Infinite(32)

“My name’s Dylan, too,” I replied.

“Small world.”

“Very small.”

I looked around at the rest of the museum. Every detail matched my memory, every painting looking as vivid as the original, every window in the skylight and every angled floorboard under my feet looking unchanged. It seemed impossible to me that my mind could replicate the entire museum in an instant, but here I was. Except where were all the other versions of myself?

Surfer Dylan and I were alone.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said to him.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was wondering if you’d seen him. Choppy dark hair, heavy five-o’clock shadow, mean smile. He likes to wear a beat-up old leather biker jacket with stains on it.”

The other Dylan’s smile disappeared. “Man, you don’t want to find him. He’s bad news.”

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“Word gets around. That dude’s trouble. Whatever you do, don’t let him follow you out of here.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned around, I saw another Dylan Moran walk into the gallery. This one had a completely shaved head, wore a black turtleneck, and had silver circular glasses on his face. Everything about him was neat and orderly. He wandered past us without a word to a nearby painting, Peter Blume’s surrealistic The Rock. The centerpiece of the painting was a jagged sphere, like a pink geode cut open, around which men were laboring with hammers and stone slabs. A lone woman on her knees grasped for the sphere, as if worshipping it. Bald Dylan stood with perfect posture as he examined the painting, his hands folded together in front of him. Every now and then, he leaned forward to study a particular detail.

“This is a working man’s painting,” I said, joining him.

He studied me with a serious expression, but like Surfer Dylan, he showed no recognition that we were twins. “Yes, my father used to say this painting was about the ennoblement of the union man.”

“I can’t remember my father ever going to the museum.”

“No? My father worked here until he retired. He was an art historian. Actually, the museum runs in the family in a way. His father was the reason we got Nighthawks here.”

“Daniel Catton Rich? The car accident?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the story. Yes, that’s right.”

“Is your father still alive?” I asked.

“He is. We lost my mother last year, though. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, her dying brought my father and me closer together. I don’t think either one of us would have made it through that time without the other.”

I tried to imagine a world in which my father hadn’t killed my mother. A world in which they’d both been with me as I grew up, in which my father didn’t drink and took me places and made me a part of his life. I knew nothing else about this Dylan next to me, but I already knew that I envied him.

I began to understand what Eve Brier had warned me about.

You might be tempted to stay.

Around me, more Dylans arrived at the museum. Half a dozen. Twenty. Forty. I soon lost count. They were all completely different and yet all the same. They wore different clothes. Some had beards; some didn’t. Some were heavier than me, some skinnier. One was in a wheelchair. One had an artificial right leg. Some looked almost identical to me, just a few little changes to tell me that a part of their life was different from mine.

But I saw no Dylan wearing my father’s leather jacket.

I wandered through the museum as it got more and more crowded. We kept bumping into each other, all the Dylan Morans squeezed into every wing. Near the American Gothic display, I saw one Dylan stop in the middle of the gallery as others streamed around him. He was dressed exactly the way I was, in a slightly rumpled blazer, dirty slacks, and loose tie. Tears streamed down his reddened face, and his chest heaved with despair.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

His mouth fell open. He unleashed a guttural cry that was pure agony. He stared at me, consumed by pain. “Karly’s dead.”

The words nearly knocked me over. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t live without her. I can’t.”

Tragic Dylan reached into the pocket of his suit coat and removed an automatic pistol, which he armed by racking the slide. Instinctively, I took a step backward and put my hands up.

“Dylan, put the gun away.”

He shook his head and continued to sob. As I watched, he opened his mouth and closed his lips around the barrel of the gun. His hand quivered as he slid his finger onto the trigger. Mucus dripped from his nose, and drool leaked onto the barrel. His screwed-up face looked like a version of The Scream, as if he were one more painting in the museum.

“Dylan, no! No, don’t do it!” I looked around at the others; there were hundreds of them now. “Somebody help over here!”

But no one stopped. No one even noticed the drama playing out.

The Dylan in front of me squeezed the trigger. The bullet blew out the back of his skull, spraying the Dylans behind him with bone, blood, and brain matter. They didn’t react; they just kept walking with their clothes and faces covered with the remains of another man’s head. Tragic Dylan crumpled to the floor in front of me. The others walked on top of him as if he wasn’t there at all. Blood spread into a pool on the museum’s wooden floor, getting on everyone’s shoes.