Finally, back in my room, I locked the dead bolt. I even thought about dragging a chair to the door to make sure it wouldn’t open. With my heart pounding, I paced back and forth between the walls, unable to stop, unable to calm down. When the phone rang, I jumped. I let it go, and eventually the ringing stopped, but only seconds later, it rang again. This time, I picked up the receiver without announcing myself. I waited nervously to hear who was on the other end, and I exhaled in relief when I heard Tai’s voice.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“I tried you several times and didn’t get an answer. I was worried. I asked the desk people to keep an eye out for when you got back.”
“I was out,” I told her, without going into detail.
“Do you need anything?”
“No. Thanks.”
Tai was quiet for a while, breathing softly into the phone. “Well, I’m almost done for the day. I’ll be heading home soon. The team has everything under control for the Eve Brier event. Our Lady of Infinite Worlds. She’s speaking in the ballroom tonight.”
“I remember.”
“You sure you’re okay? You sound tense.”
I was more than tense. My life was breaking down like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but I couldn’t tell her why. I couldn’t even explain it to myself.
“I’m fine, Tai. You’ve had a long day. Go home.”
“Okay.”
But she didn’t hang up.
“Do you want some company?” she went on after a brief pause. “There’s nothing but Lean Cuisine and Prime Video waiting in my apartment. I still have that thank-you bottle of pinot the Walkers gave us. I could bring it up, and we could talk. Or not talk. If you want to just sit there and drink and look at the lake, we could do that, too.”
“Not tonight.”
“Look, I know you may feel like it’s better to be alone, but that’s not always the best thing. Sometimes it helps to have a friend there with you. Someone warm, someone who cares.”
As if her meaning wasn’t clear enough, she made it even clearer.
“I can stay all night if you want, Dylan. As a friend. That’s all. I really have no expectations. But if you need to be close to someone, I’m here.”
I was tempted. Not because I’d ever been attracted to Tai, not because I wanted sex, but because I liked the idea of having a real person with me, keeping me sane. I was afraid of being alone and of what would happen to me next.
Listening to her, I also felt like a fool for missing her intentions. Karly had been right, as she usually was. I’d been telling Tai my secrets for months because it felt safe, but there was nothing safe about it.
“I appreciate the offer,” I told her over the phone, “but I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
Her disappointment was palpable. “Well, the door is always open, Dylan. I mean that. If you change your mind, call me. Or come by my apartment. I don’t want you feeling like you have to be by yourself.”
“Thanks, Tai.”
I hung up the phone. The hotel room was quiet, just the rumbling white noise of the fan blowing warm air. I’d turned up the heat, but I was still cold, because my clothes were soaking wet. I peeled them off and stood shivering in the darkness. I’d bought a bottle of bourbon in the gift shop earlier, and I opened it and poured a glass, neat. The amber liquid trailed fire down my throat into my stomach, and the warmth spread. I took it to the window and stared out at the city, where night had fallen. In the distance, I could see the gold lights of the fountain, the glow of waterfront condominium towers, and the kaleidoscope of the huge Ferris wheel out on Navy Pier.
Where was he?
Who was he, this man that my mind had conjured? Was he down in that darkness, staring up at my window?
I didn’t know what was happening to me. I wanted my old life back the way it was. I wanted Karly, naked like me, her skin pressed up against me from behind, her chin on my shoulder. If I closed my eyes, I could feel her there. I could hear her whispering to me. I would turn around, and we would kiss, and our eyes would glisten with desire, and we would tumble onto the bed and melt into each other with breathless, urgent laughter.
We’d had so many moments like that.
We would never have them again.
I drank more bourbon, but my body was still cold. When my third glass was empty, I went into the bathroom and ran a scalding-hot bath for myself. As the tub filled, I slid down into it, the hot water lapping at my skin. I let it go as high as it could, and then I sank down below the surface. I immersed my whole body, and the hot, clean water became black as night, and the slimy mud oozed over my skin, and my wife screamed for me to save her.
Dylan, come find me! I’m still here!
If I drowned myself, I’d be with my wife again. But my body betrayed me. As I ran out of air, I threw myself upward. My face burst from the water, and I gasped for breath, gagging and coughing. I opened the tub drain and listened to the loud, sucking slurp as the water went down. When the tub was empty and I was cold again, I finally climbed out and went back into the bedroom.
I needed to talk to someone about all of this. About my grief and my hallucinations. I needed answers.
I realized there was someone in the hotel who could help. Dr. Eve Brier — author, philosopher, and psychiatrist — was downstairs, and according to Tai, she knew me, even though I didn’t know her. I wanted to understand how that was possible.
“Don’t you know her?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s strange. She told me she picked the hotel on your recommendation.”
I got dressed again. I put on a navy blazer and black slacks, playing the role of hotel events manager. I made sure I was shaved, and I brushed my teeth and popped a few mints in my mouth to cover the smell of the bourbon. Then I headed to the elevators.
The hotel’s gold ballroom had a narrow second-story balcony that made a U around the palace-like space. From up there, people could lean on the elaborately carved railings and watch the wedding parties dance below them, or pretend that they were in powdered wigs and part of the court of Louis XIV. I let myself onto the walkway through a staff entrance and stayed discreetly at the back. No one was up here tonight. The action was below, in the darkened ballroom, with several hundred guests paying rapt attention to the woman illuminated on the stage.
Dr. Brier was dressed completely in black. Black pantsuit, black heels. In the stark spotlight, her head looked almost disconnected from her body, and her hands fluttered like flying birds as she gesticulated to the crowd. Her highlighted hair swirled as she walked from one side of the stage to the other. I could see the reflecting glint of her golden eyes like two faraway jewels. Her voice, through the microphone, had a mellifluous quality, the kind of singsong sweetness that could hypnotize you or seduce you, depending on what she wanted. It worked its magic. I didn’t think I’d ever heard our ballroom as drop-dead quiet as it was at that moment. Dr. Brier had these hundreds of people holding their breath.
“Think about what this means,” she told them, drawing out her words with a pregnant pause. “If we accept the Many Worlds theory as true, then our universe is constantly replicating itself, atom by atom, moment by moment, choice by choice. Every possible outcome of an event exists in its own separate world. We are all inching along on a single, solitary, fragile branch of a tree that grows infinitely larger with each nanosecond. As I leave the ballroom tonight, I turn left, but I also turn right. I go home, and I don’t go home. I kiss my husband, and I slap his face, and I have sex with him, and I stick a knife in his heart. In my consciousness, I only experience one of those outcomes, because I’m on one branch of the tree. But the Many Worlds theory tells us that all of those things happen in parallel universes.”