at the same time hesitantly raising my hand and letting it rest lightly on her forearm where it lay across my chest.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” I said.

  She brought her lips down to mine and kissed me. I responded by swiveling on my chair and slipping my arms beneath the light robe she wore and feeling the smoothness of her skin. She lowered herself onto my lap and sat astride me, our mouths still locked together and our mutual desire suddenly requiring urgent satisfaction. I carried her like that back to the bedroom, from which we emerged a half-hour later, flushed and perspiring, to take a shower together.

  It was almost eleven by the time she was dressed and ready to go to the gallery. It was a Saturday and she wouldn’t normally have gone in over the weekend, but they had an opening coming up on Tuesday and there was a lot to get ready. She kissed me goodbye at the door and reminded me that we had a party in the Village that evening. I watched her walk along the corridor to the elevator. She turned and waved as it opened, then she was gone.

  Back in the apartment I found myself in a strange limbo. I knew that I was slipping into the role that I was playing as though it were my life, which it was not and never could be. Nor did I want it to be. I had about as much ambition to be George Daly as I had to work in some dry goods store in Cleveland. And yet I was beginning to feel at home in his life, and comfortable. And dangerously attracted to his wife. I had always been aware that she was a good-looking woman, but I had not expected this degree of feeling between us. For God’s sake, I had planned to murder her. And that plan was still there, at the back of my mind, awaiting only the right opportunity.

  And yet… suppose Sara were to have an accident, now, after Steve’s trial? Wouldn’t that risk opening up the whole can of worms? After all, Steve would have nothing to lose now by admitting his affair with Sara. If she died in even faintly questionable circumstances, and I was left, as I would be, far better off under the terms of her will than under the terms of a divorce, he might well think it his civic duty to reveal my motive by telling of their affair and the fact that I had known about it. What it had been in his interests to keep quiet during his trial might now provide grounds for an appeal, a further investigation, a retrial even. I was in a tricky position. I had to think carefully.

  Couldn’t I just carry on as I was? The more I thought about it, the more I could see no reason why not. I could simply live as George Daly. It was a comfortable and easy life, and the night that I’d just spent with Sara held out the prospect of its being a very agreeable one. There was something in her sexuality that excited me in ways I did not know how to describe. Nadia had been sensual and uninhibited, but somehow obvious. What you saw was what you got, and that was pretty good. But with Sara what you got was so much more than what you saw. True, what you saw was great. But what you got, what I now got, was somehow special, exclusive, mine and mine alone. At least that was how it felt. And it was a nice feeling. The first time I’d ever had it.

  So, all right, I said to myself, suppose I go on as I am, living as George Daly. Of course I had no intention of writing any books, because for one thing I saw now what an empty fraud George’s writing career had been. It was not something he earned a living at, just something he was being indulged in—a kept man.

  For a while I allowed myself the fantasy that my future was settled, that I had found the role I would play for the rest of my life. But then the doubts set in again. It was true that I could decide to stay with Sara, but suppose she got tired of me—of George, that is—as she had before? If it happened once, it could happen again, and surely would in time. What would I do then? I would be back at square one. Why should I wait around passively for that?

  I felt the need for guidance, but I didn’t know from where. It wasn’t in my nature to ask people for advice. Plus the things I needed advice on weren’t the kind of things you talked about.

  Then I remembered something I’d read about in George’s notes a while back. His “library angel.”

  Did I believe it? I decided it couldn’t hurt to try. I turned my head away from the bookshelves, reached out, and picked a book at random.

  It was the I Ching.

  I knew what it was, or was supposed to be—another of those mysterious reflections of the supposed fact that the universe is a whole. I had read George on the subject—not that it was clear he entirely believed it himself. The theory was that any single set of phenomena, however small or large, is connected to everything else. Thus, if you have the knack for it, you can read a person’s future and possibly that of the whole human race from the leaves left
in the bottom of a tea cup. Or you can figure out from the movements of the stars whether or not you should buy that new car this week, or take a trip to Vegas. The / Ching was another variation on the reading of omens. And, I had to admit it, an omen was what I needed at that moment.

