Recursion(34)

“I’m angry,” she says.

“That’s fair. I would be too.”

Prior to this moment, she had assumed Slade possessed an immense intellect, that he was a master manipulator of people, as all industry leaders tend to be. Perhaps that’s still true, but the lion’s share of his success and fortune is simply attributable to his knowledge of future events. And her intellect.

The invention of the chair can’t just be about money for him. He already has more money, fame, and power than God.

“Now that you’ve got your chair,” she says, “what do you plan to do with it?”

“I don’t know yet. I was thinking we could figure that out together.”

Bullshit. You know. You’ve had twenty-six years leading up to this moment to figure it out.

“Help me streamline the chair,” he says. “Help me test it safely. I couldn’t tell you what I meant the first time, or even the second when I asked this question, but now you know the truth, so now I’m asking for a third time, and I hope the answer will be yes.”

“What question?”

He comes over and takes hold of her hands, close enough now that she can smell the Champagne on his breath.

“Helena, do you want to change the world with me?”





BARRY





October 25–26, 2007

He walks into his house and closes the front door, stopping again at the mirror by the coat rack to stare at the reflection of his younger self.

This isn’t real.

This can’t be real.

Julia is calling his name from the bedroom. He moves past the television, where the World Series is still on, and turns down the hallway, the floor creaking under his bare feet in all the familiar places. Past Meghan’s room, and then a guestroom that doubles as a home office, until he’s standing in the doorway of his and Julia’s room.

His ex is sitting in bed with a book opened across her lap and a cup of tea steaming on her bedside table.

“Did I hear you go out?” she asks.

She looks so different.

“Yeah.”

“Where’s Meghan?”

“She went to Dairy Queen.”

“It’s a school night.”

“She’ll be back by ten thirty.”

“Knew who to ask, didn’t she?”

Julia smiles and pats the bedspread beside her, and Barry enters their room, his eyes drifting over wedding photos, a black-and-white of Julia holding Meghan on the night of her birth, and finally a print over the bed of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, which they bought at MoMA ten years ago after seeing the original. He climbs onto the bed and sits against the headboard next to Julia. Up close, she looks airbrushed, her skin too smooth, only beginning to suggest the wrinkles he saw at brunch two days ago.

“Why aren’t you watching your game?” she asks. The last time they sat on this bed together was the night she left him. Stared into his eyes and said, I’m sorry, but I can’t separate you from all this pain. “Honey. What’s wrong? You look like someone died.”

He hasn’t heard her call him honey in ages, and no he doesn’t feel like anyone died. He feels…an intense sense of disorientation and disconnect. Like his own body is an avatar for which he’s still getting a feel for the functionality.

“I’m fine.”

“Wow, you want to try that again, but more convincing this time?”

Is it possible that the loss he’s carried since Meghan’s death is bleeding from his soul through his eyes and into this impossible moment? That on some lower frequency, Julia senses that shift in him? Because the absence of tragedy is having an inverse, proportional effect on what he sees when he looks into her eyes. They astound him. Bright and present and clear. The eyes of the woman he fell in love with. And it hits him all over again—the ruinous power of grief.

Julia runs her fingers down the back of his neck, which puts a shiver through his spine and raises gooseflesh. He hasn’t been touched by his wife in a decade.

“What’s the matter? Something happen at work?”

Technically, his last day of work consisted of getting killed in a deprivation tank, and sent back into whatever this is, so…

“Yeah, actually.”

The sensory experience of it is what’s killing him. The smell of their room. The softness of Julia’s hands. All the things he’d forgotten. Everything he lost.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“Would you mind if I just lie here while you read?”

“Of course not.”

And so he rests his head on her lap. He has imagined this a thousand times, usually at three a.m., lying in bed in his Washington Heights apartment, caught in that wearisome handoff between intoxication and hangover, wondering— What if his daughter had lived? What if his marriage had survived? What if everything had not derailed? What if…

This isn’t real.

This can’t be real.

The only sound in the room is the soft scratch of Julia turning the page every minute or so. His eyes are closed, he’s just breathing now, and as she runs her fingers through his hair the way she used to, he turns onto his side to hide the tears in his eyes.

Inside, he’s a quivering heap of protoplasm, and it takes a herculean effort to maintain his mental composure. The pure emotion is staggering, but Julia doesn’t seem to notice the handful of times his back heaves with a barely suppressed sob.