And until he understood what had happened to him, he was terrified of revealing his sense of displacement from what he still regarded as his real life. Luckily she seemed not to be in an amorous mood. She gave him a quick kiss, a light friendly embrace, and rolled over, pressing her rump against him. He lay awake a long time, listening to her soft breathing and feeling weirdly adulterous in this bed with another man’s wife. Even though she was Mrs. Ted Hilgard, all the same—all the same—
He ruled out the stroke theory. It left too much unexplained. Sudden insanity? But he didn’t feel crazy. The events around him were crazy; but inside his skull he still seemed calm, orderly, precise. Surely true madness was something wilder and more chaotic. If he had not suffered any disruption of his brain or some all-engulfing delusional upheaval, though, what was going on? It was as though some gateway between worlds had opened for him at Teotihuacan, he thought, and in that instant of dizziness he had stepped through into the other Ted Hilgard’s universe, and that other Hilgard had stumbled past him into his own world. That sounded preposterous. But what he was experiencing was preposterous, too.
In the morning Celia said, “I’ve got a solution to the argument over Cuernavaca versus Guadalajara. Let’s go to Oaxaca instead.”
“Wonderful!” Hilgard cried. “I love Oaxaca. We ought to phone the Presidente Convento to see if they’ve got a room—that’s such a splendid hotel, with those old courtyards and—”
She was staring strangely at him. “When were you in Oaxaca, Ted?”
Hesitantly he said, “Why—I suppose—long ago, before we were married—”
“I thought this was the first time you’d ever been in Mexico.”
“Did I say that?” His cheeks were reddening. “I don’t know what I could have been thinking of. I must have meant this was our first trip to Mexico. I mean, I barely remember the Oaxaca trip, years and years and years ago, but I did go there, just for a weekend once—”
It sounded terribly lame. A trip that was only a vague memory, though the mere mention of Oaxaca had made him glow with recollections of a lovely hotel? Celia had registered the inconsistency, but she chose not to probe it. He was grateful for that. But he knew she must be adding up all the little contradictions and false notes in the things he was saying, and sooner or later she was apt to demand an explanation.
Within an hour they had everything arranged, and that afternoon they flew down to Oaxaca. As they checked in at the hotel, Hilgard had a sudden horrified fear that the clerk, remembering him from two years ago, would greet him by name, but that did not happen. Sitting by poolside before dinner, Hilgard and Celia leafed through their guidebooks, planning their Oaxaca excursions—a drive to the ruins at Monte Albán, a trip out to the Mitla site, a visit to the famous Saturday morning market—and once again he found it necessary to pretend little knowledge of a place he knew quite well. He wondered how convincing he was. They had dinner that night at a splendid Basque restaurant on a balcony overlooking the main plaza, and afterward they strolled back slowly to their hotel. The night air was soft and fragrant, and music floated toward them from the plaza bandstand. When they were halfway back, Celia reached for his hand. He forced himself not to pull away, though even that innocent little contact between them made him feel monstrously fraudulent. At the hotel he suggested stopping in the bar for a nightcap, but she shook her head and smiled. “It’s late,” she said softly. “Let’s just go upstairs.” At dinner they had had a carafe of sangria and then a bottle of red Mexican wine, and he felt loose-jointed and tranquil, but not so tranquil that he did not fear the confrontation that lay just ahead. He halted a moment on the landing, looking toward the glittering pool. By moonlight the heavy purple clusters of bougainvillea climbing the ancient stone walls of the courtyard seemed almost black. Huge hibiscus blossoms were strewn everywhere on the lawn and strange spiky flowers rose from a border of large bizarre succulents. Celia touched his elbow. “Come,” she said. He nodded. They went into their room. She turned on a lamp and began to undress. Hilgard’s eyes met hers and he saw a host of expressions cross her face in an instant—affection, desire, apprehension, perplexity. She knew something was wrong. Give it a try, Hilgard told himself fiercely. Fake it. Fake it. He ran his hand timidly along her hips, her thighs. No.
“Ted?” she said. “Ted, what’s going on?”
“I can’t explain. I think I’m losing my mind.”
“You’ve been so strange. Since yesterday.”
He took a deep breath. “Yesterday is the first time I ever laid eyes on you in my life.”
“Ted?”
“It’s true. I’m not married. I run a gallery at 60th near Second. I came to Mexico alone last Thursday and I was staying at the Presidente.”
“What are you saying, Ted?”
“Yesterday at Teotihuacan I started to walk past the Temple of Quetzalcoatl and I felt a peculiar sensation in my forehead and since then I seem to be somebody else of the same name. I’m sorry, Celia. Do I sound incoherent? I don’t think I do. But I know I’m not making any real sense.”
“We’ve been married nine years. We’re partners in a marketing research firm, Hilgard & Hilgard, on 57th and Sixth.”
“Marketing research. How strange. Do we have children?”
“No. We live in a co-op on 85th, and in the summers we—oh, Ted! Ted?”
“I’m so sorry, Celia.”
Her eyes in the moonlit darkness were fixed, bright, terrified. There was the acrid smell of fear-sweat in the room, hers, his. She said huskily, “You don’t remember any of our life together? Not a thing? In January we went to San Francisco. We stayed at the Stanford Court and it rained all the time and you bought three ivory carvings at a little place across the street from Ghirardelli Square. Last month we got the contract for the Bryce account and you said, ‘Fine, let’s celebrate by going to Mexico. We’ve always wanted to go to Mexico and there’s no better time than this.’ In April we have a big presentation to do in Atlanta, and in May—Ted? Nothing. Ted?”
“Nothing. It’s all a blank.”
“How scary that is. Hold me, Ted.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t remember us in bed either?”
“The first time I saw you was two o’clock yesterday afternoon.”
“We’ll have to fly home tomorrow. There’s got to be some kind of therapy—a drug treatment, or maybe even shock—we’ll talk to Judith Rose first thing—”
Hilgard felt a shiver of surprise. “Who?”
“You don’t remember her either?”
“That’s just it. I do. I know a Judith Rose. Tall handsome olive-skinned woman with curly black hair, professor of neurobiology at Rockefeller University—”
“At New York Medical,” Celia said. “All the rest is right. You see? You haven’t forgotten everything! You still remember Judith!”
“She’s at Rockefeller,” said Hilgard. “I’ve known her four or five years. She and I were supposed to take this trip to Mexico together, but at the last moment she had to cancel because she got tied up on a grant proposal, and it looked like she’d be busy with that for weeks and weeks, so we decided that I would come down here by myself, and—”
“What are you saying?” Celia asked, amazed.
“Why, Judith and I are lovers, Celia.”
She began to laugh. “Oh, no! No, that’s too much. You and Judith—”
“We both see other people. But Judith has the priority. Neither one of us is the marrying sort, but we have an excellent relationship of its kind, and—”