“Humor me.”

“Okay,” she said, and did as instructed. They both watched the coin pinwheel for a second before she caught it in one hand and slapped it on the back of the other.

Jonas reached out to clasp her hands in his. When his skin connected with hers, he felt a jolt of electricity. She made no move to retract her hands as he stared back at her. “Now,” he said, his eyes locked on hers, “the quarter came up either heads or tails, right?” Amanda nodded. “And now,” he said, “there are two universes. One heads, one tails.” Her hands were still clutched in his.

“How many undergrads have you tried this on?” There was whimsy in the question.

“This is just a variation on Schrödinger’s cat. It’s an illustration of the apparent paradox of quantum superposition.”

“Quantum superposition?” She spoke with the slowness of someone saying the words for the first time.

“Yes. It means that until you open your hands, the coin is both heads and tails.”

“At the same time?”

“At the same time. But when you open your hands . . .” He peeled away his fingers and pulled off one of her hands to reveal the quarter. George Washington’s profile lay on the back of her hand. “. . . you reveal one universe. But you’ve created another. A different universe. One where the quarter came up tails.”

“Seriously, if you haven’t pulled this with at least one of your students, that’s just a tragic waste.”

“Maybe I’ve just been waiting for the right student.”

Amanda wagged her index finger in his direction. “Oh, that’s good. That’s really good.”

They shared a laugh and leaned back in their chairs. Jonas felt himself relaxing and knew it wasn’t the whiskey or the cabernet. Talking to Amanda was as easy as breathing. And, as with breathing, he felt unable to stop. He wanted to learn everything about her. How did she become an artist? Why? What were her dreams? How did she see the world? What place could he have in hers?

Eventually the appetizers came, and then their meal, and then dessert. They enjoyed another drink. Jonas didn’t want the evening to end, and he sensed she didn’t either. He offered to walk her home to a three-bedroom walk-up in Chelsea that Amanda shared with a poet and another artist. His hands were clammy as they arrived at her stoop and stood in a pool of white cast by a nearby streetlight. A pregnant moment hung, and Jonas tried to divine whether she wanted him to kiss her. Her eyes were tethered to his, and the space they shared hummed with a kind of magnetism.

Amanda’s lips were parted slightly, and the air between them was combustible. Jonas leaned in, and his lips found hers. She tasted like strawberries. As his hands rounded her back, he felt her tongue slide to meet his. She felt small and firm in his arms. Her hands draped across his neck before sliding back to cradle his face. As gentle as a breeze, she pulled back, her hands still on his cheeks. Their mouths made an almost imperceptible pop when they parted.

“Thank you for a great evening,” she said. “And for dinner. And for walking me home.”

Jonas grasped for a response, but words eluded him. How could he find the words for all he was feeling? He thought of asking Amanda’s roommate, the poet, but instead, he commanded his mouth to curl into a smile that he hoped could express his emotions in that moment.

Amanda gave a little half chuckle to indicate that she found his inability to speak charming. He saw that expression on her face again, the one that teased that she was smarter than him, at least in matters of the heart, that suggested she was thinking five to ten moves ahead but found herself attracted to him all the same. He knew right then and there that he could spend the rest of his life looking at her.

Ultimately, she withdrew into her building. Jonas stayed on the sidewalk until she disappeared inside and for at least a minute after that. He walked home carried by a lightness he’d never known before.

He texted her the next morning. He didn’t care what the rules of dating required. This was different, he told himself. This wasn’t dating. This was courtship, as ridiculously old fashioned as that idea was. He couldn’t wait. He wanted to see her again. She’d either feel the same or she wouldn’t. Either way, the decision wouldn’t depend on the timing or manner of how Jonas asked for a second date.

They made plans for the next Friday.

He’d wanted to plan a more memorable evening out than the standard drinks or dinner or movie or some combination thereof. He tortured himself with ideas that he rejected as stupid, desperate, or unromantic. He ran a few past Victor, who had managed to find someone to marry, despite all reason. Jonas queried colleagues and interrogated grad students and teaching assistants only to be embarrassed and annoyed at himself when it dawned on him that presidential inaugurations were given less thought.

Eventually, he settled on the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, despite a chorus of internal protestations that Amanda would consider it corny or lame or—the cardinal sin of romance—desperate. And maybe it would have been any or all of those things, but Jonas had pulled a favor, and they would have the Hayden Sphere’s Space Theater all to themselves.

