by Max Barry
“She fell off the platform in the subway,” Gavin offered.
“When did you fall?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“And you hit your head?”
“I might have.”
“Do you have any pain?”
“No.”
“No pain anywhere?”
“No.”
Charu tapped at the keyboard. Felicity could see the screen: nil pain. “Any nausea, vomiting?”
“No.”
“No dizziness or fainting?”
“No.”
“Any difficulty walking or moving about?”
“No.”
“Can you open your mouth and poke out your tongue?”
She did that.
“You can close your mouth.” Charu used a penlight to study Felicity’s eyes, just as the MTA man had done. “When you say you’ve had trouble with your memory, can you give me an example?”
“We have two cats, Joey and Percival. Joey has always been shy. He hides. But today . . .”
“We have one cat,” Gavin offered. “Percival. We’ve never had two cats.”
Charu looked between them. “There’s no second cat?”
“No,” Gavin said.
Charu was silent. “I asked you this morning,” Felicity said. “I said, ‘Did you feed the cats last night?’ And you said yes.”
“I thought you said ‘cat.’ Singular.”
Charu typed: altered mental sta. Then she glanced at Felicity and tilted the screen away. “Did your memory of the second cat begin yesterday?” She blinked twice. “I’m sorry. I mean, when did she first mention a second cat?”
“This morning.”
“Until today, she never said anything about a second cat?”
“No.”
Charu typed. “Are there any other inconsistent memories?”
“Yes,” Felicity said. “I remember a clock at work that isn’t there anymore. And working on a story that no one knows anything about. I went to a crime scene where a woman was murdered.” In the waiting room, she had looked up the Henshaw Realty website on Gavin’s phone. She had scrolled down the staff page and up again. There was no Madison May. “But it’s like it never happened.”
“She came home with this,” Gavin said, offering the plastic tub. “After she fell, she was carrying it.”
Charu made no move to take it. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Felicity said. “Someone gave it to me. Then he pushed me off the subway platform. That’s when I fell.”
Charu was silent.
“Could it be toxic?” Gavin said.
“We may want to look at it later. For now, I’d like to check your head for bruising.” She opened a drawer and extracted a pair of blue plastic gloves, identical to the ones Felicity had been given by Detective McHenry at the house in which Maddie May had been murdered. In Felicity’s memory, at least. Not in real life, it seemed. Charu’s fingers probed Felicity’s skull and pressed behind her ears. “Any pain when I do that?”
“No.”
Charu peeled off her gloves and dropped them into a canister. “I’d like to run some more tests.”
* * *
—
The CT machine was a giant plastic doughnut. It sucked Felicity in and out. Then there was a room with a bed and a TV on the wall. It was small and bare but private, which was more than she’d expected: This was thanks to Gavin’s insurance, which was infinitely better than her own. Felicity had been dismissive at times about Gavin’s attention to mundane things, such as insurance. But now look at this.
He parked his butt beside her bed, fiddling with the TV remote. She was sitting atop the sheets with the tablet. Gavin glanced at her. “Should you be doing that?”
“I’m just Googling.” She showed him the screen. “There is a Hugo Garrelly. He did murder his wife, and he is in Sing Sing.”
“Okay.”
“But I remember him at the crime scene.” She looked at Gavin. “How do I know he exists?”
He shrugged. “You work in a newsroom. You pick things up.”
“Mmm,” she said, unconvinced.
“I’m going to ask someone if you should be doing that,” Gavin said.
She watched him leave. He’d been the picture of concern all day. She couldn’t have asked for more. But she was not comforted. She was suspicious. As a reporter, she was used to being lied to, and that was how this felt, like someone trying to rewrite history. Trying to gaslight her. She couldn’t think why Gavin would want to convince her that she’d never owned a second cat. Or why it would involve the newsroom and the removal of the world’s loudest clock. But she felt hella gaslighted.
Gavin returned. “I couldn’t find anyone,” he said. “But I don’t think you should be doing that.”
