“I take it I won’t like it?”
She shrugs. “You might. One of my PT clients teaches at this performing arts high school in Evanston. They have an opening for a jazz band teacher. You don’t need a teaching certificate—just a Master’s.”
A long silence. Then he finally mutters, “Uh-huh.”
She stands up, takes his hand. “The pay’s decent. Better than you’re making at the club.”
“Go on,” he says with a blank stare.
She smiles, earnestly. “You could still play out on the weekends and cut your record in the basement. And you’d be able to spend more time at home, and we could move into a nicer place and finally have a baby.” Her voice trails off at the end, high and squeaky.
“I thought you were happy,” he says. “This is what we wanted.”
“I was.”
“And you’re not now?”
Her eyes get big and wet—his principal weakness—and he appears near to crying himself. “We’ve lived like this for four years. I’d like to have a grown-up life for a change.”
Her tone suggests he is supposed to decide right now. He says nothing.
Finally he sighs. “Babysitting a bunch of rich kids isn’t my style.”
Kaylee’s face goes taut. “Could you at least think about it?”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, baby. I just can’t do it.” He moves in to embrace her, but she pulls away.
She takes a deep breath and sighs. “Do you really want to live this way forever?”
“It won’t be like this forever,” he says. “Our demo’s almost done, and when we get a label we’ll play other places, and then we’ll be doing pretty well.”
She rolls her eyes. “This job is a real future, Mitch.”
His eyes widen and he practically snarls. “Did you really just say that?”
Her lips pucker and tears glint at the edges of her eyes. “Can’t you at least think about it? Please? The ad doesn’t go up ‘til next week.”
At this point, Mr. Delgado clearly wants peace, so he nods. “Fine. I’ll think about it. Just come to bed.” He heads off to the bedroom, peeling his clothes off and dropping them on the gold-checkered carpet along the way.
For the rest of the night Mr. Delgado lies awake, staring at the ceiling. She does not join him.
Earth-1
Chicago, Illinois
Jan. 22, 2014
9:45 p.m.
Mr. Delgado and his bandmates are playing a set at Yellowjacket’s, a Wrigleyville jazz club. He is blowing the notes of The Manhattan Project’s composition, “Michigan Avenue Lullaby,” a slow melodic number, when his sister Martha enters the club. Still reeling from his confrontation with Kaylee, he plays his solo angry and chaotic, so much so that Charlie, the drummer and bandleader, keeps looking over at him to see if he is all right.
When the tune is done the band goes on break; Charlie quickly checks on Mr. Delgado, who says everything is fine.
Martha sweeps him into a tight hug when he steps offstage. He buys her a whiskey-sour and they sit at the bar as some of the regulars pat him on the shoulder and say, “great set.”
Martha, a woman of forty, lean and muscled from her fifteen years as a yoga instructor, pulls off her hair-tie and shakes out her straight black hair. She places her hands over his. “Tell me what you need, little brother,” she says, her voice soft and low. (We note that Martha was Mr. Delgado’s principal caretaker since their mother died of cervical cancer when he was eleven. His father abandoned the family shortly before he was born.)
Mr. Delgado sighs. “I need you to help me pick out a ring,” he says.
Martha smiles wide, hugs him tight and plants a loud kiss on his cheek. “Finally!” she says. “I’m so happy for you. Any big proposal plans?”
He shakes his head but does not speak.
“Oh,” she says, her face losing its grin. “That is not the face of a man about to pop the question to the love of his life.”
He shrugs. “It’s just time, I guess.”
“That’s not a good reason to get married.”
He explains everything.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” she says, sipping her whiskey sour. “It’s been, what, five years now? I’d want a ring too. But is this what you want?”
Mr. Delgado orders a Rob Roy and drinks it down in two large gulps. “I don’t know. Just tell me what to do. You’re good at that.”
Martha takes his hand, squeezes it tight. “I can’t, Mitchie. Not this time.”
He sighs. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“I know,” she says. “You need to figure out whether you really want the same thing. And if you don’t....”
