Chapter 16 Guest Wing #9
A filigree design has been laid over the gold base in copper. On each side, it converges at a small metal plate.
“See how these lines are parallel? They look like the circuits you see on a microchip,” Gloria explains.
“Seymour found the watch somewhere in North Beach, but it’s broken; the hands don’t budge.
Even the woman who fixed his chromaphone couldn’t figure it out.
When I mentioned our electricity experiment, he insisted that I take it home.
I meant to play around with it, but then I started my professorship. ”
Four tiny gold knobs cluster at the hinge: two on the top of the case, and two on the bottom.
Laurel pries them apart. The device springs open to reveal two identical clocks.
They point in opposite directions; Laurel must turn the contraption upside down to read the second.
Leaning closer, she sees that what she took to be two faces are four.
A smaller circle nestles in each of the larger ones.
“Gloria,” she says, “how closely did you look at this?”
Each of the larger faces has 365 notches. The smaller faces contain two hundred. The first reads 1900, the last 2100.
“Well, I assumed that the smaller face refers to the year. The larger one must correspond to the date, don’t you think?”
Eli squeezes Laurel’s wrist. “One for each universe.”
All four faces possess a single hand. None reflect the current time.
The dials are exposed, not protected behind crystal, and Laurel tries to nudge one of the hands with her finger.
It quivers from the pressure but doesn’t yield.
Afraid to push too hard, she stops; there is a blend of dignity and delicacy to the pocket watch.
With Gloria, Laurel examines the filigree. Paul and Eli attempt to turn the knobs, but these are as stiff as the hands. After an hour, Paul stifles a yawn.
“Should I make more coffee?” he asks.
Gloria yawns, too. “I think we should all go to sleep. But you’ll get there, Laurel. I know it. A walk always helps me.”
Paul leaves his candle on Eli’s bedside table.
“Make yourself at home,” says Gloria. She hugs Laurel tightly.
—
Laurel and Eli climb into bed. As the wind whistles outside, Laurel sets the watch on her side table.
“Maybe we should ignore it,” she says.
“We’ll pretend it isn’t even here,” says Eli. “God, that wind is loud.”
Laurel puts her arms around him. To lie in bed together at night is bliss.
“Do you remember the first time we talked,” he says, “when you took me to the orchard? I said that I’d memorized Ed White’s EVA, and you told me to prove it.”
“Of course.” What she would have given to peer into Eli’s mind that day! “I was dying to know what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking that you were bold. That I liked you,” Eli says. “I also thought a lot about how much I wanted to kiss you.”
“You should have.”
“I would have, if your boyfriend hadn’t found us.”
“He ruined everything,” Laurel agrees, snuggling closer.
“Well,” says Eli, “not quite.”
They lie there, peaceful and close, warmed by each other. The wind sings in an alto voice, then a soprano.
“You know,” Laurel says, “there’s something else I’ve always wondered. At Clare and Walter’s unwedding, when you and I went into the gazebo—it felt like something was going to happen. Like you were about to lean in.”
“You looked alarmed. So I didn’t.”
“I think most people would be alarmed if their ex-spouse moved to kiss them,” says Laurel, though she is inwardly delighted. “Was that the only time you wanted to? After the divorce, I mean?”
“You’re fishing,” says Eli.
“Let me.”
“No.” He sighed. “It wasn’t.”
“What was the first?”
“In the library at McMurdo—when you drew the Arc and the basin, and it looked like the Duoverse.”
Laurel looks up, astonished. “I never knew.”
“I hoped not,” Eli says.
“And the next time?”
“After the dive.” He pauses. “Did you ever have an impulse?”
“At that point? I don’t think so. Not consciously, at least.”
“Well, that tracks. Even after we slept together in Cedar, you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“I’m still sorry about that. But I’ve always wanted something to do with you—ever since the senior talent show.”
“What if we’d gotten together back then?” Eli asks. “We could have skipped over so much.”
“Yeah,” says Laurel, “but we might have burned out before we could really get started.”
“You would have married that awful mycologist.”
“Christopher? God forbid. And you would have married Angela.”
“We could have gotten divorced at the same time.”
Laurel giggles. Then she remembers something.
“Eli.” She reaches for the watch so abruptly that it skids across the table.
“Gloria thought this could be a circuit. I wonder if it would respond to the electricity in our bodies.” Laurel puts her palm to the front of the case and holds Eli’s hand to the back.
