Chapter 11
Mallory
Friday Afternoon
One Day After the Outing
Mallory’s phone buzzes. Mid-stride, she swipes to switch from her search engine to her messages.
Ilena: You’re not in your office.
A question in statement form that makes the inherent judgment more pronounced.
Ilena: We need to talk.
Mallory’s grip on the soft-sided carrier tightens. She actually should be at the office by now. But her decidedly Barney-colored
jumpsuit garners attention. In terms of evidence, the Koozie may be circumstantial, but if there was an outing here last night,
she couldn’t very well show up in the same outfit. Especially the outfit that leaves the fading, though still visible, handprint
on her arm for all to see.
After the car service had dropped Ilena and Aubrey off at AIM, Mallory continued on to “her” condo on the far side of Harvard Square.
She entered with a level of trepidation, but the changes were more subtle than the ones at Grayson’s, less evocative of a personality adjustment and more in line with what she assumes are current trends.
Capiz honeycomb chandelier instead of a linen drum pendant, absurdly bright colored tanks and blouses instead of sleek grays, whitewashed farmhouse floors instead of wide pine planks.
Thankfully no evidence of another living being—not a partner, not a furry pet, not even a goldfish.
She hurriedly changed, leaving Harley in his carrier, unwilling to turn her well-manicured condo over to a dog. And yet as
she began her walk to AIM, she realized that having him in the office wouldn’t be much better, especially since she’s the
one who nixed the pets-in-the-office proposal a couple of years ago.
She texts Ilena an On my way. Traffic traverses universes! and slides her ringer off.
She increases her pace, resisting the aroma of coffee from two of her favorite shops and one she hasn’t seen before that’s
trying a bit too hard with its 1980s decor. She longs to stop for a takeaway cup, rich and strong enough to make her dizzy,
but between her phone and the furball, she doesn’t have enough hands.
She closes the tab on The New York Times, which exists here too. But it matters less if this place has the same president and climate change and reality star scandals
and more what this place is.
She needs that coffee. She backtracks, crosses the street, and slips into the ’80s café, cringing at the “take one, leave
one” neon plastic bracelets at the register.
When her order is ready, she clutches the cutesy Garfield mug and sits on a stool by the window, Harley at her feet.
She starts by typing in “A place that is the same but different,” which leads her to “the weirdness of Austin” and “islands that are really peninsulas” and “how to make your au pair feel at home,” but also to what had been rattling around in her brain since the three of them sat on Grayson’s couch, ten feet from his corpse, with memories of the lives they led that were slightly off from the ones they appeared to be in.
She couldn’t remember the term, but now, here it is: parallel universes.
One of the top hits is a link to the movie Sliding Doors, and it gives her an odd sort of comfort to know that not just the movie but Gwyneth exists here. (Sans Goop, which makes
her an ideal asset to entice to AIM.)
A fact that Mallory files away just in case. Even amid all this, whatever “this” is, Mallory’s brain never fully disconnects
from her career. She refuses to apologize for being ambitious, for wanting her company to succeed, for the hope that AIM being
on the morning show was happening at home. She’s worked half her life for this, and she deserves it. They deserve it. And
maybe it will be the key to changing Ilena’s mind about leaving AIM. Because one thing The Shandy Shane Show made clear is that Mallory can and will take AIM public without Ilena. The thought punches a hole in her heart, same as the
thought of taking AIM public here. Because here isn’t home. Here is where Grayson Fields is dead.
She steadies her racing pulse and types “theories for parallel universes” into her browser. She watches the links pop up and
begins skimming articles, her heart pounding in time with her scrolling, her brain hurting with every article she attempts
to read. By the time she sets down her phone and drinks her untouched coffee, it’s long past cold. She blinks, trying to reinvigorate
her tired eyes. She searches the tote she grabbed at Grayson’s for drops and finds a pair of cat-eyed reading glasses. Oh,
for Chrissake. Her oval face is entirely the wrong shape for cat eyes. Still, she puts them on, and instantly the shaky letters
sharpen. Is it possible that this Mallory is older?
Feeling superior physically, Mallory wonders which of them is lacking mentally. Trying to make sense of all this is about to give her an aneurysm.