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
They sit silently until Charlie emerges from the orange haze and informs Mr. Delgado that they are back on in five.
Mr. Delgado returns home at 1:45 a.m. to find Kaylee on the couch, flipping endlessly through the TV channels.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” she replies without looking at him.
He stands in front of her, mouth half-open. “Baby, I...” he begins, but nothing else comes.
She looks up at him, sees how rigid he is, stands up, embraces him. “It’s okay,” she says. “We don’t have to do this right now. We can talk about it later.”
She pulls him down to the couch and reclines across his chest. Two minutes later and she is asleep. He holds her a while, staring at her, then nods off himself just before three.
In the morning she carefully slides out from under his arm and throws the blanket over him.
Earth-2
Park Ridge, Illinois
January 28, 2014
7: 15 p.m.
Mr. Delgado is seated on the couch, chain-smoking despite Kaylee’s repeated objections, his right leg twitching, dressed in the charcoal suit she bought him for her sister’s wedding. His hair is freshly cut and slicked-back, his goatee trimmed and neat. In his left hand is a small, white felt-covered box. On the card table, champagne is cooling in a bucket of cold water with little ice shards floating in it, and chocolate-covered strawberries sweat on a platter next to them.
This world registers close to our own on the multiversal string. There are few differences, except that Mr. Delgado’s leather jacket is cordovan and he has a full goatee instead of a Van Dyke. He has not met with Martha, as her fiancé Ruth slipped on the ice and badly twisted her ankle and needed to go to the ER.
Beads of sweat begin to drip from his brow. Kaylee was due home forty-five minutes ago.
Finally, at 7:37 he hears her key in the lock. She looks around, sees the spread and the suit.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
Trembling, he drops to one knee, opens the box. She tears up, says “yes,” hugs him round the neck so tight his face turns red.
She says, “I love you so much,” grabs the back of his head and kisses him forcefully.
They drink the champagne, eat a few strawberries, then go into the bedroom, but when they make love it is quiet and mechanical, even after she takes the condom wrapper out of his hand and whispers, “I want to feel you inside me.”
When it is over, she falls asleep on his sweaty chest. He tries to slip out from under her but cannot move.
Earth-5
Chicago, Illinois
February 1, 2014
6:35 p.m.
Mr. Delgado and Kaylee are attending a function at the South Shore Cultural Center, at which President Clooney will speak on behalf of an aspiring Congressional candidate, a tall, handsome black man with a strange name and a voice like a soul singer. Between the couple is a small boy of about three, holding his parents’ hands as they enter the reception area. He runs over to the picture window and stares out at the panoramic view of Lake Michigan, and says, “Wow!” before Mr. Delgado hoists him into the air and into a folding chair. There is a white-gold wedding band on Mr. Delgado’s finger.
Mr. Delgado has c
ut his hair short and is wearing a navy pinstripe suit instead of his leather jacket. On stage, before the candidate’s speech, The Manhattan Project is playing a searing number with a frenetic sax solo while the crowd waits for President Clooney’s arrival. The sax player is a young black man with a dreadlock ponytail.
They appear to be entirely content; Mr. Delgado is smiling and slightly tipping his head to the beat. Then the set ends, and Charlie approaches him and embraces him in a bearlike grasp.
“How you doin, man?” the big man says after introductions are made. “It’s good to see you, my friend. What’dya think of Roscoe up there?”
“He’s great,” Mr. Delgado says. “Better than me.” (Authors’ note: while musical tastes are subjective, we believe he is incorrect.)
“Ain’t nobody better than you,” Charlie says. “So I hear you’re a professor now?”
Mr. Delgado nods, and Ms. George smiles in approval. “Community college, but yeah.”
Charlie laughs. “Look at you, all respectable and everything. Ever miss the old days?”
Mr. Delgado does not look at Kaylee when he answers. “Sometimes,” he says.
“Well, it was good seein’ you, man,” Charlie says. “Stick around and we’ll all have a drink together, for old time’s sake.” Then he turns and heads back to the stage.
