The Infinity of You & Me

by J. Q. Coyle

  She pulls into a parking space. I don’t know if we’ve arrived or if she’s just collecting herself.

  “His mother … the other you…” I don’t know how to say what has to come next. How do you tell someone they’re dead in another world?

  “What?” Jane says.

  “She’s … gone.”

  “The virus?”

  I nod. “Jax won’t give up on the people left there. It’s why I want the cure.”

  “I can’t go on if he’s gone,” she whispers. She looks around the lot, like Pynch tracking takers. What is she watching for here? She takes a deep breath, checks her phone. “Let’s go.”

  We both get out of the car and start walking. Across the street is a large gray building with a churchlike top. Behind it are huge hospital buildings.

  We walk to the end of the parking lot. I can hear the rush of cars on Storrow Drive.

  She stops at the edge of a crosswalk. “I have to leave you here.”

  “Here?” Here is nowhere in particular. “At a crosswalk?”

  “I’m sorry.” And I know she’s trying to apologize for the danger she put me in, hoping to save her own son. “Look,” she says, “if you can get Alex into that world and out of this one, Olsson and I have a plan to free your father.”

  “Alex isn’t so different from anyone else, deep down. I think I can do it.”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  “Wait.” I hand her the photograph of her and Jax.

  She touches it as if she could stroke Jax’s cheek.

  “It’s yours,” I say. She reaches out, holds it with both hands for a second. As she slips it carefully into her purse, I see a flicker of movement over her shoulder.

  A man in a suit, face tilted down, talking on a cell phone on the opposite corner.

  Another man, also in a suit, is leaning against a wall near a coffee shop.

  A third man is looking down from the T platform.

  All their faces are shadowed.

  A hot shiver spreads through my chest.

  “Jane,” I say, and she looks up.

  A woman in a thick coat and sunglasses is holding a small dog at the entrance to a construction site under the platform.

  “Wait,” I say. My fear is getting the better of me. “Where’s Olsson? Jane, I think you should come with me. We should stick together and—”

  She shakes her head. “Shh. Don’t say anything more.” And then she hugs me tight. I’m caught off guard. I don’t want to hug her back, but I can’t help it. I’m suddenly afraid I’ll never see her again. “We’ll be here for you when you get back,” she whispers.

  And then she lets me go, and as she walks back to the car, I see another figure, hanging out at a bus stop. This one is so tall and lanky I’d recognize him anywhere, Hafeez. Does Jane know he’s here? Did he bully his way into getting a chance to help, or is he flying solo? Either way, I’m incredibly happy to see him, but I look away so I don’t tip anyone off that he’s here. I stand there, waiting, feeling alone but also watched, like the gazes are sliding over my skin.

  And that’s when I look up at the churchlike tower in front of me. I see the circular window—four large circles and then smaller ones fit in between, with one of the small windows in the center of it all.

  The oculus.

  The Liberty Hotel.

  I look at all of the lit windows—floors and floors of them.

  My father is in there.

  I remember the view through that one small bit of curtains—the curved edge of the windows—and I try to match it with the windows in front of me. I start to count floors.

  And then someone touches my elbow.

  I spin, startled.

  Sprowitz. Panic rolls through me so hard I’m almost nauseous.

  “Come with me,” he says. “Alex is waiting.”

  My legs are quivering. I can’t speak. But I have to keep myself together.

  We head toward the Liberty, his hand on the back of my arm, gripping me tightly.

  * * *

  The lobby of the Liberty Hotel is wide open with massive hanging circular light fixtures, people chatting on sofas—postures stiff, faces taut and shining—beautiful clerks and well-dressed doormen and, all around, stacked floors of hotel rooms. This place was once a prison?

  And, high above it all, the oculus windows are glittering with the night sky behind them.

  It smells like money—a perfumed chemical newness.

  All the beauty and grandeur remind me of who I am and where I’m from—saggy chain-link fence, broken windows reinforced with cardboard, cars up on blocks. What if I’m just as flimsy as the house I grew up in? What if I can’t do this?