She’s been here nearly an hour. Ilena’s going to send out the National Guard, or at the very least, Noreen. Noreen. Mallory better have Noreen here, or a Noreen equivalent. As Harley wriggles inside the carrier, Mallory finishes her cold
coffee, tucks her phone in her bag, and hits the sidewalk.
She follows her mental grid of the city streets and chews on “Schrodinger’s cat” and “Copenhagen interpretation” and “Einstein’s
wormholes” and “collapsing wave functions.” Terms and theories that make her long for Jonah’s science fiction–honed mind.
She should have paid more attention when he recounted his latest geeky read.
Still, no matter her level of comprehension, everything she scrolled through points to the same conclusion: parallel universes
are theoretically possible. Controversial, complicated, for sure, but not solely the stuff of science fiction books and movies.
As much as, logically, the multiverse theory screams otherwise.
How is this physics and math and not woo-woo crap? That every time a decision is made, the outcome not taken branches off
into a different reality? Every time. That means the universe, Mallory’s universe—the one where Grayson’s alive and her wardrobe doesn’t appear to come from a
cruise ship’s gift shop—has split and is still splitting into near-infinite alternatives, each slightly or wildly different
from one another. That’s what this is. But then again, it can’t be what this is. Every article she read and those she simply scanned and searched for terms like collide or meet or cross said the same thing: they shouldn’t be able to intersect.
But what if they can?
What if they have?
Is there a third and a fourth and a fifth Mallory about to approach an animal shelter with hands shaking from having possibly, probably, potentially just committed intentional or unintentional murder?
At her feet, Harley gives that same small whimper, and Mallory bends before the carrier. Her trembling fingers unzip the flap.
What if the thing has to go? She can’t let him soil himself in there. The shelter might not take a dog with crap matted into
its fur.
The dog creeps forward, and Mallory’s fingertips graze its soft hair, not fur. He tilts his head to look at her, and she reaches
into the carrier’s side pocket for the bag of dried minnows. The security guard, Archie, had given the treats to her as the
three of them left Grayson’s building, Mallory quelling the tremble in her voice at the image of Grayson underneath that blanket.
She nodded along as if dogs eating fish was something she knew, otherwise she might have undermined her whole dog-sitting
story.
Harley sniffs the stinky creature but doesn’t move to eat it. He pads closer to Mallory. She never thought puppy dog eyes
were real until this moment.
“It’s temporary,” she says.
Harley places a paw on her leg, and all Mallory can see is Grayson’s loafer, his leg bent in a way it couldn’t possibly be.
But was.
Because he was dead. Most likely of anaphylactic shock.
Yet the question is how that could have happened.
She both wants to know and doesn’t want to know.
Because she’d have never put out the crackers by mistake.
Sure, sure, because of her position as CEO of a health and wellness company, but also because of what nearly happened a year ago.
The night of the launch party for “How Wide’s My Smile,” the night she and Grayson went to that vegan restaurant.
The server had been new. Rather disturbing to wonder what he must have thought it referred to, he hadn’t known the chef’s reference of “Brazilians” in the amuse-bouche of a shot glass of carrot soup meant “Brazilian nuts.” Thankfully, the host who’d taken the reservation and noted Grayson’s nut allergy had intervened right before Grayson lifted the glass.
Grayson didn’t carry an EpiPen. Hubris or stupidity or both. He could have died. While Mallory watched. They hadn’t slept
together yet, that would happen hours later, but the image had curdled the launch party cocktail in her stomach.
After, she had Noreen poll the entire company on allergies, each one noted in a searchable database and listed on foods served
at every AIM event since. And that day, Mallory swore off the nut crackers that had once been her snack bag staple.
Her breaths shorten, echoing in her ears, and she wants to focus on the sound. If she focuses on the sound, she’s not focusing
on Grayson, her hands on his cold skin, her fingertips on his lifeless eyelids, his palm on her warm inner thigh, their synchronous
fist pumps when they got their first valuation for AIM. All replaced by their clipped tones at the outing. He was the first
investor who had truly believed in her. They are so very alike. Were so very alike.
“It’s temporary,” she says again.
Screw the internet. If these worlds intersected once, they can intersect again, which means she’ll be back in her world with
Grayson alive and everything will be as it was. Maybe not good, but also not this.