“Where’s the rest of the crowd?” Amanda asked as Jonas walked her inside. She was wearing another sundress, and he watched as she tucked an errant strand of hair behind her left ear.

“Well, as it turns out, if one of the docents is a former student, you can arrange something special to impress a girl.”

On cue, the room’s customized Zeiss Star Projector revolved and pivoted in the center of the theater as the houselights slowly dimmed. Amanda let out a warm laugh. “Nice.” She grinned.

“I did not expect that to time out as well as it did,” Jonas said, chuckling a little to himself.

Above their heads, the projector beamed a high-resolution video of the night sky. It had the feel of magic.

Amanda craned her neck up to take in the show. “Why are you showing me this?” Her voice carried a tone of awe.

“Third grade,” Jonas shrugged. “Mrs. Weingarten’s class.”

Above, the night sky projection morphed into a view of the Milky Way. Nebulae danced overhead. Jonas took it all in, marveling in the memory of the first time his whole life changed and the thrill of sharing that with the person who embodied the second.

“In the face of all this . . . wonder,” he told her, “I felt small. But not insignificant. In fact, it was the opposite. I was inspired. Where did this all come from? Why? Who created it? And who created whoever created it? I was flooded with questions, each one more recursive than the last. My head began to swim.” His eyes blazed, reverent. “And I was hooked.”

He felt her staring at him. A bolt of self-consciousness surged. He’d taken it too far, been too corny, revealed too much. It was only their second date. What was he thinking? He felt the blood draining from his face. His stomach turned over.

“So am I,” she said.

“What?”

“Hooked.”

Jonas strained to understand what she meant, what was happening. Her entire affect had changed in a breath. She was more . . . earthy. Dangerous. There was an expression on her face that he was incapable of recognizing as lust. “Do we have this place to ourselves?” she asked.

Jonas looked around. He knew nothing, understood nothing. “Yes.”

“The person who turned on the thing . . .”

“The Star Projector,” he clarified. Amanda met him with skepticism. “Really, that’s what it’s called.”

“A bit on the nose, isn’t it?”

Jonas shrugged his admission. His head was swimming, caught between dread and panic. “I think the people who design planetariums don’t value subtlety,” he may have said. He wasn’t sure.

“But the person who turned it on,” Amanda probed, “they can’t see us?”

“No, they just press a button and leave. Why?”

She answered him with a kiss. And then with more. Her hands drifted down his body and took hold of him. Realization grabbed him as well, and he returned her ardor. They peeled off each other’s clothes and lowered themselves to the floor. Above them, the majesty of the cosmos wheeled and turned, oblivious to their passion.

NOW

The connection between Jonas and the woman is evident, Victor Kovacevic notes, even from across the Rue Virginio-Malnati. Cars and trucks and buses whip past, occasionally obscuring the pair. He doesn’t need to see more, though. He’s found the needle he has been searching for in an infinite number of haystacks. He sees the woman giggle at whatever Jonas has said, and he feels that pang of envy, as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice.

Victor reaches down to manipulate his bracelet. Capacitance sensors in the housing register his touch, and he starts to feel the cosmic energies at work. He resists an urge to close his eyes. He wants to see it happen, to watch this universe fold in on itself as he slips the bonds of one reality and deposits himself in another. The sight reminds him of a reflection rippling on the surface of a pond while fireworks blossom and spark overhead. And when the phenomenon is over, when his body no longer feels like it’s plugged into a wall socket, he sees that he’s back in his Manhattan apartment.

Normally, floor-to-ceiling windows offer breathtaking views of the Upper East Side, but Victor has kept the curtains drawn for months. Walls that once held original works of art, a collection amassed at great expense, are now bare. The hardwood floor is discolored where his Steinway Grand once stood. But those were all personal effects, discarded like a snake’s shed skin. The apartment is no longer a home. It hasn’t been since his wife left.

In the void left by art and furniture and sentimental items stands a parade of whiteboards, each covered with exotic equations. They flank a massive device wrought of exotic metals, which reminds Victor of the eye of a giant robot. Cables as thick as human arms curve from it and run along the floor. Enough power flows through them to service ten city blocks. Getting the necessary waivers from Con Edison required an army of lawyers and millions of dollars.