Chapter 15 Entanglement #9
He laughed. Their understanding was so effortless that she wanted to grab him, take him back—and she might have done it, had someone else not appeared in the doorway.
“You must be Laurel,” the woman said. “I’m Angela.”
Her hair was dark and glossy. One lithe arm extended forward. Laurel felt as though her insides had been excavated.
“My colleague,” said Eli, who looked distressed; he clearly hadn’t known that she had followed him.
Laurel had no reason to resent Angela. Technically, she and Eli had broken up; if anything, Laurel might seem threatening to Angela. Still, she felt venomous.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said. “I should get back to the party.” And then, because of Angela’s mole, which Laurel hated, as it made her even prettier, she added, “I’ll see you on Saturday, Eli?”
All she wanted now was to go back to the hotel. Laurel found Gloria in the living room, wearing a dress she’d made herself: yellow velvet, with wide batwing sleeves. She was drinking something lavender out of a coupe glass.
“Imagine living here,” Gloria said, and Laurel did not tell her that one day, she just might.
—
The conference passed in a parade of papers and poster boards, coffees and cocktail hours, hand-shaking and sad pastries and, every so often, a presentation so intriguing that word of it traveled.
Laurel, Tess, and Gloria had been scheduled for the conference’s largest venue, and when they entered, almost every seat was full.
Laurel heard gasps as they played footage of the Spark.
Their conclusions didn’t go unchallenged, but even the most skeptical observers acknowledged that the data was compelling.
Afterward, many rose for a standing ovation.
By Sunday evening, Laurel was haggard, and she decided to leave the parties to people Gloria’s age.
From a bus shelter at the top of Lone Mountain, she caught the 1 California to her hotel.
The conference had arranged a block of rooms at the St. Francis.
Laurel took the famous glass elevator upstairs, watching Union Square grow smaller as she rose.
Laurel unzipped her boots and took a miniature vodka bottle from the minibar.
The image of Eli and Angela tormented her.
It was one thing to set him free in theory; the reality was wrenching.
Tomorrow, Laurel would see him at the beach, and she still didn’t know what she’d say.
It was not that she thought they’d made the wrong choice but that the heartache of it kept unfolding.
Yet her gut still told her to continue. Laurel thought of the day when she and Eli unconceived Silas—how they met at home, propelled by instinct—and wondered if these were more of the Duoverse’s workings, just as it had pushed her toward Christopher.
Was she exercising her own free will? The question made her feel rebellious, and more confused than ever.
She showered and changed into her pajamas.
Outside, the moon looked staticky with haze.
Laurel sat at the desk to check her email.
There was only one new message. It had come from the repair shop where she’d sent the other Laurel’s camera.
The technician apologized; Laurel’s order had been buried beneath an avalanche of malfunctioning MacBooks.
She double-clicked the attachment: Salter.mov.
—
Laurel rode the 38 Geary to the western edge of the city, where residential streets gave way to cliffs and water.
She was early. Instead of taking the road that curved to the Pacific Ocean, she stopped at Sutro Heights Park.
Two lion statues marked the entrance, life-sized, kingly as Aslan.
She walked down a wide path fringed by pines the height of redwoods.
From there, she passed a cream gazebo and climbed a narrow staircase.
A vast disc of meadow, hemmed by a stone parapet, overlooked the ocean.
Laurel held on to a metal railing and watched the waves uncurl, thin and layered by the time they reached shore.
She made her way back to the sidewalk, passing the Cliff House on the way to the Great Highway.
The medians were filled with sand in which long, green succulents grew; fuchsia flowers nestled in their fingers.
Eli sat alone on a graffitied concrete wall.
Above him circled gleeful seagulls screaming, Ah! Ah! Ah!
He sensed Laurel and turned.
The seawall stretched along the shoreline for a mile. It was two stories tall, designed to barricade the sand and the ocean. Only the top three feet extended above the sidewalk, which made it a convenient perch. Eli patted the space beside him, and Laurel swung her legs over the side.
They were quiet, almost bashful. Then Eli said:
“You were fantastic the other day. People are calling it the best talk of the conference.”
“You were there?” She couldn’t hide her pleasure. “I didn’t see you.”
“Of course I was,” said Eli.
It was overcast, with velvet clouds, the edges fringed by sun.
