by Claudia Gray
Maybe sometimes I felt jealous myself.
Within twenty minutes of arriving at the luncheon, I’ve been introduced to the duchess’s niece Romola, the one at Chanel. She’s not a designer there, merely a publicist, but as Aunt Susannah says, “Every connection helps, right?”
Surprisingly, Romola doesn’t treat me like a leech; instead she latches on to me. “We’re going to have fun,” she whispers. “About time someone interesting showed up.”
Ten minutes after that, I’m in the bathroom watching Romola do a line of coke. She offers me some, and I decline, but I suspect this dimension’s Marguerite would say yes without a second thought.
So fifteen minutes later, when Romola offers me champagne—at two in the afternoon—I say yes. If I’m going to be convincing as this Marguerite I need to play the part.
Aunt Susannah watches me start drinking, and she doesn’t say a word. I guess she’s used to it.
This party is the weirdest thing, simultaneously upper-crust and tacky. Cosmetic surgery has warped the faces of every woman over thirty; they don’t look younger, just not quite human in a way society has decided to pretend not to see. Half of the people are talking more to the holograms from their rings or badges than they are to the people around them. What conversation I can hear is mostly gossip: who’s shagging who, who’s making money, who’s losing it, who’s not invited to the next party like this.
Maybe the technology is different, but the shallowness of the scene is probably universal. So this is the life my father escaped when he chose to go into science, to leave Great Britain and join Mom in California. He was even smarter than I knew.
Here’s to you, Dad, I think as I grab another glass of champagne.
Seven hours after the luncheon, I’m behind the wheel of Romola’s car—a shiny silver teardrop that actually drives itself, which is good, considering how tipsy I already am. Romola herself is telling me about the amazing clubs we’re going to hit tonight. We’ve hung out all day. She acts like we’re friends now, like she’s going to get me an internship at Chanel. I know and she knows that we’re both just using this as an excuse to get wasted. I don’t think she’d let me ditch her if I tried.
I hate this. I’d rather go home, throw up, and pass out, preferably in that order.
But every time I look out at the dark, jagged, futuristic London in front of me, I remember that Paul is here. I remember that we have to meet again, and what I have to do when that happens. There’s no way out—not for him, and not for me.
Paul would say it was our destiny.
“What are you trying to do?” Theo said one time, glaring across the table at Paul. The pieces that would become the very first Firebird prototype were strewn between them, across the rainbow table. “The minute Sophia gets vindicated, you want to turn her into a laughingstock again?”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. I’d come in from piano lessons, and I quickly ditched my sheet music so I’d look less like a kid. Theo is only three and a half years older than me, Paul only two; they were the first of the grad students I’d ever thought of as being more like me than like my parents. I wanted them to think of me the same way. “Why would people be laughing at Mom?”
Paul’s gray eyes glanced up to meet mine for only one second before he went back to his work. “It’s not her theory. It’s mine. I take responsibility.”
Theo leaned back in his chair as he gestured toward Paul with his thumb. “This one is ready to risk his scientific credibility—and his adviser’s, no matter what he says—by arguing that destiny is real.”
“Destiny?” That sounded weirdly . . . romantic from a guy like Paul.
“There are patterns within the dimensions,” Paul insisted, never looking up again. “Mathematical parallels. It’s plausible to hypothesize that these patterns will be reflected in events and people in each dimension. That people who have met in one quantum reality will be likely to meet in another. Certain things that happen will happen over and over, in different ways, but more often than you could explain by chance alone.”
“In other words,” I said, “you’re trying to prove the existence of fate.”
I was joking, but Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something intelligent. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”
“You should come to Paris with me next week,” Romola shouts over the dance music in the club. I think it’s the same one I was standing outside last night, when I arrived in this dimension.
“Sure!” Why not accept? She’ll never actually take me; I’ll never actually go; and we both know it. “That would be amazing!”