“Press harder,” she says, but the device shows no reaction.
“What if we touch the plates?” asks Eli.
They try again. This time, the watch twitches, and her arm begins to tingle.
Eli hoots. But the tingle passes, and the watch returns to stillness.
“It’s not enough,” says Laurel. She can feel how close they are, the answer only a hairsbreadth away.
“The overtaker told us that he met two other travelers—a different couple,” Eli says. “He said they had an instrument. Could it have been something like this?”
“Maybe. But the instrument Kenji mentioned used nuclear technology, right? It must have been able to generate a huge amount of energy. I don’t know where we’d find that kind of power.”
As she speaks, thunder cracks overhead. Lightning illuminates Gloria’s garden.
Laurel and Eli look at each other. Then she lunges out of bed and carries the watch to the door. When she opens it, cold blasts into the room, and a swirl of snow lands on her feet. The next bolt of lightning strikes so near that she can smell it.
“Eli, look!” Laurel cries.
For the dials of the watch have begun to revolve. All four hands spin wildly, like eyes rolling in their sockets.
—
They take slippers from the closet: Laurel wears Gloria’s, and Eli steps into Paul’s.
Holding each other, squinting, they make their way through the yard.
Every roar of thunder seems to shake the ground beneath them.
The watch revolves for a moment more before its hands begin to slow.
They stop at the current year and date: January 24, 1996.
“What should we do now?” asks Laurel.
“In my diagram of the Duoverse, the antiuniverse is on the bottom, so maybe we should leave the lower face alone. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?
” Eli is frenzied, nearly tripping over his words.
“And then, in the top face—because we want to go to our universe—maybe we’re supposed to set it to the time we want. ”
Laurel can’t think of a better approach. “The bottom face is where—and when—we’re coming from,” she says, to make sure she understands. “The top face is where and when we want to go.”
“That’s right,” says Eli. “Let’s try to move the hands.”
Laurel nudges one. It swings easily now: the electricity has acted like grease.
Eli laughs with happiness. “Do you realize what this means? We can set the date to August 2014, right before Silas died.”
It would be so easy. But—
“We can’t,” says Laurel. Her mouth is suddenly dry.
“What do you mean? This is what we’ve dreamed of since McMurdo: a time machine.”
“If we don’t cross at the same time as our doubles, we could destroy them. That’s what it said in the other Laurel’s letter. We have to pick a date that matters to everyone.”
“I’m sure they know about Silas by now!”
“And we know about Celeste. It would be just as fair to choose a time before her life ended.”
Eli breaks away and makes a sound of anguish.
“Maybe it’s okay to cross at different times,” he says. “They didn’t know for sure.”
“Maybe,” says Laurel. “But the only thing we know for sure is what worked before. We came through the portal at the same time, and everyone survived.”
Wet up to his knees, Eli paces. “That might not be true. The other Laurel wrote her letter before they left for McMurdo. We don’t know what happened after that. They could have died.”
“But I can feel her.” Tears freeze on Laurel’s cheeks. “I know she’s still alive.”
She reaches the probe of her mind behind the curtain that keeps them apart.
She can sense Laurel Two do the same, seeking her own consent.
All her life she thought she was alone, not knowing she walked with another: her shadow self, her mirror self, too far to touch, but almost, almost. They have not met each other, but they are each other, slant.
For Laurel and Eli to erase the Twos would be a profound violence.
Only at their end of their lives should they have to say goodbye to each other.
“There’s only one date that means the same thing to the four of us,” Laurel says. “October 9, 2017: the last time we all crossed over.”
She walks to Eli, pulling him close. His cold cheek is pressed to hers. Laurel speaks into his ear; she must be strong for him.
“This might not even work. But if we make it, I know—you know—that life is still worth it without him.”
Thunder clamors with the chaos of a cosmic argument: shouting back and forth, a lamp hurtling to the ground. Laurel’s hair floats skyward as she sets the upper clock: the date to October 9, the year to 2017. Her double’s attention draws toward the lower face in response.
The very air acquires pressure. Bolts of lightning stagger closer.
Laurel and Eli look through the sky’s dark fleece to its inner wiring.
Her hands begin to move, but not of their own accord: the other Laurel is guiding her fingers to the knobs at the top of the watch.
Eli watches, astonished, as his hands float toward the bottom.