Infinite

by Brian Freeman

  Then Ellie began to cry. Her little face screwed up as she realized that her mother was gone and a stranger was holding her. With her cheeks red, she wailed for Karly and squirmed to get away from my arms. That was when the reality of this situation truly hit me.

  She was not mine.

  She belonged to someone else.

  Nothing in this world was mine.

  Karly returned moments later, wearing a loose Cubs jersey and sweats. “Aw, what’s wrong, Ellie?” she murmured as she retrieved her baby and took a seat in the living room near the fireplace. She lifted her shirt and offered up her breast, and Ellie settled immediately, making soft suckling noises. “Could you dim the lights, honey? She likes it better when it’s not so bright.”

  I did.

  “And some music?” she asked. “Something mellow.”

  “Sure.”

  When the piano music was playing, I took a chair opposite her. I needed to go, because the real Dylan could return home at any moment, but I found it impossible to drag myself away. Watching Karly, watching Ellie, I felt in awe of the amazing life this other version of myself had built. To be honest, I was jealous. Envy ate me up inside. This man, whoever he was, had made bad choices like me—he’d killed someone with all his pent-up frustration—and yet here he was with this beautiful wife and child. He’d gone through hell and come out in heaven on the other side.

  It was almost too much for me to bear. Everything here felt so good, so natural, so right. And none of it belonged to me.

  “I saw Susannah for lunch today,” Karly told me, using her mother’s first name.

  “How is she?”

  “I think having a granddaughter may turn out to be a reasonable trade for me getting out of the real estate business.”

  “She didn’t try to get you back?” I asked, because I knew what Susannah was like in any world.

  “Well, she didn’t put her heart into it. She brought it up once and then dropped it. She did remind me that with you working for a nonprofit, and me being a stay-at-home mom, we have practically no money.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said you have a ten-minute walk to work, and I don’t mind Hamburger Helper.”

  Karly’s eyes drifted to Ellie, and I watched her face glow with love.

  “Are you really okay with this?” I asked her.

  She looked up from Ellie, and her eyes were as serious as I’d ever seen them. “Life’s about making choices, Dylan. This was my choice. I don’t have a single regret.”

  I wished I could say the same. At that moment, I was consumed with nothing but regrets. I told myself again: You need to go. I needed to leave this house and give it back to the people who belonged here.

  But I couldn’t.

  “I was working on another poem today,” Karly went on.

  “That’s great.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, because we’re not poor enough, I want to get a useless graduate degree and write poetry. I haven’t shown any of them to my dad yet. He keeps pestering me, but I’m not ready. They’re really dark. I don’t know where any of it comes from. I’m so happy with my life, but I start writing, and it all comes out like a nightmare.”

  “I think that’s the sign of a deep soul.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” she replied, but she had the twinkle that told me she liked hearing that.

  “Can I see what you wrote?”

  “Sure. I’ll read it to you later when we’re in bed.”

  I covered my disappointment, because I wouldn’t be here for that. “Okay.”

  “Would you get me a cup of tea, sweetheart?”

  “Of course.”

  I stood up from the chair. I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening like this, in the dim glow, with music playing. Then I would put my daughter in her crib and go to bed with my wife. My hunger to stay in this life overwhelmed me, but all good things had to end. Like a jumper on a bridge railing, I finally took the plunge, but I regretted it as soon as I fell.

  “I think I’ll stretch my legs outside,” I told her. “I need to clear my head.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I just want to get some air. Do you mind? Are you okay here?”

  “I don’t mind, but please stay out of the park. Did you hear about that woman disappearing? I don’t like you walking home that way at night. I know the park is a shortcut, but I want you to stay on Foster.”

  “Okay. Whatever you want.”

  I went into the kitchen to make her tea. I knew the kind Karly liked: mandarin orange with a hint of cinnamon. It was too sweet for me, but she loved it. I could do this one last thing for her, but then I had to go. While the water boiled in a mug in the microwave, I got myself ready. I grabbed a light jacket from a hook near the back door, and I slipped it on.

  Then I took a long, sharp knife from the butcher block on the counter and tucked it into the jacket pocket.

  CHAPTER 31

  Despite Karly’s warning, I headed straight for the park. It drew me into its darkness. There was no one around, just empty sidewalks and shadows where the glow of the light posts didn’t reach. The night hid me, but it hid him, too. I walked across the wet grass to the dense trees lining the riverbank, where my gaze couldn’t penetrate the wall of tangled brush. The sewery dankness of the water intensified as I got closer, like the blooming of a corpse flower. The wind was dead still, letting the smell hang in the air.

  I thought about calling out to him. I was sure he could hear me. Let’s end this now. You and me. But I didn’t think he’d show himself yet. He was like a virus, stalking his victims silently and only coming into the open when he saw that they were vulnerable.

  In the quietness, I listened to the chirp of a lone cricket, like a spy issuing a warning. A mosquito whined in my ear, and I batted it away. Keeping my eyes on the riverbank, I returned to the trail and headed north. As I walked, I curled my fingers around the handle of the knife in my pocket. Every few steps, I looked back, trying to pick out a silhouette in the trees.