At eight o’clock, she was visited by a specialist, a short, balding man who wore scrubs rolled up over enormously hairy forearms. She repeated her story and he ran her through the same questions the ER doctor had, plus one about whether she’d been handling snakes. Her CT and blood work had come back clean.
“That’s good?” she said.
“It’s terrific,” said the specialist. “No obvious bleeding or swelling. So next step is likely to be an MRI, either tomorrow or the day after. All right?” He showed white teeth.
When Gavin had left, she watched a TV reality series about terrible people doing terrible things. When it was over, she picked up the tablet and navigated to the News. She’d checked a hundred times already, but now there was something new:
STUDENT, 22, FATALLY STABBED OUTSIDE HOME
Ordinarily, “Student murdered outside home” was not an article. There had to be more juice than that: a moral failure, a grieving parent threatening to sue somebody, a startling coincidence. In this case, the juice was the photo, because the victim was young and white, with an open, affable smile. It was a so much to live for photo. The kind of shot that could, juxtaposed with that headline, strike terror into the hearts of parents, and bring forth thousands of clicks.
It was Maddie.
Her chest tightened painfully. She felt her own brain struggle to make sense of it, as if it were one of those illusions that would change from one thing to another as you looked at it: bird, woman, bird, woman. What am I looking at? Student, real estate agent. Inside, outside. Yesterday, today. She felt afraid to move, as if she might disturb the tablet and the image and headline would disappear. Finally she raised a finger and tapped.
Police are seeking a man in connection with the stabbing death of Madison May, 22, a performing arts student at NYU.
Felicity swung her legs out of bed and entered the hallway. There was no one in sight, so she walked barefoot to the desk, which was staffed by a thin woman in a red bandanna, studying her phone. Felicity put her hands on the counter. “Can I see a doctor, please?”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Is the specialist still here?”
“You need to go back to your bed,” said the woman.
“No,” she said, “I need to see the specialist,” and this evolved into a scene where the woman in the bandanna made some threats and then a call in which she called Felicity “uncooperative.” A few minutes after that, the short, hairy-armed specialist came by, and Felicity showed him the tablet.
His eyes flicked across the screen. “What am I seeing?”
“I called security,” said the bandanna woman.
“I told you I remembered this murder. This is her. It’s happened.”
The specialist scratched his cheek. “This is the real estate woman?”
“Yes,” Felicity said, although, according to the article, no: Maddie was a student. “The details are different. But it’s her. It’s the same person, murdered in a di
fferent place.” This came out before Felicity realized quite how it sounded.
“This is fine,” the specialist said, his voice soft. “You’ve got bits and pieces in your head and they’re all scrambled around. If a few are starting to come together, that’s a great sign. Take yourself back to your room and I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
She stared at the tablet.
“I have a patient who needs me,” said the specialist. “We’ll reconnect tomorrow, okay?”
The woman in the bandanna was staring, Felicity realized. Staring aggressively. Felicity padded back to her room and climbed into the bed. She could hear the burbling of a television from somewhere. On her bedside table sat the plastic tub with the metal egg inside. No one from the hospital had been interested enough to take it away yet. She eyed it.
Outside her room, someone coughed. There was a peal of laughter. She raised her tablet and began to research Maddie May.
* * *
—
In the morning, a short nurse with dubiously long lashes took her blood pressure. The man in the next room was a complainer, the nurse said. He had complained about her perfume. “Do I smell funky to you?” the nurse asked, and Felicity shook her head. “Exactly,” the nurse said.
Her blood pressure was fine. Everything was fine, except for how Felicity’s memory disagreed with everyone else’s. At nine o’clock, her tablet trilled, and it was Gavin. “You won’t frickin’ believe this,” he said. “We’ve been burgled.”
Ah, yes, she thought. Of course we have.
“I went out for breakfast. I was gone all of forty minutes. When I came back, the place was trashed. I mean, it’s destroyed. Everything’s on the floor. They cut open the sofa.”