I’m wearing a dress she loaned me: dull pewter leather, skin-tight even on my rail-thin frame. It couldn’t be more obvious that my breasts are practically nonexistent, but I’m also showing off a whole lot of leg, and in the opinion of the guys in this club, that makes up for the lack of cleavage. They’re all over me, buying me drinks—more drinks I don’t need.
And I hate the way they look at me, admiring but appraising, the same kind of hard, greedy assessment they’d give an expensive sports car. Not one of them sees me.
“Probably you think it’s impractical at least,” I said to Paul, that one night he watched me paint. “Art.”
“I don’t know that practicality is the most important thing.”
Which sounded almost like a compliment, for a moment, until I realized that he basically had admitted that he thought it was impractical of me to study painting at college. I was going to take classes in art restoration so I wouldn’t wind up living in Mom and Dad’s basement when I was thirty, but I didn’t feel like defending myself to him. I felt like going on the attack.
It was late November, just after Thanksgiving—only a week and a half ago, and yet already it seems like another lifetime. The evening was surprisingly warm, the last glow of Indian summer—or “Old Ladies’ Summer,” the Russian phrase my mother prefers. I wore an old camisole smeared with a hundred shades of paint from past evenings of work, and blue jean shorts that I’d cut off myself. Paul stood in the doorway of my bedroom, the only time he’d ever come so close to intruding on my space.
I was so aware of him. He’s bigger than your average guy, and way bigger than your average physics grad student: tall, broad-shouldered, and extremely muscular—from the rock climbing, I guess. Paul’s frame seemed to fill the entire door. Although I kept working, rarely looking away from my brush and canvas, it was as if I could sense him behind me. It was like feeling the warmth of a fire even when you’re not looking directly at the flame.
“Okay, maybe portraits don’t rule the art world anymore,” I said. Other students at art shows did collages and mobiles with “found objects,” Photoshopped 1960s ads to make postmodern comments on today’s society, stuff like that. Sometimes I felt out of step, because all I had to offer were my oil paintings of people’s faces. “But plenty of artists earn good money painting portraits. Ten thousand bucks apiece, sometimes, once you have a reputation. I could do that.”
“No,” Paul said. “I don’t think you could.”
I turned to him then. My parents might worship the guy, but that didn’t mean he could wander into my room and be insulting. “Excuse me?”
“I meant—” He hesitated. Obviously he knew he’d said the wrong thing; just as obviously, he didn’t understand why. “The people who get their portraits painted—rich people—they want to look good.”
“If you’re trying to dig yourself out of a hole, you’re doing a crappy job of it. Just FYI.”
Paul jammed his hands into the pockets of his threadbare jeans, but his gray eyes met mine evenly. “They want to look perfect. They only want their best side to show. They think a portrait should be—like plastic surgery, but on their image instead of their face. Too beautiful to be real. Your paintings—sometimes they’re beautiful, but they’re always real.”
I couldn’t look him in the face any longer. Instead I turned my head toward the gallery of paintings currently hung on my
bedroom walls, where my friends and family looked back at me.
“Like your mother,” Paul said. His voice was softer. I stared at her portrait as he spoke. I’d tried to make Mom look her best, because I love her, but I didn’t only re-create her dark, almond-shaped eyes or her broad smile; I also showed the way her hair always frizzes out wildly in a hundred directions, and how sharply her cheekbones stand out from her thin face. If I hadn’t put those things in the painting too, it wouldn’t have been her. “When I look at that, I see her as she is late at night, when we’ve been working for ten, fourteen hours. I see her genius. I see her impatience. Her exhaustion. Her kindness. And I’d see all that even if I didn’t know her.”
“Really?” I glanced back at Paul then, and he nodded, obviously relieved I understood.