  No one was there.

  I kept looking for the Dylan who lived in this world, coming home from work. I wasn’t sure what emotions I would feel when I saw him. We’d have the same face, the same body, the same walk, but he had so many things I didn’t. Karly and Ellie were waiting for him. When he was back in our apartment, he’d kiss his little girl and sleep next to his wife. I had no one waiting for me in my own world. They were all gone.

  All I could do was make sure that this Dylan Moran got home safely to his family.

  At least, that was what I told myself I was here to do.

  Ahead of me, the trail split. One way led up to Foster Avenue. The other way led down into a tunnel beside the water. I took the tunnel, where lights illuminated rust, swirls of graffiti, and a swarm of bugs. The last time I’d done this, I’d found Dylan Moran’s body in the process of being consumed by rats. It made me wonder if I was already too late. Maybe the Dylan of this world was never coming home from his job. Maybe my doppelgänger had left his body beside the river, his decomposing flesh contributing to the rotting smell in my nose. But I couldn’t let myself think that way. I had to keep going.

  On the other side of the tunnel, I climbed the wet grass to the north side of Foster. A few cars lit me up with their headlights. I walked several blocks to the neighborhood of North Park University. My mother, Eleanor, had gone there. I walked as far as Kedzie and saw a one-story office building across from the entrance to the university campus. I could see white lettering stenciled on the tall windows.

  Chicago Housing Solutions.

  This was the nonprofit run by Dylan Moran.

  The lights were on inside. I could see a few workers, but I couldn’t make out individual faces. All I could do was wait for Dylan to head home and then follow him. I was near a McDonald’s, and I was hungry, so I took a minute to get myself an order of fries. I brought them back out and ate them one at a time as I perched on the top of a low fe
nce that ran along Kedzie.

  I’d been there about twenty minutes when a voice behind me said, “Mr. Moran?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be recognized here. I looked back, thinking about how to explain myself. A plump black woman in her sixties stood next to the door of an old Camry in the McDonald’s parking lot, with a brown takeaway bag in her hand. A boy no older than ten held her hand. Seeing my face, she gave me a wide, gap-toothed smile.

  “Oh, Mr. Moran, I knew that was you. You taking a little dinner break?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She looked down at the boy who was with her. “William, you go shake that man’s hand, all right? Do it right now. He’s a very special person.”

  The boy looked nervous as he came up to the fence, but his grip was strong as he reached up to shake my hand. “My name’s Bill,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Bill. I’m Dylan.”

  The woman approached the fence, too. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  I began to apologize, but she waved it away.

  “No, no, don’t you worry about that. With all the people you meet every day, I’m not surprised at all. I’m Cora-Lee Hobart. You helped my son Lionel last year. Saved him is what you did. You saved all of us, including me and my grandson here. Lionel fell behind on our rent when he was out of work for a couple of months. I needed looking after when I had my heart attack, but do you think the landlord cared about that? He was going to kick us out on the street. You wouldn’t let that happen. You made calls and wrote letters and got lawyers and people from the city on our side, and the landlord, he backed right down. Let Lionel catch up on the rent again when he went back to work. Without you, heaven only knows where we would be right now. God bless you, Mr. Moran.”

  I smiled at her, but I felt envy again.

  Envy that no one had ever spoken to me with that kind of gratitude in their voice. Envy that I’d never changed someone’s life like that.

  “Well, it’s good to know you’re all doing so well,” I told her.

  “That we are.” Cora-Lee looked around the parking lot and lowered her voice. “I’m not sure if you realize this, Mr. Moran, but people around here know your story. You made mistakes, and I’m sure you feel bad about what you did, and I know you paid a price for it. All I can tell you is, I thank God for your mistakes. They’re what brought you to us. Ain’t no accident, that’s for sure. You’re here for a reason.”

  I shook my head with a kind of wonder. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Her grandson shook my hand again. The two of them got into her Camry, and Cora-Lee waved at me as she pulled out of the parking lot. They drove down Foster toward the river, and I was alone again. When they were gone, I crossed the street to stand outside the offices of Chicago Housing Solutions. I hoped the darkness would keep me invisible on the other side of the windows. I needed to see this Dylan Moran up close—not just his face, but who he really was inside.

  It wasn’t a big-budget operation. All the furniture looked secondhand. The yellow paint was dirty, with posters that read “Housing Is a Human Right” stuck crookedly on the walls with masking tape. The gray industrial carpet was worn and stained. Despite the late hour, almost a dozen people worked the phones and computers as if it were the middle of the day. A couple of them wore business clothes, but most wore blue T-shirts with the CHS logo, identifying them as volunteers. I saw two Lou Malnati’s pizza boxes on one desk, several liters of Mountain Dew, and a beat-up coffee machine with an oversize red tub of Folgers next to it.

  My stare went from face to face. Then I saw him.

  With his feet up on a desk and a phone propped on his shoulder, Dylan Moran drank Folgers from a paper cup.

