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I wheel my luggage into the center of the empty space. “Wait a sec. Where’s my new bed?”
Heather shrugs. “It never arrived.”
You’ve got to be kidding. “What am I supposed to sleep on?”
“What do you want me to do? Call a mattress company.”
Crap. My phone. “I forgot to pack my phone.”
“Where’s the rest of your furniture? Where are you going to put your clothes?”
“At the moment, I’m more concerned with where I’m going to put me.” The couch did not look all that comfortable.
“It’ll probably come tomorrow. Are you hungry? What are you doing for dinner?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Do you eat Italian?”
“Sure.” Who doesn’t? “But I’d like to unpack first, if that’s okay,” I say, glancing dubiously at the miniscule closet.
“Obviously. I need to make us a reservation, anyway.”
At least I remembered my Hello Kitty alarm clock. I set the current time and the alarm for tomorrow. Then I pull my work clothes out of my bag and shake them out. I have no idea what I’m going to wear tomorrow for my first day, but whatever it is, it must not be wrinkled. I open the closet to find it…stark free of hangers. Wonderful. “Can I borrow some hangers?”
“I don’t have too many extras.”
Come on. “One? Two? I’ll buy my own tomorrow.”
She sighs and retreats into her bright orange room (which looks bigger than mine from this angle), and returns a few minutes later with three metal hangers, the kind you get at the dry cleaners. “I’ll need these back ASAP.”
I guess we won’t be sharing shoes just yet.
“So what’s your story?” she asks over our Caesar salads. We’re at a table by the window looking onto Lexington. Every time the door opens, a burst of cold air blows through my clothes.
“Which one?”
“Men-wise.”
This is one story I don’t feel like rehashing. “Had a boyfriend. Now I don’t.”
Her eyes gleam. “So you’re single.”
Single. I haven’t been single in years. The word feels foreign in my head, like another language. “I suppose so.”
“Good. I could desperately use a new single friend. All my girls have sold their souls. It’s the worst. Their men are their goddamn appendages. Tell me, why can’t a wife have dinner with her friends one night a week? Will her husband starve?”
“I don’t know.” Cam was actually pretty good about letting me have my own space. Although who knows if that would have changed if we lived together.
“Well, I do. Women let men control their lives. They don’t know how to create boundaries.” She draws a square in the air with her index finger. “They don’t know how to keep their own individuality. At least we’ll have each other. At least you didn’t bail. You wouldn’t believe the freaks I met trying to sublet this place. I wish I could keep the whole apartment on my own, but I’d be broke by Christmas. Leigh moving out totally screwed me, you know. What a bitch.”
If Leigh was a bitch, what does that make Heather? Our server arrives with our raviolis, and I shove a forkful into my mouth in case I’m suddenly tempted to answer my question out loud.
After dinner, I’m in my bedroom, staring at the apartments across the street, my sheets covering my makeshift bed (aka the couch cushions). It’s already eleven, but I doubt I’ll be able to doze off anytime soon.
First of all, it’s only nine my time. Second, I’m terrified of closing my eyes. I’ve been in denial all day, but I can’t ignore that every time I go to sleep, I seem to end up in an alternate reality. And since that isn’t possible, I must just be having weird dreams, right?
Maybe tonight I’ll dream about something normal, like failing a test in high school.
What if I wake up back in Arizona?
No. No, no, no. Must think positively. It won’t happen again! I will wake up in New York! I will…I will…I will…
My eyelids feel heavy. Yes, that’s what’s going to happen. I will wake up in New York. I will wake up back in New York. I will…
Blinding pain. Light.
“This week in sports…”
There’s a fire in my head! I blink twice and open my eyes. Shit.
“Morning, gorgeous,” Cam says. He’s sitting up in bed, shirtless, watching TV. “You must be zonked. It’s already ten.”
I try not to cry. I am going mad. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I tell the difference between dreaming and real life? Why is my brain playing tricks on me? I pull the covers back over my head.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nightmare,” I say.
“About what?”
About what, indeed. “A fire.” My brain is on fire.
“No fires here,” he promises.
I stay hidden until Cam eventually leaves to make us breakfast. “Omelet?” he asks from the kitchen. “Cheese and onion?”
“’Kay,” I answer. I am not coming out. I am temporarily crazy, so I will remain here until it passes. Like the flu.
My stomach starts to growl as the scent of onion and bacon wafts under the sheets. Yum. I doubt Heather is making me anything this good in my real life.
“Since you won’t come out for the chow, the chow is coming to you,” Cam says, placing a tray on my lap. Breakfast in bed. How sweet is that? “Eat, future wife,” he says. “You need your strength.”
I slither out from the sheets, lean up against the headboard and dig in. A girl’s gotta eat, even if she is asleep. “And why is that?” I ask, digging into my omelet.
“Because as soon as you finish, you have to call your parents. It’s not right.”
Yes! The man’s a genius! I’ll speak to my mom. She’ll remember our conversation yesterday. She’ll have to. Mothers know these things, right? They can sense if their children are losing their minds. I reach for the phone as I stuff another forkful of egg into my mouth. “I’m going to call her right now.”
He winks, hands me a napkin and sits down on the edge of the bed beside me. “There’s a good girl.”
I dial her room at her hotel, but she doesn’t answer. So I call her cell. “Mom? It’s me.”
“Oh, so nice of you to call,” she snaps. Do I detect a hard line of sarcasm in her voice? “Anything you’d care to tell me?”
“What are you talking about?” I take another bite of egg. A drop of ketchup smears onto the bedspread. Cam rolls his eyes and points to the napkin.