She glanced at the plastic tub on her bedside table.
I need you to hold something for me, Hugo had said. She’d been focused on the something part, trying to figure what the thing was. But there was another implication. Hold. Not take. Like it was temporary. Like he’d want it back.
“I’ve called the police, but who knows how long they’ll be. How are you? Do you feel any better?”
“I think so,” she said, which was the truth: She did feel better. She felt increasingly confident that she wasn’t crazy.
“If you’re doing okay, I’m going to hang around and deal with this mess.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll let you know when I know anything. Love you.”
“Love you,” she said, and put down the tablet. She climbed out of bed and eyed the tub with the metal egg inside. Then she began to look for somewhere to hide it.
* * *
—
She spent the afternoon lying with her back to the door, the sheet pulled up to her chin, as if she were sleeping. She wasn’t. She was waiting, with one arm beneath a strategically placed pillow, her hand resting on the call button. Someone brought her lunch. The room filled with the smell of cooked vegetables. Voices echoed in the hallway. Someone dropped a stack of something—folders?—and someone else said, “Those had better not be for Dr. Bolton.” Felicity began to feel drowsy. She caught herself drifting off, then did fall asleep. When she woke, someone was moving about the room.
She lay still. The person was moving quietly, but that could be for a couple of reasons. She heard drawers open and close. The lifting of the chair cushions. A rustling that could have signaled the emptying of her plastic flowers from the beside vase. Then, unmistakably, someone on hands and knees, inspecting the underside of her bed. And was there not a distinctly male smell filtering through her neglected lunch? Yes, she thought. There was.
The sheet was ripped from her body. She gasped. He glowered down at her: Hugo Garrelly, the man she’d stood next to at the murder house and later pursued onto a train, no cap, a blue shirt this time, but the same beard, the same intense eyes. “Where is it?”
She pressed the call button. What she hoped was the call button. Press, press.
“I need it back,” he said. “Where did you put it?”
“You’re supposed to be in Sing Sing,” she said.
He seized the bottom of her mattress and lifted. She tilted toward the wall. Then he dropped her. “You’re sitting on it. Get off the bed.”
“I’m not,” she said, but he advanced and she scuttled out of the bed. He patted around the sheets. Then he looked at her. She understood: There was nothing else in the room. “I don’t have it.” She held out her arms, spreading her pajamas to prove it. He gripped her and patted and squeezed, his touch passing over her arms, stomach, and thighs.
“Where is it?”
“How did Madison May die twice?”
He squinted at her.
“I’m in a hospital because people think I’m crazy. But I’m not, am I? And you know why.”
His watch beeped. He glanced at it. She recalled that it had done that before, in the subway. He had a bunch of alarms, for some reason.
“Tell me,” she said.
He walked out.
This she hadn’t expected. She went after him. “Where are you going?”
“There are other ways to do this.”
She caught him at the elevators. “Why does no one else remember? What does the metal egg do?”
The elevator doors opened. Hugo stepped inside. She made to follow and he pushed her back by her shoulder. “No.”
“Yes,” she said, and tried again. The doors began to close and she managed to get a leg between them and they opened again. Hugo gave a grunt like he was about to send her skating across the floor on her butt. Then a mother with a young boy appeared and Hugo hesitated and then stepped back to let them enter. Felicity slipped inside with them. The doors closed.
“I’m hungry,” said the boy.
“Where’s my cat?” Felicity asked Hugo, who ignored her. “Where’s my goddamn cat?”
The boy gazed at them. “Is your cat lost?”
“Shh,” said the woman.
“He took it,” Felicity said.
Hugo said, “I didn’t take anyone’s cat.”
“Yesterday, I had two cats. Now I don’t. Where’s Joey?”
Hugo didn’t answer. The boy said, “Do you know where Joey is?”
“No,” Hugo said. The elevator doors opened and Hugo strode between them toward the lobby.
