Recursion(54)

From high above, a single beam of light shoots down the center of the stairwell and slants toward them across the checkered floor.

“Come on,” Barry whispers, opening the door and pulling her into a corridor.

They move quickly down a red-carpeted hall of hotel rooms, whose numbers are projected onto the doors by lights in the opposing wall.

Halfway down the corridor, the door to Room 825 swings inward and a middle-aged woman steps out, wearing a navy robe with “HM” embossed on the lapel and carrying a silver ice bucket.

Barry glances over at Helena, who nods.

They’re ten feet from the hotel guest now, who hasn’t seen them yet.

Barry says, “Ma’am?”

When she looks in their direction, he aims his gun at her.

The ice bucket falls to the floor.

Barry brings a finger to his lips as they quickly close in.

“Not a word,” he says, and they push her back through the doorway and follow her into the room.

Helena locks the dead bolt, hooks the chain.

“I have some money and credit cards—”

“We’re not here for that. Sit on the floor and keep your mouth shut,” Barry says.

The woman must’ve just stepped out of the shower. Her black hair is damp, and there’s not a speck of makeup on her face. Helena doesn’t meet her eyes.

Dropping the duffel bag on the floor, Barry unzips it and pulls out the zip ties.

“Please,” she begs. “I don’t want to die.”

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Helena says.

“Did my husband send you?”

“No,” Barry says. He looks at Helena. “Go put some pillows in the bathtub.”

Helena grabs three pillows off the decadent four-poster bed and lays them in the claw-foot tub, which stands on a small platform with a view of dusk falling on the city and the buildings beginning to glow.

When she walks back out into the bedroom, Barry has the woman on her stomach and is binding her wrists and ankles. He finally lifts her over his shoulder and carries her into the bathroom, where he lays her gently in the tub.

“Why were you here?” he asks.

“You know what this place is?”

“Yes.”

Tears run down her face. “I made a bad mistake fifteen years ago.”

“What?” Helena asks.

“I didn’t leave my husband when I should’ve. I wasted the best years of my life.”

“Someone will come for you,” Barry says. Then he rips a piece from the roll of duct tape and pats it over her mouth.

They close the door to the bathroom. The gas-log fireplace is putting out a welcome heat. The bottle of Champagne the woman was apparently about to drink stands on the coffee table beside a single glass and an open journal, both pages filled with handwriting.

Helena can’t help herself. She glances at the elegant scrawl and realizes it’s the narrative of a memory, perhaps the one the woman in the bathtub was going back to.

It begins—The first time he hit me I was standing in the kitchen at ten p.m., asking him where he’d been. I remember the redness on his face and the smell of bourbon on his breath and his watery eyes

Helena closes the journal and goes to the window, sweeping aside the curtain.

Anemic light creeps in.

Peering eight stories down onto East Forty-Ninth, she can see Barry’s car a little ways down the block.

The city is wet, dreary.

The woman is crying in the bathroom.

Barry walks over, says, “I don’t know if we’ve been made. Regardless, we should go after Slade right now. I say we take our chances with the elevator.”

“Do you have a knife?”

“Yeah.”

“May I see it?”

Barry reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folding knife as Helena removes her leather jacket and rolls up the sleeves of her gray shirt.

She takes it from him, sits down in one of the armchairs, and opens the blade.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Making a save point.”

“A what?”

She inserts the tip of the knife into the side of her left arm above the elbow and draws the blade across her skin.

As the pain comes and the blood begins to flow—





BARRY





November 7, 2018

“What the hell are you doing?” Barry asks.

Helena’s eyes are shut, her mouth hanging slightly open, perfectly still.

Barry carefully pries the knife out of her hands. For a long moment, nothing happens. Then her bright-green eyes snap open.

Something in them has changed. They exude a newfound fear and intensity.

“You OK?” Barry asks.

Helena surveys the room, glances at her wristwatch, and then wraps her arms around Barry with a startling ferocity.

“You’re alive.”

“Of course I’m alive. What happened to you?”

She leads him over to the bed. They sit, and Helena removes one of the pillowcases and tears off a strip of cloth, which she begins to tie around her self-inflicted wound to stop the bleeding.

“I just used the chair to return to this moment,” she says. “I’m starting a new timeline.”

“Your chair?”