  We get to the elevators, but Sprowitz doesn’t push a button. He just waits in front of one set of doors. They open.

  We step inside.

  The doors glide shut. He hits a button for the fourth floor.

  “Does Alex have the vaccine?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t. “Is he going to free my father?”

  “Shut up,” Sprowitz says. A vein stands out on his neck, which is stubbled with razor burn. I look down at his wide knuckles. He looks like in another life he’d be a butcher in a blood-smeared apron.

  The doors glide open. We step into the hallway.

  “Aren’t there guests around? Doesn’t someone know what’s going on?”

  Sprowitz just laughs at me.

  We walk down corridors and stop at a door. He knocks.

  I’m bracing myself. Am I about to see my father—still strung up?

  The door opens, and it’s a fancy hotel suite—a bedroom off to the right with big fluffed pillows on the neatly made bed. And Alex, straight ahead, is sitting behind a desk.

  One guard stands by the window, hands clasped, feet wide. He wears a crisp suit, and a wire snakes from one ear into his collar. And when he turns his head, I see a jagged scar on his cheek. And I recognize him immediately. This is the man who killed me in the cruise ship world. My murderer. Iosif.

  I feel a strange fiery sensation spread through my chest.

  My killer. In front of me. There’s nothing I can do or say now.

  Sprowitz takes his position by the other window, his face a blank stare.

  Alex smiles at me—a weird, twisted smile that looks like it hurts. There’s a small box on the desk in front of him and a bottle of champagne chilling in a glass bucket.

  I can’t believe how he fooled my mother all these years—sometimes even me—pretending to care so much about me. “What are we celebrating?” I ask.

  “A minor breakthrough,” he says. “Why don’t you have a seat?” He points to a chair next to his massive desk.

  “I’m fine,” I say. I don’t want to be ordered around under the guise of hospitality. “I’ll stand.” Just that one act of resistance has calmed me a little. I’m taking everything in. I focus on breathing evenly.

  “Okay then,” Alex says. He leans forward, elbows on the desk. “You know why I like this place?”

  “Could it be the old-prison vibe?”

  Alex smiles. “I’m sure you know that spandrels existed long before this was a prison, long before the ideas of physics and the multiverse, in fact. Way back, spandrels were shamans and spirit guides, or sometimes demonized. So, yes, a good number rotted away in this very prison, and not so very long ago. The worlds they made are still going. With the atlas, do you know how many worlds we’d have access to? All those family lines. Imagine!”

  “This is all very interesting, but I’d like to know where my father is.” I know he’s in this hotel somewhere. I feel restless because I’m so close but can’t save him.

  “How about you tell me where the atlas is.”

  “I don’t want to hand that over without being sure you have what I asked for.”

  Alex opens the lid of the box. A single slim vial sits in a groove inside its velvet lining. “This can be replicated in any lab. That’s the beauty of it—cheap, high-volume.�
� He puts the vial back and closes the box. He doesn’t miss how my eyes follow it. “So why do you want to save that one world? Why so fixated?” He taps his fingers on the edge of the desk. “I mean, I understand why you’d want your father freed, but that world? Why not a fresh one?”

  “Because in that world,” I say, “you’re my father.”

  The room is silent. Sprowitz and the other guard are completely still.

  Minutes seem to pass before Alex stands up. “Get out,” he says to the guards. “Give us our privacy.”

  They both leave and I almost wish they hadn’t. They weren’t on my side, but not having any witnesses is scarier.

  Alex walks to the window. “Alicia,” he says, smiling, “that’s pretty hard to believe. I mean, you’re saying your father created a world in which—”

  “He did the right thing,” I say. “At some point, he figured out you’d be the better husband and father. My mother went back to you.”

  He spreads his hand wide and flat against the pane of glass. “Then I guess you know about my history with your mother.” He doesn’t look at me. I know his mind must be racing. “I know my brother.” He stares out on the Charles River. “I’m sorry to say, but he’s never done the right thing.”