Kaylee taps him on the shoulder. “I think lil’ tiger would like a drink,” she says, pointing at the little boy.
“‘Kay,” he says. “What do you want, little man?”
The boy looks up from the buckles of his dress shoes just long enough to say, “Lemonade, Daddy.”
He wends his way through the crowd to the bar, obtains two lemonades and a shot of Wild Turkey. He drinks down the shot, has another, then goes back to Kaylee and the boy.
Kaylee sniffs the air around him. “Everything all right, dear?” she says.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, as the band begins another tune. “Everything’s fine.”
As the band plays another number, Kaylee leans back in her chair and smiles, as if all is perfect in her world. Then she looks over at him, eyes closed, his fingers pressing invisible keys in his lap, and her smile fades.
Earth-2
Chicago, Illinois
January 29, 2014
1:35 p.m.
Mr. Delgado is seated in a booth with Charlie at Yellowjacket’s, nursing a beer and half a Reuben. Charlie, a massive black man with a shaved head and fu Manchu, frowns.
“I can’t believe you’re gonna do this,” Charlie says. “You are our sound.”
Mr. Delgado sighs. “You’ll find somebody else. I’ll stay on until you do.”
Charlie leans in close. “Kaylee finally crack the whip?”
Mr. Delgado stares daggers at him. “Nobody cracked any whips.”
Charlie instantly diffuses the tension. “Hey, man, I get it. I just want you to be sure you know why you’re doin’ this.”
“I’m sure,” Mr. Delgado whispers. “Time to grow up.”
“I wouldn’t call walking away from something you’re really good at ‘grown up’,” Charlie says, patting him on the shoulder. “Kaylee’s a fine woman, but you really think this is worth it?”
Mr. Delgado nods.
“Then you know what to do.”
They embrace, and Mr. Delgado leaves, the Reuben shedding sauerkraut as he walks.
Earth-1
Park Ridge, Illinois
Feb. 4, 2014
2:30 a.m.
In the hours before Mr. Delgado returns, Kaylee looks up the performing-arts school on the Internet, prints out teacher bios of the faculty and leaves them face-up on the table, then looks at real-estate listings in their perceived future price range, in particular a gray house on Cumberland with cobblestone walkways lined with lilac bushes. She scratches out a note and leaves it on the refrigerator, then goes to bed.
Kaylee has been working double-shifts for the past two days, and so she and Mr. Delgado have not seen much of one another; when he wakes she is already gone, and when he returns home from a set she is asleep.
Mr. Delgado arrives home and is about to grab a beer out of the refrigerator when he sees the note under the jade elephant magnet, scrawled in her bubbly script: “Can we talk about this, please?” He takes a long sip from the bottle and shuffles to the bedroom door. He stares in at her, face turned away from the sliver of light from the hallway, listening to her breathe, watching her breasts gently rise and fall. He kicks off his shoes and collapses on the couch and falls asleep with the beer still in his hand.
When Kaylee wakes at 6:15, she cannot rouse him, so instead she gently takes the bottle and drapes an afghan over the top of him. “Later, then,” she says, kissing his forehead on her way out.
Earth-7
Chicago, Illinois
Feb. 4, 2014
4:47 p.m.
The Manhattan Project is onstage at the Orpheum, kicking off a tour in support of their first record. Mr. Delgado is in the middle of a particularly inspired solo, and the crowd is transfixed. President Clooney is in attendance and has asked to speak to the band afterwards. The auditorium is packed with enthusiastic fans; a further search reveals that the group gained exposure in a jazz-themed film starring Mr. Clooney, filmed in Chicago and released about six months prior to the election.
Kaylee is three rows back; her comments to her date suggest she does not care for the chaotic, unstructured nature of jazz. She is with a tall stick of a man with a thin face, wide round eyes, and short-cropped blond hair. The ethereoscope identifies him as Mr. Andrew Noonan, a Congressional staffer based in the south suburbs. We observe a noticeable lack of physical affection, suggesting the relationship is troubled.
