June, this year
With nobody occupying the Lake Bluff house in this reality, I’m able to jump the front gate pretty easily, and walk across the gravel drive with no fear of being caught.
Down the side lawn, in front of the basement door, I remove my Contact lens and place it in the capsule in my pocket. I take a deep, cleansing breath.
Here I go again.
I pull hard, and the now-familiar rush of air and released suction washes over me. A moment ago, it had looked all dark behind this door.
But as I step into the vestibule, all the lights are on. People are actually down here, in the basement recreation room, chatting, laughing. Teenagers, watching a movie.
I can’t escape back the way I came. God knows what would happen if I did that. Back to Evan’s world, maybe? Into a new world where everything is backwards? I really don’t want to find out.
No — as the saying goes, the only way out is through. And in this case, up the stairs. And out the front door.
I’m gonna have to make a break for it.
I suck in some air through my nose, brace my shoulders as if for impact, and march into the recreation room.
Five or six late-teens, some of them distinctly bigger than me, stare up at me in shock, their movie forgotten. A bowl of popcorn spills.
To start with, nobody says anything, and I avoid all eye contact as I stride my way quickly across the room, stepping with a half-leap over a pair of gangly legs belonging to a bewildered guy on the floor. Then one of the girls screams, and I break into a run up the stairs.
“Who the fuck is that?”
“What the hell?”
“Moooommm!!! Daaaddd!!”
At the top, I don’t wait to look around the kitchen, as footsteps are starting to follow me.
I glimpse a pair of adults in my peripheral vision, somewhere near the kitchen counter, but I’m already running into the foyer.
I push out through the front door, sprint across the gravel, and bash the gate release button as hard as I can.
They’re already at the front door, shouting at me.
The gate starts to swing open and I squeeze through, sprinting down the street. I have no idea where my car might be, assuming I even have a car stashed nearby, but I just need to get away. I run for several minutes towards the wooded ravine, around several bends, until I’m sure I’m safe.
My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’ll come out of my mouth, and I lean over, head at my knees, gagging and panting.
Fuck.
That was a bad one. Even worse than that first family I came across.
I straighten up and pat down my clothes for keys and a phone.
That’s really weird.
I’m wearing a rough wool coat, even though it’s a hot summer evening. Below that are stained gray sweatpants with ragged edges, and a Cubs sweatshirt with a peeling logo. My sneakers are ill-fitting and caked with dirt.
No keys.
No phone.
No wallet, or ID.
Nothing in my coat pockets but two scrunched-up dollar bills, a single quarter, a couple of folded-up documents, and a UP-N train ticket.
My scalp is itching, and I run my nails — short and bitten though they are — through my hair.
It’s long. Like, really long, four inches past my shoulders. And slightly tangled, in places.
What the fuck?
What kind of condition am I in, in this world? Stained clothes, unkempt hair? Almost no money, and no house or car keys?
Jesus . . . Am I homeless?
I stand on the grass verge, bewildered. Across the street, a woman inside a fancy house is twitching her net curtains, watching me. Probably worried that I’m a criminal about to break into her home.
Given that I just broke into a house up the street and terrified a bunch of kids, she has every right to be nervous.
I move on, further along the tree-lined street, towards the ravine.
What to do? I can’t go back to the house right away and reset my reality — I won’t even make it to the basement door if I go back right now.
The family has probably called the cops.
I need to wait this one out a while before I can reset.
Maybe find a café where I can get something for two bucks.
Does anything only cost two bucks, these days? Maybe a soda.
Plus, there’s the small matter of how I told myself I would try to help the versions of me who are in trouble.
I can’t run out on this one without at least seeing if I can do something.
Can I? After all, I did tell myself that I’d try to leave each Millie’s life better than I found it, if there was anything I could do.
Like with the Millie who is married to Rufus — I have to hope that she returned to her body, and got out of her awful marriage.
I have to see if I can help. This Millie is still me, and I’d want help, if it could be given.
It’s a few miles to the commercial center of Lake Forest, and these sneakers are crappy, but at least they’re comfortable to walk in.
I can check to see if Bonnie’s store exists in this reality.