  “Except in this case, he did.”

  “Your mother loved me once. You know that, right?” I know my mother never loved him. She had been trying to do the smart thing.

  Alex pulls the curtain aside. “I thought that what he did had been so easy it never tore him up, not even for a second.” Alex looks at me. His eyes are wild, like they’re quivering. It’s as if he’s seeing the past run through his mind at a hyper-fast speed, again and again—lots of versions of it.

  I pull out the holiday card with the picture of Alex, me, and my mother on the ski slope. “Their world is dying. You’re killing it. There isn’t much time.” I put the card on the desk and slide it to him.

  He picks it up and looks at it for a long time. He eyes it, hungrily. Finally, he lays the card gently down on his desk. “That’s lovely. It really is. But how do I know it isn’t fake?”

  I pull out the page I tore from the Houston phone book, the one that lists “Alex and Francesca Maxwell.” I hand it over. “How about this?”

  Alex considers this piece of evidence a bit longer. “Well done,” he says. “But my sources say otherwise.”

  “Did I really have time to fake two pieces of evidence and get the atlas?”

  Alex picks up the box on his desk, walks around to me, and tilts the box toward me so I can see the viscous golden liquid. “You never really answered my question. Why don’t you tell me what’s in it for you—saving this world? It’s not about me. Why’s this one so precious?”

  I can feel heat coming into my face. Alex thinks my father is dead in that world, and I can’t let him know about Jax. “It’s still one of my father’s worlds. Broken as it is. He cared about it, and so do I. That’s the thing. The people in these worlds are real. You and Jane told me for years they were just hallucinations, but they exist.” This doesn’t interest my uncle so I drive to the real point. “The atlas is in that world. So if you let that world die out, it goes, too. We’ll make the exchange there. Nowhere else.”

  Alex raises his eyebrows. It’s nice to surprise him for once. I swipe the holiday card off the desk to give him another look. “It’s ironic. You attack the one world that has the life you really wanted. Don’t you want to at least see it before it’s gone?”

  “I’m not so sure I believe you have the atlas.”

  “But once you see it, will you agree?—the atlas for the vial and my dad’s freedom?”

  Alex is staring at me, thinking it over, and then he cocks his head. “Sometimes you look just like your father. It’s amazing, the resemblance.”

  He brushes his hand through his hair, and it’s clearly shaking. He walks back around the desk, opens the top drawer. He pulls out a gun and twists it in the air. “Remember this little beauty? You know I gave it to your mother as a gift one Christmas. A woman alone with her young daughter in a house should protect herself from intruders, right?”

  “You don’t need a gun,” I say.

  “The gun’s a deal breaker for me. If the vaccine comes, so does the gun.

  “Fine. I can take you in,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “You think I’d travel with a novice?” Alex walks to the door. I hear him talking to someone in the hallway.

  He returns with Sprowitz. He can piggyback?

  “Your gift is rare,” Alex says, “but I collect rarities.”

  Sprowitz tries to smile, as if being part of one of Alex’s collections is an honor.

  Alex still has the box tucked in one jacket pocket and the gun in a holster that runs across his back. “We know your father’s mind trigger. Blood. And this world is … where?” He seems to search his memory.

  “Collarbone.”

  “Yes.”

  Alex looks at Sprowitz, who gives a nod. He’s ready.

  Now I only have to think of blood, and the flash in my head is my uncle’s blood, spilling on the floor. It’s that fast—red behind my eyes. Do I really want him dead?

  I push my knuckle into my clavicle. The red in front of my eyes recedes. The room stretches thin.

  And the last thing I see is Alex’s face pulled to one side like it’s made of elastic, then snapping.

  And in less than a second, but what feels stretched into hours in the hurtling dark, I hear Sprowitz’s voice. “Remember when we were kids,” he says. His voice is different, shy almost. It fills my ears while my eyes only see shadows and feel the rush of air around me. “In that Florida motel,” he says, “watching lizards hunt moths on the window screen?” His voice seems to have no body. It’s a voice that exists almost in my own mind. But it’s clearly his.

