by Thomas Locke
The vortex.
“Brett?”
He turned slowly, his heart already zinging. Before he had consciously fit a name to the voice, his entire being was flung about the room like a swallow dancing on unseen winds. “Hello, Josie.”
“It is you.” She was a vivacious bundle of intelligence and energy that defied her sixty-plus years. She peered at him with that myopic squint generations of students had mocked. “What are you doing here?”
“I should ask you the same thing.”
“Here in the city because I run the neuroscience department at Columbia. Here at the exhibit because my husband teaches modern art at NYU and serves as a part-time curator.” She clutched her purse with both hands. “Now you.”
Brett wished he didn’t have to answer. Especially to her. Dr. Josephine Banks had been his doctoral supervisor and Brett’s biggest supporter. “I joined the research project.”
“I know all that.” Her grip tightened. It was not anger. Not really. Josie Banks simply carried passion into every aspect of her professional life. “You left me after I forbade you to take up that post.”
“It wasn’t really a post—”
“The project was run by that Italian, what was his name?”
“Her. Gabriella Speciale.”
“Sure. And so it failed like I warned?”
“No. It has proven to be an enormous success.”
She stepped closer. “So why the long face?”
He struggled momentarily and came up with, “They’re not ready to publish. Not even close. We’re talking years.”
“You left them?”
“No. But I don’t . . .”
She finished for him, “Have anything to show for your time.”
Brett waited, his heart thudding, heavy with dread. Not over the question he expected her to ask next. Over his reply. No matter what the disembodied Brett might have said to Agnes about moving on, if his favorite teacher asked, Brett would tell her. Everything. He felt a genuine sense of brutal rightness standing here, preparing himself to reveal his dark side.
But Josie Banks surprised him by shrugging in disinterest. “New fields can take years to become established. Decades. But the Italian’s concepts have proven to be authentic?”
“At every stage.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“Whatever you want to know.”
“Later. Tomorrow, yes? Right now, tell me why you’re in New York.”
So he told her about Agnes, the year of monitoring the critically ill. At least he started to. She cut him off with, “This is utterly groundbreaking.”
He nodded. “And it’s just one facet of their project.”
“All right. Yes. But the concept.” Her eyes shifted rapidly back and forth, as though reading a journal article. Or preparing one. “There are two key elements, correct? The first is the temporal and spatial issue.”
“Redefining boundaries,” Brett confirmed. He had always liked this about her. How Josie Banks could take the vague whispers of a postgrad’s idea and crystallize it into something real. “Physical confines can no longer be seen as boundaries for mental awareness.”
“Physical confines.” She released the purse so as to grip herself around her middle. “And then there is the other issue.”
“Death,” Brett said. “Its definition. The moment of the event. And the moment after.”
She rocked back and forth, still scanning the unseen text. “I was wrong to urge you away from this.”
“No.” Brett sighed. “You weren’t.”
“You wasted nothing. It has cost you, I see that. But you have also—” She stopped, apparently caught by a sudden idea. “I need your help.”
“Anything.”
“One of my department heads has had a stroke. Her postgrad stand-in is insufferable. The students loathe him. There could well be a riot. Will you take over the class?”
Brett endured yet another swoop-and-dive. “I’d like nothing more.”
“It’s not a real post, of course. Just covering for the six weeks remaining of this semester. I believe the current week’s lesson is on neurobiology’s connection to quantum mechanics.”
“I could teach that,” Brett replied. “In my sleep.”
“Of course you can.” Josie slipped a card from her billfold and pressed it into his hand. Her smile carried a fullness that reached back through the years and the awful mistakes, and blessed him with that rarest of gifts, a second chance. “Your class starts tomorrow at two. I expect you in my office at one thirty. Be on time.”
19
Lena watched from a distance as her legs carried her down the corridor and across the central foyer. She thought she heard someone call her name, but refused to be drawn from the intensity that left her hovering a fractional distance beyond herself. Out where a discussion across time was more real than the crowd and the gallery. And far more important.
Lena asked, You are dying now?
I share with you my last few breaths. Stop here. See the gentleman studying the Renoir? That is him.
Who?
Brett Riffkind. The love of my life. The breaker of hearts. The wounder of souls. Please. Let me touch his face one last time.
Brett stood before a Renoir lithograph entitled Pinning the Hat. It had been one of his mother’s favorites. A framed copy had hung on her office wall throughout Brett’s childhood. Standing here, he could smell the papers and ink and old perfume. His mother had been a noted mathematician and not especially good with her lone child. But they had shared art and museums. This particular piece had always intrigued Brett. Renoir was by most accounts a dour and somber man, yet he had managed to convey with piercing clarity the lighthearted gaiety of two young girls. This had been his first attempt to use lithography as a vehicle for genuine artistic expression. Brett could almost hear the girls’ laughter, as though they mocked his inability to fathom the forces that rocked his world. To have his favorite professor arrive here and offer him a job, however temporary, was a vivid sign that his journeying had come to an end. The future opened in resplendent mystery. Brett was suitably terrified. And the two girls knew it.
