by Max Barry
Later, while she was preparing noodles for one, Trent messaged her.
Can we meet?
She put down her spoon. That was a heck of a message.
Is that a good idea? she tapped.
I miss you.
It was a little too much to deal with while cooking, so she left her phone by the stove and ate spaghetti on the sofa, ignoring a show. When she came back, she discovered that he’d elucidated:
just coffee
and talk
I understand 100% if you say no
but but but
I’d love to see you
She could screenshot this and show it to Zar. It would be hilarious. And vindicating: a kind of triumph. But she didn’t. It had been a disappointing day. She was, to tell the truth, sick of solo pasta. She wrote:
when?
* * *
—
It would be the afternoon of the following Friday, on the steps of the New York Public Library, the very same place she’d snapped his profile picture. It would be coffee only. Not even sit-down coffee: coffee on the go. This, she decided, made it not a date. Even so, she knew very well what it was: backsliding. She and Trent might talk about nothing more than how to arrange the handover of T-shirts he’d left behind and it would still be wrong. She had already decided not to tell Zar.
The night before, in bed, she gave Mitch one last shot. She had zero expectations but felt the need to do it anyway, like a person might rattle a locked doorknob just one more time. Hey, she wrote, slightly ironically.
He responded right away. Hey! Thought you’d disappeared!
No, just busy.
Not too busy to meet, I hope
Can we just talk?
Sure
But she could tell it wasn’t going to work. Mitch was not a swimwear model with a curious mind who enjoyed online conversation. He was hiding his real face and wanted to trick her into a face-to-face. She wrote: I’m just not really in a place to meet.
I understand. This is fine.
I heard from my ex-boyfriend, she said, daringly. She waited but there was no response. Meeting the ex: bad idea or terrible idea?
TERRIBLE IDEA
She smiled. What I figured.
Seriously. Don’t do it. He’ll stand you up.
For all Trent’s faults, she couldn’t see him doing that. Maybe.
You watch. He’s just screwing with you. If you go, he won’t show up. Mark my words!
She wasn’t sure why Tinder Mitch thought he knew her ex-boyfriend better than she did. We’ll see, she said, because she didn’t want to argue.
I mean why would you even want to go back to him?
She typed: It’s just coffee.
Sure sure sure
Are you angry???
Disappointed. You won’t meet me. But you’ll meet him. It’s not fair.
She was tiring of this. Is that your real picture?
A pause. Does it matter?
If you’re lying to me? she wrote. Yes. It does.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
The on-screen dots throbbed. He was writing something. She waited.
I’m lying to YOU?? What about you stringing me along for EIGHT DAYS when you WON’T MEET because you are NOT JUST REALLY IN THAT PLACE RIGHT NOW but you ARE. MEETING. HIM????? How am I the deceitful one in this situation Madison????????
She set her phone on her bedside table. Then she got up and went to the bathroom. She climbed back into bed with the conviction that she would not touch her phone until the morning. Because she didn’t need to deal with this. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it and finally rolled over and groped for her phone in the dark. There were a string of new Mitch messages, mostly in one furious clump:
I always give you a chance.
I give you so many chances.
You never give me a chance.
It’s not fair.
Are you there?
Hello???????????
Then three minutes later:
I’m going to stab you in the heart.
She deleted him. Then she put down her phone and lay still. She should have reported him first, for what good that would have done. Too late, but it didn’t matter; he was nobody. She would never meet him in real life. She stayed where she was. She didn’t sleep for a long time and then it was fitful and frayed, like fabric worn thin.
* * *
—
On Friday, she left the subway on 42nd and headed for the library. A hundred yards away, she spied Trent near the place she’d taken his profile photo. He was even wearing a similar blue denim jacket. She felt a kick in her heart, maybe only familiarity, the fact that he was a known quantity and not a smiling veneer stretched over cruelty. But it was good to see him again.
She wasn’t completely focused on where she was going and someone collided with her. She gasped. “Ow,” she said. She twisted around but he kept walking, not even glancing back, his shoulders bunched. On his head was a blue cap.
She continued toward the library, but only a few steps later, stopped, out of breath. She touched her blouse and felt wetness. The pain was deep and strange. It occurred to her that the guy had stabbed her.
She turned. The guy was standing motionless in a river of human traffic, staring at her with fury from beneath a Knicks cap. She’d seen him once before, behind the coffee shop.
If you see him, run. He’s a psychopath. I’m serious.
She managed a step and then another, but her knees buckled and she had to lean against the wall. Clayton Hors. That was his name, Felicity had said. But to Maddie, he was Tinder Mitch, the boy with the swimsuit model profile picture, who didn’t want her to meet her ex.