“Look at them all. Josie’s impatient for her next adventure. Your father is distracted, off on one of his tangents, and there’s no telling whether he’s wasting time or about to be brilliant. Theo—” He paused as I took in the portrait I was finishing of Theo, complete with black hair gelled into spikiness, brown eyes beneath arched eyebrows, and full lips that would have suited a Renaissance cupid. “Theo’s up to no good, as usual.”
I started laughing. Paul grinned.
“And then there’s your self-portrait.”
Although I’ve participated in various art shows, even had an exhibition of my own in a very small gallery, I’ve never displayed my self-portrait anywhere besides my bedroom. It’s personal in a way that no other painting can ever be.
“Your hair . . .” he said, and his voice trailed off, because even Paul possessed enough tact to know that calling a girl’s hair a “disaster zone” was probably unwise. But it is—curlier and thicker and more uncontrollable even than Mom’s—and that’s how I painted it. “I can see all the ways you’re like your mother.”
Sure, I thought. Bony, too tall, too pale.
“And all the ways you’re not like her.”
I tried to turn it into a joke. “You mean, you don’t see the same incredible genius?”
“No.”
It hurt. I wonder if I winced.
Quickly Paul added, “There are perhaps five people born in a century with minds like your mother’s. No, you’re not as smart as she is. Neither am I. Neither is anyone else either of us is likely to meet in our lifetimes.”
That was true. It helped, but my cheeks were still flushed with heat. How could I feel him standing near me?
He has a softer voice than you’d think, from the big frame and the hard eyes. “I see . . . the way you’re always searching. How much you hate anything fake or phony. How you’re older than your years, but still . . . playful, like a little girl. How you’re always looking into people, or wondering what they see when they look back at you. Your eyes. It’s all in the eyes.”
How could Paul see any of that? How could he know only from the portrait?
But it wasn’t only from the portrait. I knew that, too.
Although I ought to have said something, I couldn’t have spoken a word. My breath caught in my throat, high and tight. Never once did I look away from my self-portrait and back at Paul.
He said, “You paint the truth, Marguerite. I don’t think you could work any other way.”
And then he was gone.
After that, I started work on a portrait of Paul. His face is a surprisingly difficult one to capture. The wide forehead—strong, straight eyebrows—the firm jawline—light brown hair with a hint of reddish gold to it that kept me mixing paints for hours in an attempt to get the exact shade—the way he ducks his head slightly, as if he’s apologizing for being so tall and so strong—that slightly lost look he has, like he knows he’ll never fit in and doesn’t even see the point of trying—but it was the eyes that threw me.
Deep-set, intense: I knew what Paul’s eyes looked like. But the thing was . . . whenever I painted someone, even myself, I showed them looking slightly away from the viewer. Expressions become more revealing then; it also gives the person in the portrait a hint of mystery—a sense that the real human being inside is beyond anything my work can capture. That’s part of painting the truth, too.
But with Paul I couldn’t do it. Every time I tried to paint his gaze, he wouldn’t look away from the viewer. From the artist.
He looked at me. He was always, always, looking at me.
The day after my father died, the hour after we learned Paul was responsible, I went to my room, took one of my canvas knives, and slashed his portrait to ribbons.
He made me trust him.
He made me think he saw me.
And it was all just part of Paul’s game, one small element of his big plan to destroy us all.
That’s just one more reason he has to pay.
Around midnight, my head is whirling, and I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I never stop dancing. The heavy drumbeat of the music reverberates through me and drowns out even the thump of my own pulse. It’s like I’m not even alive. Merely a puppet on strings with nothing inside.
A guy’s hand closes over my shoulder, and I wonder which one it is. Will he buy me another drink? If he does, I’ll pass out. I think I’d like to pass out around now.
But when I turn and see who it is, I gasp, and just like that—I’m alive again.
“Nice dress, Meg.” Theo smirks as he glances down my body, then up again. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“Theo!” I throw my arms around him, and he hugs me back. For the longest time we’re locked together like that, right on the middle of the dance floor.
“Are you drunk?” he murmurs into the curve of my neck. “Or are they making perfumes that smell like tequila?”