For the second time that night, he heard a woman speak his name.
“Brett?”
He turned and was immediately certain he had never seen her before. She was far too striking and intense to forget. She was perhaps even beautiful, but it was hard to tell, her face was so wracked by tragedy.
Brett assumed she was somehow linked to one of his former patients. Her bereavement was a bleak mantle that captured her face, her body, her walk. He asked, “Can I help you?”
The woman was almost as tall as he, rangy in the manner of a natural athlete. She shook her head, or at least he thought she did. Perhaps it was merely a larger tremor, one of many wracking her frame. She took another step, closing the distance to where he could see the unshed tears.
Brett knew he should say something. Everyone in the gallery was turned their way. Others had stepped into the three entries leading to adjoining chambers. All staring at this woman who breached the brittle gaiety with her tragic silence, who approached him with one outstretched hand. But Brett waited in stillness because he had no choice. He felt locked inside the moment, clenched by a straitjacket of confusion.
She settled her hand upon his cheek. Her touch was astonishingly gentle. He could feel the trembling, feel the way her fingers settled over the curves and indentations, holding him from chin to temple, almost . . .
As though she had done it a thousand times before.
Then her eyes spilled their burden of tears. The hand dropped to her side as though unseen puppet strings had been severed. Brett regretted its absence.
The woman whispered, “She’s gone.”
BOOK 2
20
All during Brett’s conversation with the remarkable woman named Lena Fennan, the reception swirled about them like a half-forgotten tune. After she departed, Brett took a taxi b
ack to the basement apartment off Park Lane. The instant he entered, he called Gabriella in Switzerland. There was no urgency to his news. But he had to speak with someone. Immediately.
When Brett finished relating the night’s events, Gabriella gave it a long beat. Digesting what she had just heard. The line connecting Brett with Switzerland crackled once, echoing the energy coursing through him. Not exactly tension. Rather, a compound of astonishments that carried with them the force to propel him out of one existence and into another.
When Gabriella spoke, it was to address the third person on the phone with them. “What do you think, Charlie?”
“You go first,” he replied.
Gabriella Speciale was a psychologist and a rare beauty. Her allure and Brett’s own frustration had been the poisonous mix that had pushed him into the dark side. Brett had traded the team’s secrets for his own lab, or he would have, except for how he had become trapped by the forces everyone now referred to as the vortex. The word was too small to contain all the terror and misery he had experienced, and which had almost consumed him. Would have, except for how Charlie had rescued him. Charlie Hazard, the supposed enemy who had won Gabriella’s heart. His rescuer. His best friend.
Eleven weeks after Charlie had rescued him from the fate he deserved, Brett had felt well enough to depart. He had designed his act of penance during the long lonely hours, assaulted by what plagued him still. For much of that time, all Brett had to do was shut his eyes and the vortex’s rushing fury was there. Waiting.
Gabriella had been utterly opposed to Brett’s self-imposed exile. Her team was becoming increasingly fractured. She wanted Brett to remain. She wanted to help him heal. She wanted . . .
Charlie had silenced Gabriella’s arguments with a few precise words. Brett was doing what he felt was best. He needed their support. Gabriella needed to let Brett go, so he could return.
“There are a number of issues here,” Gabriella said. “But two are of immediate concern. Do you agree, Brett?”
He glanced at the digital clock set into the oven’s stainless steel face. It read five minutes past midnight. Just after six in the morning Swiss time. “Yes.”
“First is the manner of this connection. You met with a dying patient who ascended and was greeted by your temporal self.”
Brett had not heard that term before. Temporal self. It indicated a significant shift. Previously Gabriella had been reluctant to even address the issue. Now she had named it. Clearly a lot had changed in the eleven months since their last conversation. Brett wanted to ask who else had crossed the river of time, but knew such questions would have to wait.
Gabriella went on, “Your temporal self says to this dying woman—what is her name?”
“Agnes Lockwood.”
“She returns from her ascent and passes on the instruction that you are to halt your current duties and go to an exhibition. You do so, and meet a woman who has recently begun receiving guidance from her own temporal self. And this woman . . .”
“Lena Fennan,” Brett supplied.
“Has never ascended.”
“Never heard of it, or had any contact with us.”
Charlie added, “Then there’s how the temporal self dies in the middle of this connection.”
“While saying farewell to Brett, her former love.” Gabriella paused. “All these make for an astonishing set of coincidences.”
“They’re not coincidences,” Charlie said.
“No. You are correct. That was not the proper term. I just . . .”
Charlie went on, “Then there’s door number two.”
“Ms. Fennan is instructed to attend a lecture you are to give tomorrow,” Gabriella said. “Which you only learned about through a connection made at this same exhibition.”
Charlie asked, “Was there any chance the lady could have overheard your conversation with the professor?”
Brett recalled the way Lena had approached him, the spectral walk across the gallery, the trembling outstretched hand, the unspilled tears. He shivered. “No.”
Gabriella asked, “What is your lecture on?”
“Some aspect of neuroscience. I’ll learn the exact topic tomorrow.”
