Jonas bolts forward, either to rail at Victor, or hit him, or both—he doesn’t know—but the space where Victor stands begins to fold in on itself. For an instant, the small confines of the galley wink with light. And then nothing.
Which is when Jonas starts to shake.
With unsettling urgency, he grasps for a glass and the closest bottle of liquor. He pours a drink and gulps it down. It burns the back of his throat but does nothing against the terror rising within him.
Victor sent the man who killed Eva.
Victor is trying to stop me.
He pours another glass. A flight attendant enters and brews a fresh pot of coffee. She’s talking to him but might as well be on another planet. The entire universe has been reduced to Jonas and the liquor in his hand.
Victor doesn’t want me to reunite with Amanda.
It’s beyond comprehension. It’s irrational. Victor’s affect, Jonas recalls, wasn’t that of a rational human being.
Victor is so envious that he wants to stop me from being with my wife.
Fortunately the liquor starts to take hold. Victor may have taken leave of his senses, but Jonas doesn’t have to. Victor tried to destroy his life once already and failed. This will be no different. At the end of the day, there’s nothing Victor can do to prevent Jonas from being with Amanda. If death itself didn’t stop him, Victor Kovacevic certainly can’t.
At least, that’s what Jonas tries to convince himself.
Jonas spends the rest of the flight in a stupor enabled by first class’s endless flow of liquor. He downs each drink in equal turns unnerved and enraged. Victor. The man’s self-righteousness and jealousy has metastasized to the point where it extinguished a human life. Jonas vibrates with fury and orders another drink. He’s so consumed with emotion that it never occurs to him to consider how Victor managed to locate Jonas twice, in two different universes.
His stomach drops, but it’s just the plane settling in for its final descent. A flight attendant’s voice, flecked with a German accent, comes across the loudspeaker. “We’re approaching Newark’s Hillary Clinton Airport. In preparation for landing, please return your tray tables and seat backs to their upright and locked positions . . .”
Out the window, the once-familiar skyline of Jonas’s home seems altered, unexpectedly unfamiliar. A new skyline transects the city, buildings of bleeding edge design rising from the older, shorter buildings that surround it. It reminds Jonas of a healed-over scar. The thought brings a chill.
On the ground, the customs officer, a heavyset man in his forties with three-day stubble, studies Jonas’s new passport for an unsettling length of time.
“Is there a problem?” Jonas asks despite his best instincts, hoping the question is inflected with the certainty that there couldn’t possibly be a problem.
“It’s just funny,” the officer says. “But there was a Jonas Cullen who died. A Nobel Prize winner. Read an article about him recently.”
Jonas spreads his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Well, clearly I’m alive, so . . .”
“The thing is,” the officer muses, not taking his eye off Jonas’s laminated passport photo, “you look just like him.” The man reaches for his phone. “Here, lemme show you . . .”
Jonas fights panic as the man googles. “Y’know, I’m actually in a bit of a rush,” he says apologetically, offering a hapless shrug.
The customs officer casts a suspicious eye in Jonas’s direction. The phone glows faintly in the man’s hand. Jonas holds his breath. Fortunately, the officer notices the line of weary travelers snaking behind Jonas and determines that he doesn’t have the time for this either. The sound of Jonas exhaling in relief is covered by the officer pounding his passport with a stamp.
“Anyway, the resemblance is dead on,” the man says, returning the passport.
“I’ll be sure to tell my wife. I bet she’ll get a kick out of it.”
The taxi fights its way through Manhattan. Jonas doubts there is any universe where the city isn’t clogged with traffic, and he considers whether walking might not be faster. The taxi lurches. Every inch is a victory, and Jonas reminds himself it’s not the traffic but his excitement that makes his progress into Midtown seem glacial. He consoles himself with the litany of things he can’t wait for. The feel of Amanda in his arms. The sound of her voice. The scent of her hair. For two years he’s clung to these memories, but they’ve been receding, slowly slipping away.
Even the image of her face has faded, though he has stared for hours at that photograph of her in Central Park, with the diamond ring nestled inside a Frisbee, eclipsed by the more indelible, tragic portrait of her hanging upside down, the blood racing up her face and pooling under her eye like a tear.
Jonas slams his eyes closed and violently wills the image away. This will all be over soon.
Five blocks away, he surrenders to his impatience and thrusts a fistful of bills through the plastic divide that separates him from the driver. He spills out onto the street and starts walking. It’s a beautiful spring day. The city smells fresh, like it has thrown off the shackles of winter and is stretching out its limbs. Heat bounces off the sidewalk. Light spills down through chasms of steel and glass.
With two blocks to go, he starts running. He threads through tourists. He hurdles a dog leash. He throws himself through a crosswalk and dodges traffic, ignoring the irate honks the maneuver draws. His sprint attracts confused and curious stares. He avoids a painful collision with a worker pushing a hand truck.
He doesn’t even know what day of the week it is. Amanda might not be home. But logistics and reason and all sense have left him, swallowed by the overwhelming need to get to the home they’d once shared. She’ll be there. He has faith. No, that’s not right. Faith is belief in the absence of knowledge. She’ll be there. He knows this. She’ll be waiting.
And then . . . he’s there. He bounds up the steps of the modest brownstone. The front door is locked. His finger flies over the building directory until he finds CULLEN. He stabs the corresponding button. Over and over. No answer. His impatience melts into desperation.
Then, behind him, labored breaths. The crinkle of paper. The clinking of glass. Jonas spins, expectant, but it’s not Amanda. It’s—What was her name?—Mrs. Gomez, her sixty-eight-year-old body winded from carrying too many groceries. She glances up, peering over the edges of her shopping bags, to see Jonas. Out of habit, he waves.
Her groceries drop.
Produce slaps the sidewalk. A bottle shatters, spraying tomato sauce. Oranges and tomatoes roll away.
Mrs. Gomez stares at Jonas. Slack jawed. Blanching. Her chest is still heaving but no longer from exertion. Her jagged breaths border on hyperventilation.
“Dios mío,” she whispers.
“Mrs. Gomez—”
Jonas chances a step toward her, but she begins to tremble. “Estás muerto. Estás muerto,” she repeats, her lower lip quivering. “No es posible . . .”
Her mouth, already agape, opens farther, and Jonas knows she’s going to let loose a scream. And a scream will cause a commotion. A commotion will draw a crowd. And a crowd will attract police attention. He can’t risk dealing with the police. Not when he’s so close, standing on the literal doorstep.