  It only took a few minutes to learn how to use it. There were no special skills involved. You just needed three coins, then you followed the rules at the back and looked up the passages cited.

  I got out three coins and threw them six times. The base line was three tails, therefore a changing line, giving first:

  This was “T’ai,” or “Peace.” The judgment read:

  The small departs,

  The great approaches.

  Good fortune. Success.

  “This hexagram,” I read, “denotes a time in nature when heaven seems to be on earth.”

  Next, I looked up the alternative hexagram that was created by the changing baseline.

  This was “Sheng,” or “Pushing Upward.” The judgment read:

  Pushing upward has supreme success.

  One must see the great man.

  Fear not.

  Departure toward the south

  Brings good fortune.

  What the devil, I asked myself, was that supposed to mean?

  I looked out of the window in search of inspiration. All I saw was that it had stopped raining. I felt restless and decided to take a walk in the park.

  It was full of noise and movement—Rollerbladers, joggers, kids screaming, ghetto blasters competing to see which would inflict most ear damage. I walked for a while without really seeing or hearing my surroundings, lost in my thoughts. I was heading north, and after a while the crowds thinned a little and the noise grew more distant. I was dimly aware that I was taking the same walk that George had taken on that first morning I had followed him. That had been a Saturday too. But there was nothing dramatic or significant in my retracing my steps in that way. It was a walk I had taken many times since, one of my favorite routes through the park.

  I came to the bench, sheltered by rocks in a corner of a winding path, where George had been sitting when we had finally faced each other. I eased myself down—as I had by now done many times—and sat hunched forward, elbows resting on knees. Just as, when I thought about it, George had been sitting that first morning.

  Not only that. Now, for the first time, I found that I was playing quite unconsciously with the three coins I’d used earlier to cast the I Ching.

  I looked down at myself. I was, as it happened, wearing the same clothes George had been wearing that morning. Not entirely surprising, perhaps, as I’d inherited his wardrobe. Nonetheless it was that thought, the totality of the coincidence, that broke my concentration. I heard one of the coins I was playing with hit the ground with a metallic clink. It landed on its edge and, before I could catch it, started rolling down the path to my left.

  A man was coming up. He stopped the coin with his foot, then bent to pick it up.

  He wore a soft felt hat and sunglasses.

  I was looking at myself.

  George.

  In my clothes.

  Exactly as I’d last seen him.

  “Hello, Larry,” he said. “Isn’t this a coincidence!”

  Chapter 30

  It took me a moment, and a lot of self-control, but I congratulated myself that I held it together.

  “What in all hell are you doing here?” I said, concealing as best I could the shock of seeing him.

  “Like I said, Larry—coincidence. This morning you threw the same I Ching I did just before we met that first time, right here on this spot.”

  “I did? How would you know?”

  He smiled faintly and shook his head as though I’d asked precisely the question he expected. “I know everything you’ve done, so there’s no point denying any of it.”

  My mind was racing too fast to think. I instinctively spread my hands like a man with nothing to hide. Immediately, I was embarrassed by the gesture—not because it was a lie, but because it was such a transparent lie. I had everything to hide, and he knew it.

  “You’re not making sense,” I said. “Where have you been? It’s been how long—eighteen months?”

  I was attempting, I think, though not very convincingly, to paint myself as the injured party here. “What happened to you?”

  He took the last few steps up the path and sat down on the bench next to me, all the time not taking his eyes off me. “Those men who were looking for you did a very professional job.” He spoke with no trace of bitterness or rancor. “I was surrounded by three of them and bundled into a car before I knew what was happening. I tried to tell them they were making a mistake, but they went through my pockets and found your ID, and that was when I realized what a neat trick you’d pulled.”

  “Come on, what is this? What are you talking about…?”

  He brushed my protests aside with a wave of his hand. “I told you, I know everything. So we may as well be open with each other.”

  I gave a noncommittal grunt and avoided looking at him. He went on with his story.

