Coincidence

by David Ambrose

  After that I went to the guest room as on the previous night and took a pill. Once again I fell asleep relatively quickly. Almost at once I found myself in the back of the same cab with the same driver. His fare meter and the clock on his dash both showed 4:44. He gave the same reply—“That’s how it works”—to my question about his dash clock being wrong. I saw the woman on the sidewalk, exactly as before. I stopped the cab and followed her, unable to catch up at first, then, finding myself right behind her, I reached out to touch her and she turned. As before, her look of surprise turned to horror. She threw up her hands and gave a piercing scream.

  The time on my bedside clock when I awoke with a gasp and bathed in perspiration was again 4:44.

  There was no way I was going to get back to sleep, and eventually I gave up trying. I decided to pull on a tracksuit and go for a jog—not in the park, but there were plenty of broad well-lit sidewalks where people ran throughout the night without much risk of being mugged or bothered in any way. I had already noticed in my dressing room that there were a couple of jackets, some shirts, and sweaters that I didn’t recognize and that must have been Larry’s purchases. Among them was a sleek gray-and-black tracksuit that I had no recollection of seeing before and that I thought I’d try on. Naturally enough it fitted me perfectly. I found some running shoes, also new, and pulled them on. As I knelt to tie them, I felt something in the tracksuit pocket dig into my hip. I reached in and pulled out a plastic card. It was black, about the size of a credit card, and without marking of any kind on either side.

  For some moments I just held it in the palm of my hand and looked at it. My mind raced with possibilities. The most likely thing was that it was some kind of key, to a hotel room, a security door, a locker of some kind. But why wasn’t it marked? That suggested it was not meant to be identified if it fell into the wrong hands. Its function was to be known only to its rightful owner.

  What, I wondered, was Larry’s secret? And how could I go about finding it out?

  I waited till Joe came on duty downstairs and asked him about the firm that had installed the security system in our building and the friend he’d claimed to have who worked there. He gave me his friend’s name without hesitation and called him to say that I would be stopping by.

  Just after ten I was in the shop, which was Midtown off Broadway, asking what they could tell me about the black card. The answer was depressingly little. A quick test established that it was indeed a magnetic key as I had suspected, but beyond that there was nothing to suggest the location of the lock it might fit.

  “It could be a security door, a private safe, or safe deposit box of some kind,” said Leroy, Joe’s amiable friend with an unruly mop of dreadlocks that covered half his face, “even a luggage locker. I can have somebody go over it and tell you how good it is and therefore the kind of place that it might belong, but probably no more than that.”

  “Try anyway,” I said, and left it with him. He said he’d get back to me by the next morning at the latest.

  “For all his fascination with ghost stories, Charles Dickens liked to think of himself as free from all forms of superstition,” writes Brian Inglis in his book about coincidence, then recounts the following story in Dickens’s own words. It obviously refers to the public readings he used to give of his works to enthralled audiences in England and America:

  I dreamt that I saw a lady in a red shawl with her back towards me (whom I supposed to be E). On her turning round, I found that I didn’t know her and she said, “I am Miss Napier.”

  All the time I was dressing next morning I thought—what a preposterous thing to have so very distinct a dream about nothing; and why Miss Napier? For I had never heard of any Miss Napier. That same Friday night, I read. After the reading, came into my retiring room Mary Boyle and her brother and the lady in the red shawl, whom they presented as “Miss Napier!”

  I was spending the afternoon searching through my collection of books on dreams—from Freud to the occult—trying to get some handle on the symbolism of my own.

  To hard-line rationalists like Francis Crick, dreams are without meaning or significance of any kind, just the nocturnal rumblings of our mental digestive systems. But that only makes dreams that appear to predict the future all the more remarkable. For example:

  British Rail had a call from a woman who claimed to have had a vision of a fatal crash in which a freight train had been involved. So clear had it been, she said, that she not merely saw the blue diesel engine, but could read the number: 47216. Two years later, an accident of the kind she predicted occurred, all the details matching—except one: the engine’s number was 47299.

  That would have been that, but a train spotter happened to have noticed that 47299 was not the engine’s original number. It had been renumbered a couple of years before from 47216. Diesels, the train spotter knew, were ordinarily renumbered only after major modifications, which this one had not undergone. When curiosity prompted him to ask why, he was told about the prediction. Apparently British Rail officials had been sufficiently impressed (they had checked with the local police and found that the woman had previously given them useful information from her visions) to try to ward off Fate by changing the number.

  The sense of déjà vu is attributed by some people, those who are prepared to believe in such things, to a forgotten precognitive dream that stirs in the subconscious memory when the event predicted eventually happens. Rationalists, on the other hand, explain it by a process called “priming,” which is a demonstrable capacity of the brain to absorb information subliminally into the unconscious. In other words, you know something without knowing that you know it. Later, when the conscious brain sees something that reflects this unconscious knowledge, it experiences a sense of déjà vu.