“You don’t know what you’re teaching.” Gabriella pondered this. “Ask Ms. Fennan if she was made aware of your topic. Before you actually reveal anything. We are seeking confirmation of future knowledge—”
“He gets it,” Charlie said.
“Yes. All right. Forgive me. I’m just . . .” She sighed. “It is so good to have you back, Brett. You are back, aren’t you?”
Brett was grappling with that very same question, so Charlie answered for him. “He’s back. Now tell him the rest.”
“You remember Massimo?”
“Yes.” The Italian student and three others had attached themselves to Gabriella in the team’s earliest days. They showed a complete inability to follow the simplest instructions, which meant their ascents were of no experimental value whatsoever. Every now and then, however, they spoke of some occurrence that shifted the entire team’s perspective. Otherwise they seemed scarcely connected to earth.
“Massimo’s temporal self has said he and his friends need to take your place.”
Brett shivered anew. “When was this?”
“Yesterday,” Charlie replied. “They’ve been drifting around for the past twenty-four hours, bags packed, waiting for you to tell them where to come. Which is the main reason why Gabriella and I aren’t too surprised about this call.”
Gabriella sounded as though she had been infected by Brett’s tremors. “Finish your work there and come home, Brett. We miss you.”
Brett cut the connection and told himself there was no reason why that simple word should cause his eyes to burn. Home.
Lena returned from the MOMA to her ratty apartment and packed. There was very little beyond her work and her clothes, and she was done in less than an hour. She then located a suites hotel four blocks from her new office and booked a room for a week, starting the next day. The boutique investment firm of Baker Meredith was located in a high-rise at the corner of Madison and 55th Street, two blocks from the Trump Tower and four from the southeast corner of Central Park.
Lena made tea and drank it, staring out the window at the rain-swept street. The entire block was due for demolition. Somewhere to her right, Wall Street slumbered. She should probably have felt something over transitioning to her new existence. But just then there was no room.
After leaving Brett she had gone to the women’s restroom and washed her face. She avoided looking at her reflection. She knew she was a wreck. When she found Roger and Marjorie, their expressions said they had seen at least a bit of her contact with Brett. There was nothing to be done about that. Lena had sought them out because the clock was ticking much faster than she would have liked. She said she needed to start in her new position the next morning, because there was a new project she wanted to investigate.
Roger had responded by quietly insisting she take the limo. Marjorie had hugged her, slipped a card into Lena’s pocket, and said, “You definitely have what it takes.” Which was almost enough to undo her yet again.
Lena turned from her studio apartment’s lone window and stared at the three suitcases and the cardboard boxes waiting by the door. She needed to research the new project, but right then she needed a few hours’ sleep. She climbed into her narrow bed. She kept on the lights, but the illumination was not strong enough to halt the memories and the questions that assaulted her.
She cried herself to sleep. Mourning the end to a love that had not yet begun, and the loss of a woman she had only tonight come to consider a friend.
21
Reese spent the weekend becoming introduced to idle hours. She read all the papers and news magazines the hotel’s gift shop had to offer. She bought a swimsuit and sweats and shorts and sandals from the same shop. She could not go anywhere else because she had no money. She lunched poolside, she swam, she dozed. At s
unset she left the hotel and crossed the bridge and walked the riverfront. There were moments of mild panic when she was seized by all the fears she had stifled while inside. She stood and gripped whatever railing was closest until the tremors passed.
She slept well, until a nightmare of being attacked by her cellmate jolted her an hour before dawn. Reese left the room and went downstairs, where a friendly night clerk offered her a pair of sneakers from the lost and found. She ran and she lifted and she fought down the terrors the only way she knew how.
The phone call came at ten minutes past seven Monday morning. The voice she’d been hoping to hear asked, “Are you awake?”
“Dressed, fed, ready to roll.”
“I’m downstairs.”
“I’ll join you in five.”
But when the elevator doors opened, Reese almost walked past the man she had once considered a close friend. Kevin Hanley had directed the second arm of an intelligence-gathering project where Reese had attained her career zenith, and where they both had experienced their ultimate downfall. Reese had spent many hours in lockup wondering if Kevin had survived the debacle. And now she knew the answer was both yes and no.
Kevin’s transformation was as drastic as her own. But because she confronted them all at once, the result was shocking. Kevin had always worn a rather flaccid mask. This granted him the ability to hide in plain sight. Now he was simply grey. Hair, skin, eyes, expression. He had lost so much weight his skin sagged and bunched.
Kevin’s response mirrored her own. His eyes widened and he mouthed a silent, “Wow.”
She nodded. Perhaps someday other people’s reactions would not bother her.
Kevin recovered and gestured toward the door. “Car’s outside.”
She followed him to the Tahoe parked by the valet’s desk. Kevin exchanged a bill for the keys and slid in behind the wheel. “I’ll drive. You need to read.”
Reese set her valise and briefcase in the rear hold, hefted the folder waiting for her on the passenger seat, and slipped into the AC’s cool wash. “Where are we going?”