Probably not, given that I helped push the store into existence, and it’s hard to imagine this is a reality where Bonnie and I are friends.
She never would have let this happen to me.
How had I let this happen to me?
As I walk through the suburbs, there aren’t many people around and I can stay pretty inconspicuous. But when I get to Lake Forest’s small shopping district beside the train tracks, where it’s humming with activity, that’s when I notice it.
People avoiding me. Giving me a wide berth. Throwing side-eyes my way. Treating me like I have a contagious disease. The more I search strangers’ faces for some kindness, even a little sympathy, the more they blank me.
When I reach what would have been Bonnie’s store, I’m shaking, choking back tears.
And Bonnie’s store, as I feared, is not her store — it’s the bagel place.
At a loss for what else to do or where else to go, I step inside. At least there’s hardly anybody in here. I walk up to the counter, trying to take measured breaths to control my panic.
A mirror behind the counter reveals what everybody else has been seeing. My hair is long and frizzy, and my oversized, stained clothes look like they were grabbed out of a lost and found. My skin has a sickly gray pallor, and my make-up-free eyes are wide and fearful.
I probably would have side-stepped me, too, if I’d seen me on the street like this. But . . . I’m just a person, and not a bad one. I’m not contagious.
A sweet-looking woman comes out from the kitchen. Her eyebrows lift as she sees me, but she recovers quickly, and gives me a warm smile. The first I’ve gotten since I got to this world.
“What can I get you, ma’am?”
I hold up my two dollar bills. “What can I get for two bucks?” I ask, my voice small and wobbly. “It’s all I have.” Moisture is brimming on my lower eyelids.
She smiles again, even more kindly, and I just can’t take it. I break down into a torrent of tears on her counter. My whole body is wracked with sobs, and I can barely remain standing.
“Oh, hush, you poor thing,” she says, hurriedly coming round the counter to support me, laying a hand across my back.
“You just go ahead and sit here, honey, and I’ll get you something.
You put that money away.” She guides me to a table.
“You want some tea? I’ll bet you could use some tea. And something to eat?”
She doesn’t wait for me to answer, although I am hungry — I haven’t eaten since my Executive Club Lounge brunch before my flight at San Francisco airport, which was nine hours and one universe ago. “I’ll bring you a pastrami bagel. Sound good?”
I nod, wiping my wet face with a paper napkin. It comes away with a gray smear. “Thank you,” I manage, a fresh tear dripping down my nose. I blow it loudly on the napkin as she moves deftly into the open kitchen.
So. Much. Mucus.
The sweet lady gives me regular reassuring smiles as she bustles about the kitchen, and I begin to calm down. At least there are kind people in the world who will help someone down on their luck.
It’s warm in the café, with the evening sun streaming through the plate glass frontage. As I sip my tea and wait for my food to arrive, I tug off the wool coat, remembering the letters and documents I’d found in the pockets earlier. They should provide some clues as to my current situation.
I pull them out, unfolding the larger items, and lay them side by side on the table.
A typed document, seemingly an official letter of some kind, with a Chicago Women’s Shelter logo, the text circling a crude graphic of female forms holding hands.
Addressed to me, confirming that my application was successful and I have a confirmed place at the shelter assigned to me, in Dorm 5, from June 12 until June 30, after which my status will be reassessed.
Not completely homeless, then. A spot in a shelter isn’t nothing. It’s somewhere to go, at least.
What else? A return train ticket, dated today at 4:43 p.m., from the Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago, to Lake Bluff Station.
I can get back to the city. I can get myself to the women’s shelter, if I decide to do so, without any money. If I need to stay in this world overnight, or longer, at least there’s a bed for me.
What else? A hand-scrawled, torn-open envelope, addressed to me, at what looks like it could be some kind of rehab clinic, outside the city — Reseda Refuge Center in Pontiac.
In handwriting I haven’t seen in many years.
My mother’s.
My stomach lurches as I take in her looped scrawl on the envelope.
In my world, I’m in very little contact with Mom these days.
The occasional text, and annual birthday phone call, in which we make small talk about my job and why I’m not dating anyone, and about her (failing) online jewelry business.