  I suppose that Occam’s razor—the rule that says we should always accept the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions—would back the second view.

  Doesn’t guarantee it’s right though.

  Chapter 42

  Our nights were becoming a ritual by now. Yet again I went to bed with Sara, around midnight this time, and lay there until she was asleep. Then I slipped from between the covers and went to my study, where I tried to read. But concentration was impossible. After barely half an hour I abandoned the struggle and went to the guest room. Again I took a sleeping pill, but this time it did not have the same immediate effect.

  I surfed through the late shows and then the late-late shows, and then I must have finally drifted into sleep, because I became aware that I was dreaming again. Once again I was in the back of the same cab with its clock and meter both reading 4:44, the same driver making the same remark, the same spectacularly attractive and dramatically attired woman on the sidewalk, the same chase, the same scream of terror when she turned and saw me.

  But this time I didn’t wake up. I was aware of a certain excitement as I felt the dream moving into unknown territory. A second later I realized that the woman’s scream was not directed at me at all. I wasn’t even sure she’d seen me, though the only reason she had turned was the pressure of my hand on her shoulder. But she was looking past me, somewhere beyond, from where I now heard a screech of brakes and a sickening thud. I spun around—and saw that a car had knocked down a pedestrian, a man who lay sprawled at an unnatural angle in the road.

  “Call 911,” the woman said.

  I turned back to look at her.

  “Call 911,” she repeated urgently, and pushed past me to where people were now crowding around the injured man.

  Once again I awoke with a start and found myself breathless and perspiring. Once again I found myself looking at the bedside clock.

  Once again it read 4:44.

  But this time the lights were on, and so was the television. I was slumped awkwardly across my pillow where I’d fallen asleep. And there was something on the screen that almost made my heart stop. It was the woman from my dream, dressed in that same encoiling black-and-white theatrical creation with the
dramatic wide-brimmed hat. But this time she was against a totally white background, which threw into sharper focus those magnificent long black-stockinged legs.

  “She walks in beauty,” crooned a deep male voice on the sound track. And up came the logo for a brand of pantyhose.

  It was the brand that I knew had been used to strangle Nadia Shelley.

  Next morning Joe’s friend Leroy from the security company phoned shortly after ten to tell me what he’d found out about the key card I’d left with him. In fact he’d found out very little except that it carried quite a sophisticated code, which suggested it was more than just a hotel or locker room key. Also, he said, it probably opened more than one lock, for example an outer security door and then a safe deposit box. Beyond that he couldn’t help. I asked him to messenger the card back to me. It arrived just as I was leaving to have lunch with my agent, Lou Bennett. I slipped it into my pocket and headed for the subway, which, I could see from the traffic, was going to be faster than taking a cab.

  I had called Lou because, despite his age and his fondness for long three-Martini (and then some) lunches, he was one of the smartest and most perceptive people I’d ever met. I knew he’d had lunch with Larry a couple of times and they’d talked on the phone now and again, and I wanted to find out if he’d noticed anything different about “me” on those occasions. I wasn’t going to tell him why I wanted to know, just ask the question. One of the things I liked about Lou was that you didn’t have to explain yourself to him. He knew that life in general and people in particular were too complex to be easily understood, and he rarely even tried; he just observed.

  It seemed that everybody and his cousin was heading downtown that morning. The subway car I got into was packed to the doors even though it was well past the rush hour. I couldn’t help giving a slightly sour smile of amusement as I thought about the consolations offered by Dave’s philosophy of life to this and other discomforts. That wasn’t really someone’s elbow in my back, and that fat man breathing in my face didn’t really stink of half-chewed sugared peanuts, nor was the music leakage from the Walkman worn by some kid jammed against my right shoulder really setting my teeth on edge: It was all just information fed into a quantum computer, as was I myself, and any resemblance to painful physical reality was purely coincidental. The world was, as any Eastern mystic could have told me with or without Dave’s scientific mumbo-jumbo, an illusion.

  At that moment, almost as though his appearance had been triggered by my thinking of him, I spotted Dave at the far end of the car. The shock made me gasp loudly. If anyone had noticed, which was unlikely, he would probably have surmised that the fat man in front of me had stepped on my foot. But all thoughts of personal discomfort were forgotten as I gazed at the mundane but unlikely figure down the car. Like me he was standing, pinned by people on all sides. He hadn’t seen me, or if he had he was being careful to conceal the fact. Each time the train and its sardinelike cargo lurched briefly to the right or left I lost sight of him, but each time he came back into view he was still staring vacantly at some tall black man’s leather-jacketed back about an inch from his nose.

  Every imaginable way of attracting his attention ran through my head, and just as swiftly I discarded them. The prospect of fighting my way down the car to where he stood was frankly a physical impossibility. And even if I shouted his name I probably wouldn’t be heard over the noise of the train; I would simply become, to the people around me, one of those New York embarrassments that you pretend you haven’t noticed and try to avoid making eye contact with.

