“Why are you using the past tense?” Eva asks.
Jonas’s blood cools, but he plasters a smile over his face. “Because I met you, past tense. I’m not still meeting you.”
Eva leans forward, steepling her fingers. “Do you know what I’ve discovered?” She bears down on him with a polygraph stare. “We’re both horrendous liars.”
Jonas swallows hard. He had led them both into a thicket by mistake. “Do you want to know . . .” He gestures an invitation with his hand, but the offer is clear in its insincerity.
“No.” Eva darkens. A coldness emanates from her. The distance Jonas had begun to feel between them now seems like a chasm. “I think I’ve learned more than I want to.”
She waves for another glass of sake and returns to her meal, her chopsticks pecking away at the fish like the beak of a pelican.
They finish the rest of the meal in silence.
THREE YEARS AGO
Thirty-five Hudson Yards was also referred to as “Tower E,” a hybrid hotel and residential building on Manhattan’s West Side. Although shaped like a prism, the sheets of glass that covered it reflected light rather than refracted it. Jonas wondered if the architects were aware of the irony.
He stepped out onto the roof, which soared over a thousand feet into the air. It was a beautiful spring day, and from this vantage he could see all the way across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey. Dappled sunlight danced along the surface of the water, looking almost electric.
He remembered a time when looking out from such a height would have unnerved him. Amanda had cured him of that, as she had cured him of so many things. Loving her made him want to be a better person, and all the things that once frightened him now seemed insignificant.
He saw her near the roofline. Her back was to him, and she was gazing out toward Hell’s Kitchen. Her hair waved almost imperceptibly in the gentle breeze. Next to her was a massive canvas, a huge five-foot square resting on a pair of easels. The canvas was coated in intersecting streaks of graphite. Lines plunged toward vanishing points. Although it was still rudimentary, Jonas could make out enough detail to suggest falling rather than flying. It was an unexpected departure for Amanda, whose prior works had always conveyed the idea of soaring.
He took a moment to admire her, the way she leaned on her right leg, cocking her hip almost imperceptibly to the side. The sun drew highlights in her brunette hair. The wind wafted at her T-shirt, making it flutter.
Amanda rarely painted this late into the day. As the afternoon waned, she said the shadows grew too long for her to work. The darkness cast by the city’s skyscrapers were, to her eye, like claws tearing through Manhattan. She preferred to work when the sun was high, and the light was sublime.
But now the sun was going down, and Amanda was flawlessly backlit by it. The sky looked as if it were aflame. Amanda’s burgeoning project was set ironically against what itself looked like a painting. Jonas took out his phone and snapped a photo. It captured her silhouette perfectly, and her inchoate project peeked in just enough to tease what it could become, what she would make it.
Jonas put his phone back in his pocket. “Hey, baby.” She didn’t turn around at first. He assumed she was focused on some detail, so he approached and took it in. Amanda worked in a way such that to see her art up close was to reveal an entirely different perspective, art within art, a painting within a painting. “This one’s coming along,” he commented. “It’s different, though. The vanishing points are lower.” He gestured toward the bottom of the canvas. “See? I pay attention when you explain stuff to me.” His tone was playful.
Amanda still didn’t respond, which was odd.
Jonas looked at her, and in an instant, his worry spiked. Her eyes were red. A tear had carved a line down the dust on her cheek. He felt cold. “Amanda?”
“I’m fine,” she said unconvincingly as she turned to face him. She looked leaden, pinned under some weight.
“What’s wrong?” He felt an urge to take her in his arms but sensed she didn’t want to be held in this moment.
Amanda bit her lower lip, as she often did when she was upset. He could see her straining not to cry. “I saw Dr. Gilberg today.” Jonas’s veins turned to ribbons of ice. He must have looked terrified because Amanda immediately added, “I’m fine. I’m not dying or sick or anything.”
