1 #7
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Twenty-five.”
(But did time move differently in the other place?
If there’s more than one universe, why would we assume that time moves identically from one to the next?
It seemed equally possible to me that an hour had passed since she left there and no one in that other world had yet realized she was gone, or that a century had passed and her children were dead. I would never say this aloud.)
“And they’re safe,” I said. “You were pulled away from them into a bad timeline, but your children, they got to stay. They’re safe in . . . wherever they are. The other world.”
She nodded again, blinked, and took a long, wavering breath. Steadying herself. “Yes,” she said.
“Nico,” I said, “I’m glad you came here. I know it was an accident, but I’m glad you’re here.”
When she looked at me, I saw something in her eyes I hadn’t expected. She was strangely peaceful.
“I realized something today,” she said. “I was walking in the park, and I was thinking about Ari Soriano, of all people.”
I blinked.
“Of all people,” I said. My voice may have been a little strained.
“You know I spent some time with her, after the explosion.”
“You told me you mostly argued the whole time.”
“That’s true,” she said. “I was thinking about one of the arguments. The last argument, the one that ended any possibility of friendship. She made a comment I didn’t like, something to the effect of having lost a world too, because her country collapsed.
I took offence. I said, you and three hundred sixty million other people, you think that makes you special?
I shouted at her. I left and never saw her again.
But just now, when I was out walking, I realized she was right. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I think if you live long enough,” Nico said, “you become a migrant from another timeline. There’s the world you learn to navigate as you enter adulthood, and then that world slips away from you by degrees, and after a while there’s nothing left of it, but you’re still here. That’s what I mean.”
“You’re saying if you live long enough, your life turns into sci-fi?
” I didn’t like to think about getting older.
I’d hated being an adolescent but I was afraid of adulthood, and I wished to stay for a moment in the in-between.
I was desperate to change the subject. “I can’t bring back everything you lost,” I said, “but I have something for you. Hold on a moment.”
I slipped quickly into the guest bedroom. I closed the door behind me, and stopped, listening. Ari was speaking softly in the dark.
“Eddie,” I heard her say, very quietly, “Eddie, my love, you’re finally here.”
“It’s me,” I whispered. “It’s Sebastian.
” But she didn’t respond. I had a creeping awareness just then that the silence emanating from the bed was too still, too deep.
I took a long breath, and realized as I did so that I was the only person breathing in this space.
There was a faint scent that I recognized, that hadn’t been here before: cigar smoke and cedar.
It was as if Eddie Kalisa had just passed through the room.
I grabbed the painting quickly and went back out to the living room.
My heart was beating too fast. I closed my eyes, trying to gather myself.
Nico, thank god, didn’t notice: she was gazing at the mural, that almost photo-real rendering of a garden that was either unimaginably distant or just on the other side of a gauze curtain.
There were times in the years that followed when I looked back to that night and recognized a hinge moment, to borrow a turn of phrase I’d heard Ari use.
There was my life before Ari Soriano died in Nico’s apartment, and my life afterward.
No, that break point can be isolated further: there was the moment before I called Obie, before he came with two of the other men who ran the neighbourhood and made the body disappear, and the moment that followed.
Or the moments after they took the body away—Ari Soriano absolutely could not be found dead in Nico’s apartment, of that I was certain—but before Obie’s boss called me, that dreaded and expected Since we did this little thing for you, Sebastian, perhaps you’d be so kind as to meet us tomorrow to discuss working with us.
All of it was already in motion when I stepped out of the bedroom with the painting, but for now there was only this: Nico turning to look at me, the way her eyes went wide when she saw Swan Dive in my hands.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, “how did you get this?” I sat in the other armchair, and handed the painting to her. There were tears in her eyes. She took Swan Dive from me, ran her fingertips lightly over the oil-paint brushstrokes.
“I bought it back from her,” I said. “I thought you could hang it in your apartment, and I’ll visit it here.”
“Thank you,” Nico said softly. “Thank you so much.” I’d wanted her to believe me but it was painful when she did, because what I saw in her face was a belief in a version of myself that didn’t exist. She thought I was a better person than I was.
In a moment I would have to tell her, I would have to make the call to someone who could make Ari’s body disappear, I would be sucked into a long grey vortex of crime and favours that I already knew would end badly, but not yet, not yet: for now I could just sit with Nico for a moment, this woman who had been my only parent, and observe her happiness.
“Happy birthday,” I said.