“I will scream like a child,” Felicity said, hurrying to keep pace. “You’re a felon. I’ll have security tackle you before you reach the sidewalk.” He didn’t answer. “Why won’t you tell me? What’s so wrong with you that you can’t just say what’s happening?”
He stopped so suddenly that they almost collided. “I’m sorry you lost your cat. But you need to back up. This is nothing to do with you.” He began to walk away.
For a moment she just watched him, astounded. “It’s nothing to do with me?” She raised her voice. “Everyone thinks I’m insane!” She went after him and grabbed his arm. “Where’s my cat?”
He pulled free without slowing. She grabbed at his shoulder, stretching his shirt. Hugo’s hand closed on her wrist like a clamp. She cried out. “Calm down,” Hugo said, and, at last, she saw a security guard ambling toward them.
“Everything all right with you folks?”
“Talk to me,” she said to Hugo. “Give me answers. That’s all I want.”
Hugo looked from her to the guard. “Fine.”
“We’re okay. Thank you.” The security guard shrugged and moved away.
“Three minutes,” Hugo said. “Then we’re done.”
“Yes,” Felicity said. “Deal.”
He glanced around. A pair of elderly women shuffled by. “You’re not crazy. Your memory doesn’t match anyone else’s because you moved. In the subway, you left one place and came here. It looks the same, but it’s not.”
She blinked, because he seemed to have finished.
“That’s it? That’s your explanation?”
“What else do you want to know?”
She stared.
“Your cat is fine, by the way. He’s back where you left him.”
“Joey’s fine?”
“He’s right where he was. Everything back there is the same. Except you’re gone.”
“Are you talking about . . .” She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Time travel?”
He shook his head impatiently. “There’s no time travel. You’re in a physically different place. It shares an ancestor with where you’re from, but at some point it split. Since then, it evolved independently.”
“You’re saying there are two worlds? The real one and a . . . a secret—”
“Many worlds. Detaching and refolding all the time. Nothing makes one any more real than the other.”
“Parallel dimensions?” she said, groping for a concept. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Sure. There you go.”
“This is a parallel world. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“Right. And here, you never got a second cat. You went to the pet store, you—”
“Shelter.”
“You went a day late, or you missed a train, and someone took him before you got there. So he’s fine. He’s just not your cat.”
She stared. This was a horrible story. “And Madison May?”
“What about her?”
“She decided to study acting here instead of going into real estate?”
“Right.”
“But she died both times. I mean, in both places.”
He nodded shortly. “And she’ll die again, unless I get out of here.”
“What does that mean?” He was throwing glances at the door like he was about to leave.
“This is what you want to know? The history of Madison May?”
It would be a start. “Yes.”
He blew air. “Fine. Someplace else, not anywhere you know, Maddie was an up-and-coming actress. Ten months ago, her first movie comes out, By the River Blue. Maddie is on-screen for all of ten minutes. Wears little shorts and gets a glass of water thrown over her. Can’t say I found her performance anything to write home about, but there’s a kid named Clayton Hors who disagrees. He sees this movie and falls in love. Ordinarily, he’d have gone home and jacked off and that’d be the end of it, but Clay is special. He knows how to move. Move like I do. He hasn’t got it all figured out yet, but he knows it means he can try things, and if they don’t work out, move somewhere and it’s like it never happened. So that’s what he does. And the thing he tries is meeting Madison May. He gets himself arrested trying to break into her house; never even speaks to her. But here comes the real disappointment, because Clay is a moron who doesn’t know anything about moorings, so when he moves, he winds up someplace Maddie isn’t an actress. She’s a TV weather girl, or a waitress, or a student. Everywhere he goes from then on, she’s like that, and not a movie star. Clay finds this frustrating. In fact, he’s so frustrated, he kills her. Why, exactly, you’d have to ask Clay. It makes no goddamn sense to me. But that’s why I’m here. To stop him from what he keeps doing, which is finding Maddie and killing her.”