  Then, as the train slowed, I saw him begin edging his way toward the doors. He was obviously getting out at the next station, and I prepared to do likewise.

  The crowd on the platform was even worse than in the train. I lost sight of Dave almost at once and could only struggle inch by inch in the general direction I’d last seen him headed. Eventually things thinned out a little, and when I reached the foot of an escalator I briefly glimpsed him stepping off the top. By the time I got there he had disappeared. There were three tunnels I had a choice of going down; most people were heading for the one to the left, so I took a chance and went that way. Sure enough, pushing through the exit gate up ahead I saw the familiar white T-shirt and long greasy hair. I put on a sprint that should have had me catch up with him before he hit the street.

  But when I reached the open air there was no sign of him. I looked desperately around in all directions, then took a chance and headed for a nearby intersection. My instincts had carried me in the right direction, because I glimpsed him on the far side, diagonally across from me and walking away. Defying the traffic and a good deal of angry honking and hollering, I made it across and managed to keep him in my sights. I caught up with him at the next corner. He spun around in obvious alarm when my hand descended on his shoulder—as well he might, because he was a total stranger.

  “Hey, what the fuck is this? What do you want?” He squirmed out of my grasp as though I was about to sexually assault him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “my mistake. Did you just come out of the subway?”

  “What the fuck is that to you? Get away from me, I don’t know you!”

  He scurried away, glancing nervously over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t following him. I stood there, cursing silently. Could I really have been that mistaken in the subway car? It was possible. I’d only had a brief glimpse of the man I’d thought was Dave. More precisely several brief glimpses, my view of him constantly obscured by the swaying bodies between us.

  Or could it really have been Dave down there, but I’d lost him somewhere in the labyrinth of stairs and tunnels, then picked up on this total stranger who coincidentally bore some resemblance to him?

  I walked on despondently for a few blocks, then remembered Lou and glanced at my watch. The traffic was still solid, so I looked around for the nearest subway entrance. And as I did so I forgot all about Lou.

  Because there, directly opposite me across the street, painted in small but distinct white characters, was the number 444.

  Chapter 43

  Despite an impulse to plunge into the traffic that rumbled past only inches from where I stood, I remained rooted to the sidewalk, staring as though afraid that if I blinked or looked away even for a second, then what I had seen might vanish. Subliminally I registered that the lights had changed and the “Walk” sign was green. I crossed with the crowd who’d been waiting, keeping my gaze fixed on that clear white “444.”

  I could see there was some sort of engraved plaque of polished brass on the wall. As I drew closer I was able to make out the words “Beacon Trust.”

  My hand slid almost of its own accord into the pocket of my coat where it closed around the card that I had put there as I left the apartment. Had I known that I would need it? Was something taking its course regardless of anything I did or thought or wanted?

  The door to “Beacon Trust” consisted of two vertical capsules made of thick unbreakable glass. One was for entering, the other for leaving. Only one person at a time could do either. I watched as a man inserted a card like my own into the slot provided. The capsule swiveled open and he stepped in, paused a moment as it shut, then the other half opened and he entered the building.

  I stepped up to the door and inserted my card as he had, praying that I wasn’t going to find that the codes had changed and the card I had was out of date. It worked. The capsule slid smoothly open, I stepped in, waited, then stepped through into a polished marble lobby.

  A couple of armed guards were on duty but paying no particular attention either to me or any of the trickle of individuals who came and went in various directions. I looked around, getting my bearings. A rather grand staircase wound up from one end of the lobby to a higher floor where, I suspected, I would find offices—which were not what I was looking for. Nearby was a bank of elevators, and next to that a recessed area from which several corridors ran off. It looked to me as if these led only to
more offices. More promising were a set of wide steps, half a dozen at most, which led to a kind of lower ground floor of which I could see little from where I was. Not wanting to stand around uncertainly, thereby attracting the attention of the guards, I went decisively down these steps, and found myself facing a blank wood-paneled wall with a single door in the center. Once again there was a slot in which a card could be inserted. Crossing my fingers that the same card would suffice, I slid it in. Sure enough there was a soft click and the door swung back on automatic hinges.

  I stepped through into a large windowless area in which there was no sound except the constant hum of air-conditioning and an occasional footstep on the polished marble floor. Various rooms opened up ahead of me and to each side. All contained nothing but floor-to-ceiling steel doors, each one obviously a private safe and bearing its own number. Those closest were only about the size of drawers, the farthest away looked large enough to take a pretty big suitcase.

  There were, so far as I could see, no guards down there and no visible security cameras. I imagined that, on the whole, the kind of people who might want to avail themselves of such a facility would prefer not to be photographed doing so.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  I jumped at the voice at my elbow and turned to see an attractive young woman in a dark suit and white blouse looking up at me with a pleasant smile.

  “If you’d like to tell me your number,” she said, “I’ll be glad to show you where it is.”