“Stop it, Ted.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just telling you how it is between me and Judith.”
“If you want to tell me you’ve had affairs, I can handle it. I wouldn’t even be immensely surprised. But not with Judith. That’s too absurd. Nothing’s ever certain in this world, but one thing I’m positive of is that Judith doesn’t have any lovers. She and Ron are still like honeymooners. She must be the most faithful woman in the world.”
“Ron?”
“Ron Wolff,” Celia said. “Judith’s husband.”
He turned away and stared through the window. Hollowly he said, “In the world I live in, Judith is single and so am I, and she’s at Rockefeller University, and I don’t know any Ron Wolffs. Or any Celias. And I don’t do marketing research. I don’t know anything about marketing research. I’m forty-two years old and I went to Harvard and I majored in art history, and I was married to someone named Beverly once for a little while and it was a very bad mistake that I didn’t intend to make twice, and I feel sorry as hell for spoiling your vacation and screwing up your life but I simply don’t know who you are or where you came from. Do you believe any of that?”
“I believe that you need a great deal of help. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to see that you get it, Ted. Whatever has happened to you can be cured, I’m sure, with love and patience and time and money.”
“I don’t think I’m crazy, Celia.”
“I didn’t use that word. You’re the one who talked of losing your mind. You’ve had some kind of grotesque mental accident, you’ve undergone a disturbance of—”
“No,” Hilgard said. “I don’t think it’s anything mental at all. I have another theory now. Suppose that in front of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl there’s a mystery place, a—a whirlpool in the structure of the universe, let’s say—a gateway, a vortex, whatever you want to call it. Thousands of people walk through at and nothing ever happens to them. But I was the victim of a one-in-a-trillion shot. I went to Mexico in my world and the Ted Hilgard of your world went there at the same time, and we were both at Teotihuacan at the same time, and some immense coincidence brought us both to the whirlpool place simultaneously, and we both went through the gateway and changed places. It could only have happened because our two worlds were touching and he and I were identical enough to be interchangeable.”
“That does sound crazy, Ted.”
“Does it? Not as crazy as any other theory: Things are different in this world. You, Judith, Ron. The Updike book has a red jacket here. I’m in marketing research instead of art. The museum has a different kind of fountain. Maybe it costs twenty cents to mail a letter instead of eighteen. Everything’s almost the same, but not quite, and the longer I look, the more differences I see. I have a complete and vivid picture in my mind of the world on the other side of the gateway, down to the littlest details. That can’t be just a mental aberration. No aberration is that detailed. How much does it cost to mail a letter?”
“Twenty cents.”
“In my world it’s eighteen. You see? You see?”
“I don’t see anything,” Celia said tiredly. “If you can delude yourself into thinking you’re entirely different from who you are, you can also very sincerely believe that the postage rate is eighteen cents. They keep changing it all the time anyway. What does that prove? Listen, Ted, we’ll go back to New York. We’ll try to get you help for this. I want to repair you. I love you. I want you back, Ted. Do you understand that? We’ve had a wonderful marriage. I don’t want it vanishing like a dream.”
“I’m so damn sorry, Celia.”
“We’ll work something out.”
“Maybe. Maybe.”
“Let’s get some sleep now. We’re both exhausted.”
“That’s a fine idea,” he said. He touched his hand lightly to her forearm and she stiffened, as though anticipating his caress to be an initiation of lovemaking. But all he was doing was clutching at her as at a rescue line at sea. He squeezed her arm briefly, let go, rolled to the far side of the bed. Tired as he was, he found it hard to fall asleep, and he lay alert a long time. Once he heard her quietly sobbing. When sleep came to him, it was deep and nearly dreamless.
Hilgard would have liked to roam Oaxaca for a few days, enjoying its clear air, lovely old streets, and easy, unhurried pace, but Celia was insistent that they start at once on the task of restoring his memory. They flew back to Mexico City on the 11:00 A.M. flight. At the airport Celia learned that there was a flight to New York in mid-afternoon, but Hilgard shook his head. “We’ll stay over in Mexico City tonight and take the first plane out in the morning,” he said.
“Why?”
“I want to go back to Teotihuacan.”
She gasped. “For Christ’s sake, Ted!”
“Humor me. I won’t leave Mexico without making certain.”
“You think you’re just going to walk back into another world?”
“I don’t know what I think. I just want to check it out.”
“And you expect the other Ted Hilgard to come strolling out from behind a pyramid as you vanish?”
She was starting to sound distraught. Calmly he said, “I don’t expect anything. It’s just an investigation.”
“What if you do? What if you vanish into that whirlpool of yours, and he doesn’t come out, and I’m left without either of you? Answer me that, Ted.”
“I think you’re beginning to believe my theory—”
“Oh, no, Ted, no. But—”
“Look,” he said, “if the theory’s crazy, then nothing will happen. If it isn’t, maybe I’ll go back where I belong and the right me will return to this world. Nobody knows. But I can’t go to New York until I’ve checked. Grant me that much. I want you to humor me, Celia. Will you do that?”
In the end she had to yield, of course, and they checked their baggage at the airport and booked a hotel room for the night and a flight for the morning, and then they hired a cab to take them to Teotihuacan. The driver spoke little English and it was hard to make him understand that they did not intend to spend all afternoon at the pyramids, but only half an hour or less. That seemed unthinkable to him: why would anyone, even two rich gringos, bother driving an hour and a half each way for a half-hour visit? But finally he accepted the idea. He parked at the southernmost parking lot, near the museum, and Celia and Hilgard waked quickly across the road to the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. His throat was dry and his heart was pounding, and she looked equally tense and drawn. He tried to retrace his steps exactly. “I came through this way,” he said, “and just around this corner, as I got my first glimpse of the facade—”
“Ted, please don’t. Please.”
“Do you want to try? Maybe you’ll go through it after him.”
“Please. Let’s not.”
“I have to,” he said. Frowning, he made his way along the paved walkway, paused as the facade and its fierce serpent-snouts emerged in sight, caught his breath, plunged onward, waiting for the moment of vertigo, that sensation as of a highly localized earthquake. Nothing. He looked back. Celia, pale, grim, arms folded, was staring at him. Hilgard returned and tried it again. “Maybe I was just six inches off that time. A little to the left—” Nothing. Nothing the third time, or the fourth. A few other tourists passed by, staring oddly at him. Back and forth he went, covering every inch. The pathway was narrow; there were only a few possible routes. He felt no vertigo. No gateway in space opened for him. He did not tumble trough into his rightful world.
“Please, Ted. Enough.”
“Once more.”
“This is embarrassing. You look so damned obsessive.”
“I want to go where I belong,” Hilgard said.