Recursion(44)
* * *
Barry shudders into consciousness at three in the morning, roused by a pounding in his apartment. He rolls out of bed, slowly emerging from a shroud of sleep as he staggers out of his room. Jim-Bob, his rescue, is barking fiercely at the door.
A glance through the peephole snaps him wide-awake—Julia is standing in the bleary light of the hall. He turns the dead bolt, throws the chain, pulls the door open. Her eyes are swollen from crying, her hair is catastrophic, and she’s wearing a trench coat over a pair of pajamas, her shoulders dusted with snow.
She says, “I tried to call. Your phone was off.”
“What happened?”
“Can I come in?”
He steps back, and she enters his apartment, a manic intensity in her eyes. Gently taking her arm, he guides her over to the sofa.
“You’re scaring me, Jules. What’s wrong?”
She looks at him, trembling. “Have you heard of False Memory Syndrome?”
“Yes, why?”
“I think I have it.”
His stomach tightens. “What makes you say that?”
“An hour ago, I woke up with a splitting headache and a headful of memories of this other life. Gray, listless memories.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Meghan died in a hit-and-run when she was in high school. You and I divorced a year later. I married a man named Anthony. It was all so real. Like I had really lived it. You and I had brunch yesterday at that same café on the river, only Meghan wasn’t there. She’d been dead eleven years. I woke up tonight, alone in my bed, no Anthony, realizing that, in actuality, you and I had lunch with her yesterday. That she’s alive.” Julia’s hands are shaking violently. “What’s real, Barry? Which set of memories is the truth?” She breaks down. “Is our daughter alive?”
“Yes.”
“But I remember going to the morgue with you. I saw her broken body. She was gone. I remember like it happened yesterday. They had to carry me out. I was screaming. You remember, don’t you? Did it happen? Do you remember her dying?”
Barry sits on the couch in his boxers, coming to the realization that this all makes some terrible kind of sense. Ann Voss Peters jumped off the Poe Building three nights ago. He had brunch with Meghan and Julia yesterday. Which means that tonight is the night he was sent back into the memory of the last time he saw his daughter alive. Catching back up to this moment must have unleashed all of Julia’s memories of that lifeless timeline when Meghan died.
“Barry, am I losing my mind?”
And then it hits him—if Julia has those memories, so does Meghan.
He looks at Julia. “We have to go.”
“Why?”
He stands. “Right now.”
“Barry—”
“Listen to me—you’re not losing your mind, you’re not crazy.”
“You remember her dying too?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“I promise I will explain everything, but right now, we have to go to Meghan.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s experiencing the same thing you are. She’s remembering her own death.”
* * *
Barry takes the West Side Highway, heading south through a snowstorm out of Washington Heights and the northern reaches of Manhattan, the road abandoned at this time of night.
Julia is holding her phone to her ear, saying, “Meghan, please call me when you get this. I’m worried about you. Your father and I are coming over right now.” She looks across the center console at Barry, says, “She’s probably just sleeping. It is the middle of the night.”
They ride through the empty streets of lower Manhattan, cutting across the island into NoHo, the tires sliding on the slick pavement.
Barry pulls to a stop in front of Meghan’s building, and they climb out into the pouring snow.
At the entrance, he presses the buzzer for Meghan’s apartment five times, but she doesn’t answer.
He turns to Julia. “Do you have a key?”
“No.”
He starts ringing other apartments until someone finally buzzes them in.
Meghan’s building is a sketchy-looking prewar walk-up. He and Julia race up six flights of a gloomy stairwell to the top floor and run down a dimly lit hall. Apartment J is at the end—Meghan’s bicycle is leaning against the window to the fire escape.
He bangs on the door with his fist. No answer. Taking a step back, he raises his right leg and front-kicks the door. A spike of pain shoots up his leg, but the door only shudders.
He kicks it again, harder this time.
It bursts open, and they rush inside into darkness.
“Meghan!” His hand fumbles across the wall and hits the lights, which illuminate a tiny studio. There’s a sleeping alcove on the right—empty. An efficiency kitchen to the left. A short hallway leading to the bathroom.
He starts toward it, but Julia rushes past him, shouting her daughter’s name.
At the end of the hall, she drops to her knees, says, “Honey, oh God, I’m right here.”
Barry reaches the end of the hall, and his heart falls. Meghan is lying on the linoleum floor and Julia is down on the ground next to her, running her hand across her head. Meghan’s eyes are open, and for an agonizing second, he thinks she’s dead.