“Alice called me this morning.”
I smack Cam’s leg. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Why is it that I heard about my only daughter being engaged from someone other than my daughter? Huh?”
“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t have a chance to call you yesterday.” Was it yesterday? I hear a smash and then a clang. I think she just threw the phone. “Mom?” I wait for her to pick it back up.
“I felt pretty stupid, Gabrielle. Pretty damn stupid. She called me to discuss the wedding, and I didn’t even know there was a wedding! In fact I told her she was mistaken, since you were moving to New York—”
My heart races. “Exactly! Mom, I just spoke to you, remember? About the—” I lower my voice so maybe Cam won’t hear “—move?” I called her yesterday. And discussed it. She has to remember—she’s my mom. Moms have a sixth sense, don’t they?
“Yes, just last week you said—”
Last week? No, it was yesterday! Or do I mean today? “What day is it?”
“It’s Sunday. And it’s been an awful day. First I was woken up at 4:00 a.m.—”
My blood runs cold. “Because of a fire alarm.”
Silence. “How did you know that?”
“You told me! Yesterday!”
“How could I have told you yesterday when it just happened?”
“You told me. Don’t joke. You don’t remember?”
“How could I have told you? You’re pulling my leg. Was it on the wire? There better not have been a reporter there. I was in my bathrobe. Do you need a quote?”
“No.” My head hurts. How is this possible? I spoke to my mother and she told me about the fire alarm. Yesterday. Or today. Am I living each day twice?
“Anyway, Gabrielle, I’m upset with you. How you could get engaged is beyond me. How you could get engaged without telling me is despicable.”
This is way weird. My mom told me about the fire alarm yesterday. Yesterday. “I’ll call you later,” I tell her and hang up. I look up at Cam.
He’s looking at me strangely. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I murmur. “You know my mother. Sometimes she makes no sense.”
“Didn’t she want to talk to me? You know? Congratulations? Welcome to the family?”
“I’ll be right back.” I hurry to the bathroom. I close the door firmly and press my back against the door. My head pounds.
When did this craziness start? When was the beginning of my double life? I retrace my mental steps. Today is Sunday in Arizona. I’m engaged. Yesterday was Sunday in New York. I wasn’t engaged. The day before that was Saturday in Arizona. I woke up in the desert. We had brunch at Alice’s. The day before that was also Saturday in Arizona. I also woke up in the desert. I told Cam I didn’t want to marry him. I finished packing.
So what happened the night before that?
I shut my eyes firmly and try to visualize the night in question. The night that Cam proposed. The night we were lying in the back of the truck, watching the falling stars.
It can’t be. It can’t.
My wish? My wish. I wished I didn’t have to choose. That I could live both lives. Stay with Cam and move to New York. Have it all.
I sink to the bath mat. It’s not possible. Is it? How else can I explain what’s happening? How else can I rationalize how I’ve been living two separate lives?
I tell Cam I need to borrow his truck to return to my place to pick up a few last-minute things.
“Like what?”
“Clothes, makeup…not that I have anywhere to put any of it.”
“I’ll make some space.”
Instead of going to my apartment, I stop by the emergency room to see if there is something wrong with my head. Like a brain tumor. After a few hours, I finally get to see a doctor.
“Lately, I’ve been existing in two universes,” I tell him. “Is that a psychological condition?”
He rubs his chin, looks into my eyes with a flashlight and asks me if I’ve been under a lot of stress.
“A little,” I say.
“You look okay to me,” he says. “Try to get some sleep. Do you want antibiotics?”
“No thanks.” I decide not to tell him the whole story. It’s not like he’s going to believe me. If this is real and I’m not going bonkers, then someone else in the world must have gone through this, too. Someone who can tell me how to make it stop.
Back in my old apartment, I get comfy on the futon, laptop on my knees, and try to figure out what the hell has happened to me.
I Google multiple lives and get over forty-three million hits. There are mentions of reincarnation, cats and, inexplicably, real estate. But nothing about my weirdo predicament. I try alternative lives and get another thirty thousand hits. Most of these are scenarios of regret. About what could have/would have/should have been. Then I land on something called Many-Worlds Interpretation. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse, many-worlds is defined as: “…an interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes the existence of multiple universes, all of which are identical, but exist in possibly different states.” Different states? Does that mean parallel universes?
I keep reading and reading and my heart pounds louder with every click, with every article. “These different states are caused by a divergence that splits the universe into two.” I discover that there is a whole theory in quantum mechanics (whatever the hell that is) that believes that whenever there is a choice, or a possibility, reality splits into a new world. Therefore, there is a new independent world for every different possibility. Anything that could happen does happen. There are books and information about this theory all over the Internet. There are over twenty thousand hits on this on Google. People have done experiments on this theory. Real scientists.
Could this really have happened to me? Yes. Yeeessss. My life verged the morning after Cam proposed. I’m not crazy. I am not crazy! What happened to me has been written about! Wahoo! Perhaps there’s a support group?
I get slightly nervous when one of the sites says that communication between these distinct universes in not possible, because I am, in fact, communicating with myself.
I search for another hour without finding anything specific. Not that it would help. Even though there are thousands of pages about many worlds, they’re all theoretical. There aren’t any real-life examples. As though no one else has gone through anything like this.
No one except me.
I keep reading and searching and end up seeing a lot of phrases like wave function collapse and relative state, which make me wish I’d taken a science class in college. I spend the next three hours searching until my eyes are tired. I type in green light, headache and wish, but still, nothing.