“How are you really?” he asked.
“Raw,” she said. “Muddling through.”
Eli nodded. “I keep picking up my phone, to call you.”
“Ask you what you want for dinner.”
“Whether you need anything from Walgreens.”
There were four or five inches between them.
“But you look good,” said Laurel. “You seem”—she searched for the right word—“looser.”
He didn’t deny it, and this was how she knew they would continue as they were. Laurel girded herself. They had their answer now.
“I’m sorry about Angela,” said Eli. “At the party. Nothing’s happened between us, I swear.”
Laurel picked at a loose thread on her jacket. “But you like her.”
Eli shrugged helplessly. “She’s a good person. There’s a reason I used to be engaged to her, even if I’m glad we didn’t go through with it. Of course, she isn’t…it could never be like…”
“It’s okay,” said Laurel. “You don’t have to compare us.” And then, because she couldn’t help herself: “Christopher Nilsson wouldn’t leave me alone until I yelled at him in the Rathskeller.”
“I knew that would happen,” Eli said. “Does he still carry around that stupid tin of mustache wax?”
Laurel laughed, which turned into a whimper when she thought of going back to her hotel alone.
“It won’t be forever,” Eli said.
“No,” said Laurel.
The horizon was a smudged gray line, like pencil partially erased. She thought of the end date they’d chosen.
“I want you to pick me up at a commune,” she told him.
Eli laughed. “A commune?”
She nodded. “It’s called the Center.”
Laurel had made her decision the night before. She couldn’t remain in Madison, waiting for him.
“Okay,” said Eli, slowly.
She also had a second, petty reason. Let his mind run wild about what happened at a commune.
—
When Eli left, she stayed.
She stayed to let the wind wash over her, shucking the sadness of seeing him. And she stayed to think of what had happened the night before.
Laurel had planned to tell Eli about the footage, but as she sat with him, she changed her mind. It felt important to keep something for herself.
Trail cameras could run for years, so they were ideal for an experiment like the other Laurel’s. She had used the time-lapse setting to film a year of progress. It was valuable data: Laurel could cross-check her assumptions about what had happened in the cave before she arrived.
So why did she feel a pang of disappointment? As months of growth scrolled past in quick succession, Laurel almost closed the file. She could watch the footage later, with Tess and Gloria.
She dragged the scrubber to the right. Just before she reached the end, the view shook, as though someone were moving the tripod. The camera swung downward. Time-lapse mode stopped; the tape returned to real-time speed. In the video, Laurel heard the sound of footsteps.
And then she saw her double.
Moving. Flesh and blood. 3-D on her 2-D screen. It was like watching herself from the outside, like glimpsing herself in a dream.
Laurel Two moved through the cave as she had: touching, checking, adjusting.
Her hair was tied back in two braids. Laurel could not see her face, only her body from behind.
She had pins in her hands, and tape, and a pen.
She must have been making the handwritten tags that Laurel found on her first trip.
Because it was dim, the video had been taken with infrared light.
The footage looked spectral, as though it came from the afterlife.
Laurel could not have expected her own reaction. Love poured forward freely. The woman was stranger and familiar both, forgotten and remembered. They were separated absolutely by the membrane of the screen. Laurel wanted to tap her shoulder, take her hand. She wanted to call: Dear, look at me!
And then, for seconds, the other Laurel did. She paused, as if she’d heard something, and stared into the eye of the camera. She appeared to be thinking, or asking an internal question. There was an agedness to her expression—a somber seeing, flecked with interest.
In her vision, Laurel had sensed that her double was suffering. Now she knew that to be true.
Something has happened to her, Laurel thought. But she hasn’t given up.
—
When Laurel returned to Madison, she packed the house. It felt wrong to give the other Laurel and Eli’s possessions away, but she had no way of knowing whether the couple would ever return.
Though it took up too much space, she couldn’t part with her double’s oak desk.
She kept several other items that seemed to be sentimental.
On the mantel was a vase that looked handmade: it was indigo, with golden seams, as though broken pieces had been joined.
A green blanket had been patched twice, rather than replaced.
Lastly, she saved the other Laurel and Eli’s writing, along with their most precious-looking books.
The latter included an antique called The Book of Camouflage.
After centuries of digital text, it was an early physical volume.