“Get me out of here.” Why is it so hard to get the words out? Only then do I realize I’m sobbing.
I’ve held it together all this time. I’ve held it together because I had to, carrying the grief and the fear even when I thought the weight would crush me. But now Theo’s here, and I can finally let go.
Theo hugs me tighter—so tightly that my feet lift off the ground—and he carries me off the dance floor, away from all the lights. He settles me on one of the long, low couches in the corner. I can’t stop crying, so he just holds me, his hands stroking my hair and my back. He rocks me back and forth as gently as he would a child. All around us, the club lights pulse, and the music and dancing roar on.
5
THE SIGHT OF THEO’S FACE, THE WARMTH OF HIS ARMS around me, make me feel as though everything should start getting better right away.
And maybe it would, if I hadn’t gotten so drunk that I made myself sick.
“That’s right,” Theo says, rubbing my back as I lean over the edge of the Millennium Bridge, where I have just vomited into the Thames. “Get that junk out of there.”
Shame has painted my face with heat. “I’m so humiliated.”
“What, because I saw you puke? Listen, if you saw me on my average Saturday night, you’d know this is nothing. When it comes to this kind of thing—I’m not throwing any stones. Let’s leave it at that.”
That’s more than a joke. Theo’s quicksilver mind has never totally concealed how wild he can be. Even though he never brought his problems into our house, I knew Mom and Dad had heard rumors about Theo getting wasted and sometimes going AWOL for hours, even a day at a time. They’d mentioned his “drinking,” though really they were worried about substances much, much less legal than his occasional cans of PBR. Even Paul had sometimes quietly suggested that Theo should slow down.
To hell with Paul. Tonight Theo’s in control, and he’s taking care of me. His hand is warm against my bare back as I stare down at the dark water of the river, trying to regain my composure.
Then I glimpse my fragmented reflection in the river, broken into pieces by the rippling water.
“Do you think this is the last thing Dad saw?” I whisper. My mouth tastes horrible. My body is weak. This is what failure feels like. “The river, right in front
of him, like this?”
For a few long moments, Theo doesn’t answer. When he does, he sounds even wearier than I feel. “Don’t think about that.”
“I can’t help thinking about it.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t. Okay? Come on. Let’s get you home.”
“I hope it was. I hope Dad saw the river rushing up at him, and then—and then it was over.” My voice shakes. “Because that would mean he hit his head in the wreck, or when the car struck the water. Then he blacked out, or died right away. He wouldn’t have had time to be scared.” How long does it take to drown? Three minutes? Five? Long enough to be horrible, I feel sure. Long enough that I hope my dad never had to endure it. “It would be better if he never knew. Don’t you think?”
“Stop this.” Theo’s voice is rough; his hands slide around to my arms, and he grips me as if he’s scared I might throw myself over the rail. “Don’t do this to yourself. It doesn’t help.”
Theo’s wrong. I need to think about my father’s death. I can’t start grieving him yet; I need the pain to keep me angry. Sharp. Focused.
When we find Paul, the pain is what will give me the strength to finish him.
I pull one arm away from Theo so I can wipe my mouth. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
We walk the rest of the way back to Aunt Susannah’s apartment. When the elevator starts moving upward, it makes my knees buckle—there’s still a lot of champagne in my system. Theo catches one of my elbows, and I lean my head against his shoulder for the rest of the ride.
As we come to the door, he whispers, “Not too late for me to get a hotel room.”
“If we’re quiet we won’t wake up Aunt Susannah,” I say as I press my palm against the electronic lock; it recognizes me, clicks open. “Anyway, I doubt she’d care.”
And I need Theo with me now more than I ever have before.
In the darkness, the white-on-white apartment is instead a silvery shade of blue, as if it were made of moonlight. Everything seems surreal as I silently guide Theo down the hallway and into my bedroom, and shut the door, sealing us in together.
