Dark Matter(66)

Graffiti on the faded white brick of a building three blocks from my house that was so artfully done it was never painted over.

I meditate on the intricacies of my home.

The fourth step on the staircase that always creaks.

The downstairs bathroom with the leaky faucet.

The way my kitchen smells as coffee brews first thing in the morning.

All the tiny, seemingly insignificant details upon which my world hangs.





AMPOULES REMAINING: 32


There’s a theory in the field of aesthetics called the uncanny valley. It holds that when something looks almost like a human being—a mannequin or humanlike robot—it creates revulsion in the observer, because the appearance is so close to human, yet just off enough to evoke a feeling of uncanniness, of something that is both familiar and alien.

It’s a similar psychological effect as I walk the streets of this Chicago that’s almost mine. I would take an apocalyptic nightmare any day. Crumbled buildings and gray wasteland don’t hold a candle to standing on a corner I’ve passed a thousand times and realizing that the street names are wrong. Or the coffee place where I always stop to grab my morning triple-shot Americano with soy is a boutique wine shop instead. Or my house at 44 Eleanor Street is a brownstone inhabited by strangers.

—

This is the fourth Chicago we’ve connected to since escaping that world of sickness and death. Each has been like this one—almost home.

Night is imminent, and since we’ve taken four hits of the drug in fairly rapid succession with no recovery period, we decide for the first time not to return to the box.

It’s the same hotel in Logan Square where I stayed in Amanda’s world.

The neon sign is red instead of green but the name is the same—HOTEL ROYALE—and it’s just as quirky, just as frozen in time, but in a thousand insignificantly different ways.

Our room has two double beds, and just like the last room I had here, it looks out onto the street.

I set our plastic bags containing toiletries and thrift-store clothes on the dresser beside the television.

Any other time, I might have balked at this dated room that smells like cleaning product failing to cover up mildew and worse.

Tonight it feels like luxury.

Pulling off my hoodie and undershirt, I say, “I’m too gross to even have an opinion about this place.”

I toss them into the waste bin.

Amanda laughs. “You don’t want to get into a who’s-more-disgusting competition with me.”

“I’m surprised they rented us a room at any price.”

“That might tell you something about the quality of establishment we’re dealing with.”

I go to the window, part the curtains.

It’s early evening.

Raining.

The exterior hotel sign bleeds red neon light into the room.

I couldn’t begin to guess the day or date.

I say, “Bathroom’s all yours.”

Amanda grabs her things from the plastic bag.

Soon, I can hear the bright sound of running water echoing off the tile.

She calls out, “Oh my God, you have to take a bath, Jason! You have no idea!”

I’m too dirty to lie down on the bed, so I sit on the carpet next to the radiator, letting waves of heat wash over me and watching the sky darken through the window.

—

I take Amanda’s advice and draw a bath.

Condensation runs down the walls.

The heat works wonders on my lower back, which has been out for days from sleeping in the box.

As I shave my beard, the questions of identity keep haunting me.

There’s no Jason Dessen employed as a physics professor at Lakemont College or any of the local schools, but I can’t help wondering if I’m out there somewhere.

In another city.

Another country.

Perhaps living under a different name, with a different woman, a different job.

If I am, if I spend my days under broken-down cars in a mechanic’s shop or drilling cavities instead of teaching physics to college students, am I still the same man at the most fundamental level?

And what is that level?

If you strip away all the trappings of personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make me me?

After an hour, I emerge, clean for the first time in days, wearing jeans, a plaid button-down, and an old pair of Timberlands. They’re a half size too big, but I’ve doubled up on wool socks to compensate.

Amanda studies me appraisingly, says, “Works.”

“Not so bad yourself.”

Her thrift-store score consists of black jeans, boots, a white T-shirt, and a black leather jacket that still reeks of the prior owner’s smoking habit.

She’s lying in bed, watching a TV show I don’t recognize.

She looks up at me. “Know what I’m thinking?”

“What?”

“Bottle of wine. Ridiculous amount of food. Every dessert on the menu. I mean, I haven’t been this skinny since college.”

“The multiverse diet.”

She laughs, and it’s a good thing to hear.

—

We walk for twenty minutes in the rain, because I want to see if one of my favorite restaurants exists in this world.

It does, and it’s like running into a friend in a foreign city.