But Jonas felt no relief, could feel no relief. Not until he knew what was wrong. He watched as she bit her lip harder. Her head gave a little shake as her tears started to swell. Her jaw jutted forward, trying to keep sorrow at bay with anger.
“There’s a growth on one of my ovaries,” she managed.
Jonas couldn’t resist any longer. He took her in his arms. He felt her body tremble against his, his shoulder damp beneath where Amanda rested her head. He stroked the back of it. “It’s going to be okay.” He hoped he sounded more convincing than he felt.
Amanda shook her head vigorously. “They have to operate.” She was sobbing hard now. Her tears drenched his shirt as she gripped him tighter. “I hate—” she began. “I hate—” She couldn’t get the words. Tears were getting in the way.
“Hate what, honey?”
“I hate that I’m scared.” The words came in a rush, laced with defiant resentment.
“It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared. But we’re going to take this one step at a time, all right?” He pulled back slightly so she could see his face. “It’s going to be okay,” he promised. “It’s going to be okay.” He paused before venturing, “Is there anything I can do for you right now?”
She stopped crying but didn’t let him go. “Just hold me.”
And he did. Until the sun disappeared behind the skyline, and the stars began to wink down on them. Jonas hid his fear from view, the expression on his face that asked, What are we going to do now?
NOW
Another week passes. Jonas moves in a trio of whiteboards and fills them up with equations that test Other Jonas’s calculations, continuing the work begun in New Berlin. All the while, Eva keeps her distance, literally and figuratively. With increasing inventiveness, she manufactures reasons to avoid him. She must run an errand. She must buy more groceries. She must keep up with her own work and, for reasons she can’t or won’t articulate, can only do so at the Hiroshima City Central Library. She takes up running with the zeal of a religious convert. But Jonas can’t shake the feeling that she’s running less for exercise than to get away from him.
He thinks about pressing the issue. Since the meal at Sushitei Hikarimachi, he’s come close several times, only to retreat, afraid to broach any topic that could lead to a discussion of what happened to Eva’s doppelgänger on the Seidenstrasse, which would lead to a discussion of how it happened, which would lead to his disclosing the threat of Victor’s crusade against him. And then he would be forced to explain why he never told her about it.
Jonas asks himself now why he didn’t. What impulse drove him to conceal the full truth of his circumstances? He’s asked so much of her, and she’s given it without hesitation or reservation. But she’s done so from behind a veil of ignorance, unaware that, somewhere in the multiverse, a man is trying to stop him. And that effort has already led to Eva’s death once before. Jonas tells himself that the act of concealment is protective—to safeguard Eva against some threat he can’t articulate—and he is shocked by the ease with which he lies to himself.
To explain Victor’s vendetta would be to expose the reason for it, the allegations of theft and plagiarism. And although Jonas is secure in the belief that he committed no such crimes, he’s forced to admit to himself that he’s concerned Eva might think otherwise. That she might lose some measure of respect for him, see him as lesser. But what would it matter if her estimation of him shrank a little? The answer lies in those fleeting moments of connection, the chemistry they’ve been sharing with increasing frequency.
Feeling guilty and ashamed, Jonas tries to wrap himself in the familiar cloak of belief in the purity of his endeavor. Getting back to Amanda requires singular focus. And he’s come too far to alter his course now.
Besides, he reassures himself, Victor likely declared victory the moment Amanda crumpled to the sidewalk two universes ago. Victor doesn’t know—can’t know—about the other Amanda, the one discovered by Other Jonas. Victor must think that Jonas’s mission, and thus his own, is now over. Victor must have moved on, resumed whatever life he had left after being consumed by envy and bitterness and hate.
Eva must be safe.
So why not tell her? Jonas finally resolves to do exactly that, to tell her everything. And to apologize for keeping secrets from her. He’s going to promise never to do it again.
Eva emerges from the bedroom on her way out of the apartment. “I’m going to head over to the Spire, see if the personal touch can work something.”