  He looked just like me. He hadn’t cut his hair or shaved. His clothes were similar to mine, a dark slim-fit button-down shirt and khakis, and leather shoes that had been through a war. As he talked on the phone, I saw a range of expressions that I regularly saw on my own face in the mirror and in photographs. We smiled alike; we frowned alike. Our blue eyes had the same heat. If you stood the two of us next to each other, we’d look like twins you couldn’t tell apart. Even Karly had accepted me as him. We were the same person.

  But to my eyes, he was a completely different man. Our similarities were skin deep, and underneath all of that, we were strangers. Even the killer wearing my father’s leather jacket resembled me more than this Dylan Moran did. I couldn’t decide what it was that made him so foreign to me. I tried to unlock the riddle in his face, but I found myself unable to decipher it.

  As I watched, he hung up the phone. I could see that it had been an intense, difficult call. I knew those calls—when I dealt with suppliers who were bucking deadlines, or with clients who kept changing their minds about their events. Those calls kept me up at night. But as soon as this Dylan put down the phone, a relaxed smile returned to his face. He called out something I couldn’t hear to two of the volunteers, and one of them tossed a foam football his way. They passed it back and forth for almost a minute. Then he got out of his chair, clapping his hands like a coach. He went from desk to desk, checking in on each of his volunteers. They joked. They argued. An old man showed him something on a computer screen that obviously made him happy, and Dylan kissed the top of his head. He finished his coffee, poured a little more from the pot, and drank it all. He found part of a doughnut in a pink box, and as he took bites of it, he sat on the edge of a desk and checked messages on his phone.

  There was nothing special or unusual about any of it. It all looked so casual. So normal. This day, this evening, must have been like any other day for the man who worked inside these walls. That was when it hit me. That was when I understood what made him so different from me.

  This Dylan Moran wasn’t running.

  All my life, I’d been hurrying to get somewhere, without the slightest idea where that was. But this Dylan was already there. He looked at peace with the ground he was standing on. He would go home to his family tonight, and wake up tomorrow, and his life wouldn’t have changed at all. That was just the way he wanted it.

  I felt a malevolent emotion grip my heart again.

  Envy, as deep as a well.

  Dylan checked his watch and realized what time it was. He was late going home. He looked up with a start, and in doing so, he stared out the windows toward the street. Among the reflections, he saw me. His face did a double-take, and he pushed himself off the desk. Before his mind could truly reconcile the idea that there were two of us, I backed up into the darkness and turned from the window. I crossed the street and took shelter behind the North Park sign, where I was invisible. The door to the building opened a few seconds later, and Dylan came outside. He looked long and hard both ways down the street, but when he saw that the sidewalks were empty, he shook his head and went back into the office.

  He didn’t stay there for long.

  Just a few minutes later, he reemerged, calling goodbye to the people inside. The incident in the window was obviously forgotten, because he didn’t check the street again. Instead, he turned left, heading toward the river.

  Heading toward home.

  I followed on the other side of the street. When the traffic cleared, I crossed and fell in behind him. We walked in tandem, half a block apart, but he never looked back. I knew, somehow I knew, that he would take the shortcut home through the park, despite the warnings from Karly that it wasn’t safe. He’d go through the tunnel beside the river, and he’d cut across the open grass where it was pitch black.

  The three of us would be together. Dylan. Me. And the killer who was waiting for both of us.

  I knew my job. I had to stop that killer once and for all. His journey ended here. This was why I was in this world. I swore to myself that I had no other motives in my heart.

  Except I was lying.

  I couldn’t hold back dark thoughts bubbling out of that well of envy and desire. Everything this
man had, I wanted. His wife. His child. His job. My perfect life was right there in front of me, and all I had to do was take it for myself. If this man disappeared, no one would know. No one would miss him. I’d become him. I would go home and wrap Karly up in my arms, and this world would go on just as it had before. The only price to pay was one sin.

  A life for a life.

  Eve Brier had whispered to me when this began: You might be tempted to stay.

  And not just stay. She’d seen this coming. She’d known that sooner or later, a serpent would dangle an apple in front of me and encourage me to take a bite. You might be tempted to kill that other version of yourself.

  Yes, I was tempted. In fact, I couldn’t think about anything else.

  Ahead of me, Dylan reached the bridge over the river. He crossed to the east side, still unaware of my presence only a few steps behind him. If he stayed straight, he’d remain on the brightly lit city streets, but the park was immediately below him, beckoning with its solitude and darkness.

  I knew that’s where he’d go, because that’s where I would go.

  And he did.

  He turned onto the park path and skidded down a grassy slope. The empty tunnel led beside the river. For a brief moment, the hill blocked me from his view, and I used that moment to close the distance between us. When I got to the tunnel, Dylan was a shadow moving toward the light, only steps ahead of me.

  I should have noticed immediately that the tunnel was dark. The lights had been on when I came this way before, but now they were off. I didn’t realize what it meant. I was too focused on catching up to the man in front of me. I plunged ahead, practically running beside the river, and the noise of my footsteps finally made him aware of me.

  He stopped, turning around slowly to see who I was. I stopped, too.

  We confronted each other. He stood at the end of the tunnel, lit by the light post and the glow of the street above him. I was still in darkness, my face obscured. We weren’t far apart. If I leaped for him, I’d be on him. He had nowhere to run.