“Trent,” she croaked. As if he’d heard, on the library steps, the boy in the denim jacket stood. But as he turned, she saw he wasn’t Trent after all. He wasn’t anyone she knew. Trent had ghosted her, just like Mitch had prophesied. And she didn’t understand, because as much as Trent had apparently changed, she couldn’t imagine he’d become a person who would stand her up, unless—
but but but
sure sure sure
Unless it had never been Trent at all. Unless Clayton was Mitch and Trent. That was how he’d known she’d be here. He’d arranged the meeting himself.
Hands seized her. Abruptly Hugo was upon her, and Felicity, as if they really had been stalking her. They called to her, but there was a rushing in her ears that drowned them out. She saw Felicity mouth her name, Maddie, Maddie, her eyes huge and anguished. She felt bad, as if she’d let Felicity down in some way. Whatever Felicity’s secret mission had been, whether it involved codes or Russians or something else altogether, it had failed somehow. I’m sorry, Maddie tried to say. The buzzing became a roaring and the street dwindled and fell away.
12
“Leave her,” Hugo said. He yanked at Felicity. Maddie was a limp doll. Maddie was literally slipping through Felicity’s fingers, because Hugo was dragging Felicity to her feet and steering her down the sidewalk, a hand gripping her upper arm, a fist in the small of her back.
“No,” she said, trying to twist away from him. “We can—”
“She’s dead.”
But how could he know? They’d seen Maddie stop and turn and sag. Hugo had broken into a run. Only then had Felicity seen Clay: when it was too late. She’d run forward, digging into her bag for the weapon she’d carried for a week now and imagined using in a moment like this a thousand times, but it was useless; Hugo and Clay were already gone. There was nothing for her to do but hold Maddie until Hugo returned.
A man shouted after them. He thought they were fleeing the scene, Felicity realized. Because they were. She saw people with phones out, filming, but also a cluster of people around Maddie, including a man on his knees, gesturing for help. Which meant he
lp was possible, maybe? “We have to go back.”
“We stay, we get arrested. You want to help, help the next one.”
She didn’t care about the next one. She cared about Maddie on the sidewalk, whom Felicity had come to know so well during the previous three weeks that she was even following her Insta account with nothing but pictures of random architecture. She’d thought she was succeeding, keeping Maddie safe. “Let me go!”
His hand clamped on the back of her neck. “Walk.”
“Stop it,” she said, but he didn’t. He steered her onto a crosswalk. She could scream, if she wanted to: There were people and she could make out like she was being kidnapped. They were enveloped by scaffolding. Then Hugo was steering her leftward, pulling open a glass door, leaving the street behind. They crossed a tired, white-marbled floor to an oak-paneled counter. A hotel, she realized.
“A room,” Hugo said to the woman behind the counter, who told him, certainly, she would be happy to help. The air was cold and quiet. Felicity’s nose began to run. She went to wipe it, but Hugo caught her hand and forced it down. He was being a jerk for no reason. He exchanged a small wad of cash for a green keycard and directions to the elevators, and steered Felicity toward them.
When the doors closed, she wrenched her arm free. “What is wrong with you?”
“Look at your hands.”
She had blood on her sleeves. On her shirt, her skirt, her shoes.
“He timed it,” Hugo said. “We’re stuck here for two days.”
She hated that he was already thinking about next, of moving on. She opened her mouth, but the doors slid apart and there was a man holding the hand of a young boy. Hugo stepped toward them, using his body to block Felicity and her stained skirt and sleeves from their view. The man said, “Excuse me,” and Hugo didn’t reply and didn’t move and then the doors closed again.
Their room was on the ninth floor, a small, generic space with brown carpet and yellowing curtains. She sank to the floor at the foot of the bed. Hugo went to the bathroom and began to wash his hands. She watched his back. When he finished, his expression was calm and thoughtful, as if there were nothing wrong.
“You prick,” she said.
He looked surprised. “What do you want from me?”
There was so much. “She died.”
He was waiting, she realized; he thought she had more to say, and she couldn’t do it, couldn’t explain to him why his lack of reaction was terrible. She put her face in her hands and began to cry.
Hugo said, “You’re getting blood on the bed.”
She made a noise of pure frustration. “What is wrong with you?”
He looked disgusted. “Get yourself cleaned up.”
“Fuck you.”
“Lower your goddamn voice.”
“Fuck you!” she shouted.
He moved toward her and grabbed her by the arm. She swung a fist that he let bounce off his shoulder. He manhandled her to the bathroom and shoved her inside. “Shower,” he said.
He turned to leave and she attacked his back. She got a fistful of his hair and pulled. He grabbed her by the back of her shirt and dragged her off. As she went, she managed to take down the shower curtain, the rings popping one by one. She landed awkwardly on the shower floor. Hugo spun the taps. Water bubbled and burst from the outlet above her. She yelled in outrage and tried to find her feet, but she was caught up in the curtain. Cold water rained down on her, spattering on the floor, creating twisting pink rivulets that ran toward the drain.