  No, I think. No, I don’t remember anything about us as kids, but my mind rockets, trying to understand what he means.

  And then I see it—orange nubby bedspreads, lamplight, Sprowitz and I are maybe ten years old, on our bellies crosswise on the bed nearest the window, staring into the dark humid night. The family bosses had met up. Sprowitz and I were left to entertain ourselves.

  “The thing is, I rooted for the lizards,” he says, his voice like a wind dragging past me. “I was drawn to them because they were lean and strong and hungry. But you always rooted for the moths, who seemed to know when the lizards were coming. They could feel the vibrations of the screen. Sometimes you’d flick the screen to warn them.”

  I remember how it felt to flick the screen, how relieved I was when the moths flitted away.

  “I think I picked the wrong side,” Sprowitz whispers.

  Now I see splotches of light and dark. His voice is gone. There’s no wind now, no sound.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  AND THEN from nowhere, the feeling of solid surface under my feet.

  Alex is doubled over, coughing, but still clutching the small box that holds the vaccine. Sprowitz is lying on the floor, his heavy shoulders shuddering. I look at him, wondering if he’ll acknowledge what he said to me. I know Alex didn’t hear it. Sprowitz meant it only for me. But he won’t look at me. He won’t make eye contact.

  I’m standing by the front door of my house in this world. Two long thin windows let in brittle light on either side of the door. Hopefully back in the prime, Olsson is meeting up with Jane, getting ready to break my father out. I push back a curtain—so delicate and worn that it disintegrates in my hand. I touch the window, and it bows out like warm plastic.

  We must have connected with Pynch, where he said he would circle back, and he’s brought Jax and me—this me—back from Houston. I know there’s a plan, but it’s hazy and fragile, more like the feeling of hope.

  The sun is brighter than ever, but it’s as if it casts no warmth. In the street, a group of people are huddled around an old metal trashcan where someone’s started a fire to keep warm. I’m assuming they’re here to he
lp in some way. Maybe as backup if this gets physical.

  I look for Jax. One face turns toward me. It’s Pynch, holding his hands over the flames. He bobs his head and turns back to the fire quickly.

  Is he here to help? Are the others also from the camp? This is part of Jax’s plan; I’m sure of it, but I just wish my brain could dredge up the rest of the details.

  I can sense my mother upstairs, still hanging on. Alex has piggybacked in. His other self could be somewhere in this house.

  “Where is the atlas?” Alex says, still wheezing.

  “It’s here. It’s coming,” I say. “I swear.”

  Sprowitz leans against the wall, taking everything in, trying to get his bearings. “Nice place,” he mutters, and I can see the boy he was, his light freckles, his quick eyes, his fine feathery hair. We were friends once, and then Alex must have come along, made him an offer.

  Alex lurches into the living room. “Jesus,” he says.

  He’s found the family portrait—Alex, Francesca, and a young version of myself in my lace collar and neatly trimmed bangs. “It’s real.” He turns a slow circle, taking in the room—its weak and cracking walls, the ribboned curtains. Down feathers have escaped the sofa pillows and spin in a draft.

  Alex’s eyes start to well up. I’ve never seen him cry. He shouts at Sprowitz: “Get out of here! Stand by the door!”

  Sprowitz gives me a quick look—a moment of embarrassment or helplessness, almost like he doesn’t want to leave me alone with my uncle, but he excuses himself and opens a door to bright, glaring light, then closes it behind him.

  I wish Sprowitz had stayed, even though he’d never help me. Or would he? If he rooted for the moths and not the lizards?

  “She’s here,” Alex whispers. He means my mother. “Where? Where is she?”

  What did I expect? Of course he wants to see her. Maybe he wants to know what it’s like for her to look at him like she loves him. Does she love him in this world?

  He rushes past the dining room and kitchen, then heads for the stairs, dust gusting into the air with each footfall.