The set ends; Mr. Noonan prompts her to get him a drink while he attempts to engage President Clooney during the meet-and-greet. She heads down to the little bar alone.
She swerves to avoid a gaggle of attractive young women in cocktail dresses and instead runs into Mr. Delgado, speaking to the President of the United States. She freezes.
“Beautiful set, Mitch,” the President says, shaking Mr. Delgado’s hand. “See you next time I come through.”
Mr. Delgado thanks him reverentially, and the President and his secret service detail exit. Mr. Noonan brushes past Kaylee to chase after them, calling, “Mr. President? Mr. President!”
Mr. Delgado turns around and sees Kaylee. Despite her frown, she looks stunning: his eyes scan her body very quickly, then fall upon her face.
“Well,” she says to no one. “There goes my ride.”
“Enjoy the show?” he says, smiling.
“Not really,” she says. “Not my scene.”
Mr. Delgado is startled by her honesty—most female fans are enthused at his presence. “Sorry to hear that,” he says, tilting his head low, almost whispering in her ear. “Let me make it up to you. I’ll buy you a drink—whatever you want.” He looks out the main entrance as the President’s contingent slogs through the crowd. “I think your boyfriend’s gonna be a while.”
Kaylee looks him over, from his sweaty brow, down to the leather jacket and black alligator loafers, then smiles and nods.
He gets them both vodka-tonics with a twist of lime, and they retreat to the little lounge a floor below. He passes Charlie on the way down the stairs. “Back in ten,” he calls out. Charlie simply smiles and slaps him on the shoulder.
He asks her name as they sit on one of the leather couches in a remote corner of the lounge, hidden behind an oversized fern.
“Kaylee,” she says.
“That’s a pretty name,” he replies. “Like some kind of flower.” Her face droops, her gaze falls to the table. He notices and scoots closer to her, as if drawn to her sadness. “You don’t seem happy, Kaylee,” he says.
She shrugs. “You know how it is.”
He smiles wide. “I really don’t.” Mr. Delgado looks off in the direction Mr. Noonan wandered off. “He doesn’t appreciate you?”
She sh
akes her head. “It’s Washington or bust with him. I think I’d rather stay, put down roots, just be.”
They talk quietly for a while—mostly she talks while he listens. After the first ten minutes Kaylee stops looking toward the door.
Thirty minutes later, Mr. Noonan has yet to make an appearance, and Mr. Delgado and Kaylee are on their third vodka-tonics. They retreat to the empty kitchen used for event catering, peel one another’s clothes off in a clumsy rush, and have frenzied sex behind the counter.
When she hears Mr. Noonan calling for her, she slips Mr. Delgado her cell number, then stumbles out into the hall, wiping the sweat from her brow with a cocktail napkin.
“What’s that smell?” he asks, sniffing at her neck.
“Vodka.”
“But you don’t drink.”
She shrugs. “Special occasion.” As they leave, she smiles wide and long.
“What are you so happy about?” Mr. Noonan asks as they exit the theatre.
“Nothing,” she says. “Just enjoying the moment.”
Earth-2
Park Ridge, Illinois
February 8, 2014
1:05 p.m.
Mr. Delgado is just waking up when Kaylee’s key turns in the lock. He emerges from the bedroom, his loose white boxers hanging a third of the way down his buttocks, and scratches his head.
“Hey baby,” he mutters. “Why are you home already?”
“I took the afternoon off,” she says, smiling. “Yvette and I went to look at wedding dresses.” She digs in her purse and pulls out a pamphlet of gown designs and opens it six inches from his face. “Guess which one’s my favorite.”
Mr. Delgado blinks, unable to focus. “I really have to piss,” he says.
“Right now?” she says. “Looking at wedding dresses makes you have to piss?”
He is cogent enough to know this could escalate into a fight, so he puts up his hands. “No. The pissing is its own thing. Independent of wedding dress selection.”
She waits until the long forceful trickle ends—he never closes the bathroom door—and waits for him to pour himself a cup of lukewarm coffee from the decanter.
“So which one’s my favorite?” she asks. She is beaming.
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