“Stop it,” Hugo said.
She didn’t, because he should have done better; they both should have. Hugo seized one of her wrists and then the other and forced her against the shower wall. He held her as the water ran down them, his chest rising and falling, until she stopped trying to hurt him.
“I’m not moving again,” she said. “Don’t you get it? This was my chance to stop him. This was it.”
“You can try again.”
“I can’t.” She shivered.
His thumbs moved along her hands, washing them beneath the water. She tried to tug them away, because she didn’t deserve his care and didn’t deserve to be clean, but he was too strong, of course, and she couldn’t stop him. He rubbed her hands until there was no trace of Maddie left.
He stepped back. Water ran down her, dripping from her red sleeves and skirt.
“You can,” he said. He turned away and closed the bathroom door behind him.
* * *
—
She wrung out her clothes as best she could and put them back on. They were cold and sodden, but she had nothing else. When she emerged, Hugo was wedged into a chair by the curtains like a boulder. Like something that had fallen to Earth. She sensed this in her peripheral vision, because she couldn’t look at him. She marched to the door.
“You can’t leave,” Hugo said. “If we’re arrested, there’s no one to help.”
She turned. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stay. Until we can move.”
“And then?”
“Finish what we started. Felicity, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering. You have to come with me. You don’t belong here.”
No, she thought. I belong with the travelers, moving between worlds. A part of her even believed it. She could almost convince herself that what Hugo had said was true, that it didn’t matter what happened to each Previous Gavin and Previous Felicity, because those people were behind her. All she would be doing was moving. Bringing beauty. Making worlds better, one at a time.
“I’ll stay in this room until it’s time,” she said. “But I’m not coming with you.” He opened his mouth and she cut him off. “I’m not talking about it.”
A grunt. An ambiguous grunt. A grunt that could have meant many things. But which she gathered mostly meant: Fine, for now.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I need to sleep.” He didn’t say anything to this, either. She returned to the bathroom and hung her wet clothes over the rails. She wrapped herself in a robe and crawled under the bedsheets. Hugo didn’t move. He would stay in that chair, she supposed. She would fall asleep and wake eight hours later to find him in the exact same position. She rolled over to put her back to him and curled her arm around a pillow, like a child.
* * *
—
In the morning, she watched TV. She browsed her phone. She ignored messages—the few she had, because during the three weeks she’d been guarding Maddie, she’d quit her job, not officially, but effectively, by ignoring calls and messages. She’d done plenty of things that were going to catch up with her in the near future, because they were the result of choices she’d made when nothing seemed as real as the woman in the coffee shop. There was a new message from Cheating Gavin (from Possibly Cheating Gavin), time-stamped late the previous night, that read simply “?”, and didn’t that say everything about the state of their relationship: that lone, tired question mark. She had effectively quit Gavin, too.
Despite this, she felt strangely optimistic. For the first time in weeks, she no longer had to fear Clay. That anxiety had filled her every waking moment, and its absence made her realize how crushing it had been. And despite the wreckage of her life, there was something exciting about the opportunity to reset—to place new words on a blank page. She had no history here, which meant she was free to make her own future.
When night fell, Hugo suggested going out. Felicity was surprised, but also eager to escape, so didn’t argue. They rode the elevator to the lobby and exited onto the street, where the pavement was dark and wet, the road full of starry headlights. The air felt bright and sharp. “Where do you want to eat?” she said, thinking of a place on 36th, but Hugo took her to a Vietnamese restaurant with cramped booths and dim lighting. As they ate, she found a growing feeling of peace. It would be their last meal together. In the morning, he wou
ld leave. She wouldn’t be the one to stop Clayton Hors. But no one else would have to pay for her decisions.
“I’ll never know whether you get him, will I?” she said.
Hugo shook his head.
“But you will get him. We held him up here long enough. The others would have been ready for him.”
“That’s my guess.”
“They can’t, you know, let him off with a warning, because he’s one of you.”
“He’s never been one of us.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Felicity,” he said, “we’re on the same page.”
She nodded. She was just anxious. He was right about that: She would always wonder.
He was gazing at her. “Felicity . . .”
“How do you know this place?” she asked, because he was about to turn the conversation, she could see it.
He sighed. “Rosie and I used to come here.”
Safer ground. “You’ll be able to find her again now? If Clay is gone?”
“I can try.”
“You can move to somewhere she’s alive, once Clay is no longer setting the path with . . .” Your dead wife’s hair. “His moorings.”
He shook his head. “Moorings fix things in place. They can’t create something you don’t already have.”
She blinked. “So how will you find her?”
“Without Clay, there’s a chance that any place I go might be the one.” He shrugged again. “So I’ll move and I’ll hope.”
The candlelight flickered. “What kind of a chance?” He didn’t answer. “One in ten? One in a thousand?” She hesitated. “One in a million?”
“A chance,” Hugo said.