She looked down as if wondering whether she should throw her plate in my face, but ended up only thoughtfully rubbing a guacamole smudge off her finger. “Better not risk shipping the box. One of us can cross to Universe A to go through it. Seeing if there’s anything of research value there will take a few days, I suspect.”
My omni beeped. Wagner. Inquiring about the sourdough starter, no doubt. I got to my feet and picked up the backpack, careful not to disturb the glass jar inside. “I better go. My crossing stamp is expiring any minute. Don’t want DIM officials taking any more notice of me than they already have. Er, Bean—one more thing,” I added.
“What?”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t send Arni or Pak for the box. One talks too much—”
“—and the other too little, yeah.”
The three books that I’d briefly had in my possession were on my mind as I waited to be turned into a number again.
Stones, Tombs, and Gourds, the prehistoric-art book whose pages had harbored a bookmark from a more recent past, was now in the hands of DIM officials. The Christie mystery Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, with its concealed eavesdropping device, I had destroyed via a smooshed-up fruit drink. The first edition of The Nine Tailors, irreplaceable as it was, was beyond repair.
Revenge, that was Gabriella’s motive. I’d found a different one for the story I’d begun on bee-shaped hotel stationary. The woman with the ice-white hair found lifeless by R. Smith after the mountain storm was, I’d decided, an artist. She had been hired by R. Smith to make decorative food sculptures for the upcoming cooking competition. The artist—Griselda? Selene? Nadia?—has an alter, also a sculptor but a shade less talented. And it’s the alter who decides to kill, not to take Griselda’s place—too obvious and overdone as a motive—but because she knew her chances for fame would be greatly improved by having an alter who was the victim of a violent and notorious crime.
Pushing aside the thought that perhaps Felix had gotten it right and I was meant to write a cookbook but had messed everything up by getting a sinus infection years ago, I imagined the final scene of the novel…in the lodge library, a cozy room stocked with comfortable armchairs, with snow gently falling outside and a fire crackling in the fireplace as R. Smith reveals that one Griselda killed the other Griselda to an audience of gathered suspects, after which the remaining Griselda tries to bean him with the fireplace poker and is taken away.
A thought struck me. I had given my victim/murderess Griselda ice-white hair, almost like I’d subconsciously realized all along that the similarly named Gabriella, with her flowing ice-white hair, was somehow involved in the repeated attempts to get rid of me.
Now there was only one question left, I told myself as the crossing chamber door slid shut and the lid started to glide into place across the skylight. Was the idea good enough—for me to quit my job at Wagner’s Kitchen and apply myself to writing full-time, that is? There was no way of telling without sitting down and finishing the damn thing, but the best way to go about doing that was to quit. I suddenly felt like a Passivist, trapped in a loop, unable to act.
One decision after another, that’s what life was.
Soup or salad. Elevator or stairs. Shower or bath.
Give Bean a call as soon as I got back, or wait a few days.
You never knew what might set off a significant chain of events.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Golden Gate Bridge in our own universe is a 1.7-mile (15 stadia long) suspension bridge, not the combination suspension/drawbridge reminiscent of London’s Tower Bridge that it is in Universe B. San Francisco summers are foggy and on the cool side here as well, making for a brisk walk or bike ride across.
The California Gold Rush took place in 1849.
Macar trees do not grow here.
Caesar salads are made with cow’s milk Parmesan.
And there is no Ferris wheel at Baker Beach.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go out to Alex Carr, my editor at AmazonEncore, for being intrigued by the title and pulling out a manuscript languishing on last year’s contest shelf and liking it; to Jill Marsal, for graciously agreeing to represent me; to Sarah Burningham and Sarah Tomashek, for helping get the word out; to the art and editing team at CreateSpace for turning a manuscript into a book; to Mary Alterman and Jo Cravens for many writers’ group meetings, even when the snow was knee-deep; to the teachers at Woodpark Montessori for imparting many bits of preschool wisdom to my son Dennis as I wrote and edited and wrote and edited; to my friends and family for all their encouragement, even when they didn’t quite understand why it was taking so long; to the light of my life, Dennis, for keeping me grounded and for introducing me to many imagined worlds of his own; and, most of all, to my husband, John, for coming along for the ride and for being steadfastly certain it would all work out in the end.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph by John Baron, 2010
Neve Maslakovic spent her early years speaking Serbian in Belgrade, in former communist Yugoslavia. After stops along the way in London, New York, and California, she has settled in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where she lives with her husband and son. She earned her PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford University’s STARLab (Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory) and is a member of the Loft Literary Center. Regarding Ducks and Universes is her first novel, and she is hard at work on her second. Visit her at www.nevemaslakovic.com.
Table of Contents
[1]: THE LUNCH-PLACE RULE
[2]: UNIVERSE B
[3]: A BIT OF GOOD NEWS
[4]: A BIT OF BAD NEWS
[5]: CASE NUMBER 21
[6]: THE QUARANTINE
[7]: A POSSESSION GOES MISSING
[8]: I GET MUDDLED
[9]: UNIVERSE MAKER
[10]: I BREAK A RULE
[11]: THE BIHISTORY INSTITUTE
[12]: MONROE’S HOUSE
[13]: 4100, 4101, AND 4102
[14]: FIVE PHOTOGRAPHS
[15]: FACE-TO-FACE
[16]: FELIX B
[17]: PROFESSOR MAXIMILIAN
[18]: PRIME MOVERS
[19]: THE GRETCHENS
[20]: I PEEK INTO A WINDOW
[21]: OLIVIA MAY NOVAK IRVING OF UNIVERSE A
[22]: TIME STAMP
[23]: THE LACE HEDGEHOG
[24]: THE ORGANIC OVEN
[25]: THE OLD GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
[26]: THE END OF A BOOK
[27]: THE BEGINNING OF A BOOK
[28]: I DEPART THE QUEEN BEE INN WITH A JAR
[29]: WE WAIT, BUT NOT LONG
[30]: THE PROFESSOR’S SNEEZE
[31]: NETWORKING
[32]: WHAT MADE OLIVIA MAY SPILL POMEGRANATE JUICE?
[33]: AN AGED RELATIVE
[34]: I HAVE AN ARCH-NEMESIS
[35]: THE MOTIVE
[36]: THE CROSSING TERMINAL
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Regarding Ducks and Universes Page 29