Chapter 16 Guest Wing #11
“Very good.” The woman pours oil into the dish and uses the pin to apply it.
There is something magnetic about her, canny, something that Laurel wants to please—though now a private shadow enters her expression.
“What happened to us was an accident. We didn’t understand the rules.
Our child was at home. We would never have left without her. ”
Laurel recognizes the woman’s misery and self-accusation. She connects the fragments now: her distinctive mole, her Russian accent.
“Olga,” says Laurel.
—
Olga’s head whips to the side, as though from a slap. She looks back at Laurel from that angle. Even here, stripped of so much, she projects a merciless edge.
The man in the suspenders steps forward to join them. His right ear is unremarkable, but the left is missing.
“You must be Ted,” says Laurel.
“How do you know our names?” asks Olga.
“Because I know your daughter.”
Olga’s hands fumble. The watch clatters to the desk.
“She was my teacher,” says Laurel. “My mentor. And my great friend.”
—
She tells them all about her: Gloria’s kindness, her resolve, her success—every marvelous discovery, the adventure she made of her life. As Laurel speaks, other people listen, drawing closer, as though her story is a source of warmth.
“She knew you wouldn’t have abandoned her. In fact,” Laurel says, “when I told her about the portal in Antarctica, she put the pieces together herself.”
Olga does not cry. She looks as though she stopped crying years ago, if years could pass in the Void. But as Laurel speaks, her face softens, the muscles releasing; and her voice, when it comes, is rich with despair, leavened by relief.
Gloria’s father touches the small of Olga’s back.
Then he tries to clasp Laurel’s hands with his.
It is the closest he can come to touching his daughter again.
Yet he struggles to gain purchase; in places, Laurel’s fingers go right through him.
Ted and Olga still have some matter left, but they seem to be nearing a precipice.
“Thank you,” says Ted.
Olga gives the pocket watch to Laurel. The filigree glows from her careful attention. It does not occur to Laurel to ask how Olga accomplished this feat, if she had never traveled with a watch herself.
“I think it might have one more trip,” says Olga.
The nearest members of the Void stare, some hungrily, others with resignation. Laurel scans the faces, and the shanties, of these cosmic refugees. She wants to bring them with her.
“If you know how to use the pocket watches,” she says, “why can’t you go home, too?”
Some of the more vibrant residents seem heartened by her conviction. The ghostliest, on the other hand, don’t hide their exasperation.
“The watches need the body’s electricity. They feed on it,” someone says.
“Look at us,” adds the magician. “We don’t have much left.”
Given how easily she procured a bench—as easily as Olga did her workshop—Laurel wondered why the people of the Void built such modest structures.
She understands when the bench disintegrates.
Laurel lands in the same changeable substance from which it was created.
Olga’s workshop, too, is slowly melting away.
The Void’s lasting items must have accompanied their owners.
The backpackers’ tents, for instance, remain; so does each person’s clothing.
But there is no food that Laurel can see, and a campfire casts no heat.
A shooting star streaks past. The man in the hat reaches up to light his cigar, but he doesn’t smoke it.
“The longer a person has been here,” he says, “the less likely they are to get out.”
Ted smiles at Laurel wistfully. “You still have a chance.”
Laurel squeezes her own hand. She treasures her body’s warmth, its beating clockwork—lent to her by nature, until the time comes to return it.
“It isn’t fair,” Laurel says. “What can I do for you in return?”
They look at her from across the ages.
“Savor it,” says Olga.
—
The knob turns without effort.
The Void reels away from Laurel, or she from it.
—
Laurel lies on her back in the cold of the snow, which is so different from the cold of the Void: tactile, felt through the skin. It is still dark, but the storm has passed. Scant snowflakes pinwheel slowly. When Eli stirs beside her, they fold into each other, stunned.
Time doesn’t seem to be acting strangely—but then again, it never does.
Laurel’s hearing is muffled. Shock numbs her limbs, and her eyes struggle to focus.
She cannot be sure of what happened. Perhaps nothing has changed: they could be in the antiuniverse, younger than they were last night.
The Void might have been a hallucination, which is to say the brain’s invention, though doesn’t the brain shape everything she sees and hears and thinks?
But maybe it isn’t insane to believe that lightning can strike twice.
They might be on the other side of yesterday, squinting at the sight.
Spring could follow winter. Her wrinkles might return.
In this version of the story, possibility lies ahead—a second trap door, a reminder that the unknowns run right down to the end.
There could be another child, half of Laurel and Eli each: a wavy-haired daughter who will ask them to tell her the story, from the beginning.