  “They drove me way out to some place in New Jersey, put a bullet through my head, and threw me in a lime pit on a big construction site. You must have upset some very unpleasant people, Larry.”

  I mumbled something about it all being a misunderstanding, but he seemed not to care either way.

  “So tell me,” I said, “if they did all that to you, how come you’re sitting here now?”

  “That’s what I’m about to explain. I know you won’t find it easy to accept, but you’ll get your head around it in time, trust me.”

  My mind raced with possible scenarios. He’d said that the men who were after me had killed him, but clearly they hadn’t. Perhaps they had thought they’d killed him and left him for dead, but he’d recovered. Maybe he’d been lying in some hospital for months, injured, in a coma.

  “Are you on something?” I said. “Some medication?”

  He ignored my question and continued to regard me with a strange kind of scrutiny.

  “You hold a horrible fascination for me,” he said. “In the sense that you’re so nearly me, and yet so different.”

  It was a stupid question to ask, knowing the things I’d done that he could never have done, but I asked it all the same. “Different how?”

  “Just different.”

  Then his gaze hardened. I got the impression that he did not like what he was looking at.

  “Listen to me, Larry,” he said, speaking as though the social niceties were over and it was time to get down to business. “That was all horseshit about you and me being long-lost twins. It’s more complicated than that. And also more simple in a way.”

  “That’s good—that it’s simple. So maybe you can explain it to me.”

  He gave a faint, mirthless laugh. “Let me just say to begin with that the whole thing was basically my fault—in so far as ‘fault’ means anything in this context. What I’ve discovered is that if you start pursuing coincidence too closely, you risk unraveling the fabric of your own reality—or, more accurately, your own unreality.”

  He gave a dry little laugh at his own joke, which I was still waiting to see the point of.

  “Look,” I said, “if you want to talk English it’s all right with me. As a matter of fact it’s my first language.”

  He ignored the crack and continued looking at me as though wondering where to start. In the end, finding no answer to that, he sighed deeply as though suddenly weary of everything and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his shoulders hunched, staring at the ground.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, sensing he wasn’t and looking for a way to get back on top of this situation.

  He gave no sign of having heard me.

  “It could all end with the flick of a switch,” he said eventually in a voice suddenly flat with resignation, “though Dave says there’s a chance of his grant being renewed for another year. Of course
that’s one of their years. There’s no telling how long it might seem to us. Eternity, perhaps.”

  “What are you talking about? What switch? Who’s Dave?”

  Again he didn’t answer, but after a while he pushed himself upright, sat back, and contemplated his surroundings. “The thing you have to understand, Larry,” he said, “is that all this, you, me—everything—is very different from what you think it is.”

  “Uh-huh.” I decided for the time being I’d just go along with him, let him talk.

  He looked at me again. “Do you ever think about the Big Bang?”

  “Can’t say I do—at least not often. Why?”

  “But you know what it means.”

  “Sure—the origin of the universe. Some kind of explosion.”

  “An explosion that, supposedly, came out of a ‘singularity,’ which is a point of zero volume and infinite mass—which means something inconceivably smaller than a single atom, but containing all the material needed to create the universe. Have you any idea what an extraordinary notion that is?”

  “Well, I guess not till you put it like that, not really.”

  He looked at me for a moment to ensure that I was paying proper attention before continuing.

  “There’s another theory known as the Big Crunch, which says that in time the whole universe will collapse back into that same point and, effectively, cease to exist. Now, Larry, I want you to think about that for a moment and tell me—what does it put you in mind of?”

  He waited. I shrugged. “Heck, George, I don’t know. What’s it supposed to put me in mind of?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? It’s some sort of power source being turned on and off—right? Like a switch.”

  “Oh. Well, yes, I guess you could look at it like that.”

  “Because that is precisely what it is.”

  “It is?”

  He leaned toward me as though about to impart a deep confidence. “You and I, Larry, and everything we know, are part of a program running on a computer that exists in another world outside our own. We’re just bits of information, all of us and everything. A cyberuniverse.”

 

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