The ship is the Tōya Maru. The chief mate gives Jonas some clothing from the laundry’s lost and found, and that night, he enjoys his first proper meal in days. Two hours later, his stomach, unaccustomed to being full and traveling by sea, throws it all overboard.
The days are long but filled with tasks that make the hours pass swiftly. Jonas is assigned to replace chipped paint, to grease the fittings on hatches, grease the fittings on tackle, grease wire. Everything on the ship seems to require lubrication. One day, one of the ABs—able-bodied seamen, Jonas learns—spies the equations on his arms and starts asking questions. After several ill-fated attempts to put the man off, Jonas confesses to being a scientist. This leads him to getting assigned technical work. He’s put with the ship’s chief engineer and ends up hanging off the bow, making repairs to the bow-tank level sensor as the ocean gallops beneath him.
He lets a beard carpet his face and grows tan from working in the sun. His darkening skin begins to obscure his tattoos, but it doesn’t matter. Whether he reunites with Amanda or not, he knows this is the reality he’ll die in. Surely the quantum energies have left his body by now.
One night, the ship is buffeted by a terrible storm. Waves as high as buildings crest over the bow and assault the deck, swarming the ship. The ABs chatter and gossip about a “sudden cold front” or the ship’s radar failing to spot the oncoming hurricane, but Jonas holds a different fear, a concern that this universe might be waking to his presence, forming designs on stopping him from reaching Amanda. He tries to console himself with the argument that such worries are a ridiculous way for a scientist to think, but he knows better. He’s witnessed it.
Two more storms break out. Power failures plague the ship. Mechanical failures. Every day, the vessel develops new ailments. The crew openly begins to consider the possibility that the voyage is damned. In every conversation, Jonas keeps his own counsel. He focuses on his share of the repairs.
Despite the universe’s best efforts, the Tōya Maru makes port in Seattle, Washington. In the dead of night, the massive vessel slips into a berth. Even though it’s three o’clock in the morning and the night is as black as pitch, the men begin the work of off-loading their cargo. Amid the hoisting and winching, in the shadow of swinging cranes, Jonas slips away into the predawn darkness.
His salary from the ship pays for a Greyhound bus ticket to New York. But in Montana, the bus breaks down on the side of I-90 East. The passengers disembark to stretch their legs while the driver works to repair it. Rather than waiting for the man to undo the universe’s mischief, Jonas hitchhikes and ends up bouncing around in the rear of a dented pickup truck he estimates is at least twenty years old. Of course, the pickup also develops trouble.
Jonas transfers to a train, which manages to get as far as North Dakota before the universe stops it. Another bus takes him through Minnesota and then Wisconsin. The universe throws traffic and unseasonable snow at it. The journey is labored.
In defiance of the universe, Jonas passes through Pennsylvania and then New Jersey. With Manhattan in sight, he begins walking. It’s the middle of the night when he arrives at Van Brunt Street. The city that never sleeps rises from the horizon like a waking giant. Apart from a handful of minor changes—a street with a different name, a building with a different facade, the Mets with an extra World Series championship to their name—it’s the New York he remembers. It’s the New York that’s home.
He quickens his pace with each step that brings him closer to the Upper West Side. He should be exhausted, spent beyond belief or description, but his strides grow quicker. He fears another storm or earthquake. Or the universe could conjure some new mischief to delay him. But he’s so close now that he knows nothing can truly stop him.
His spirits begin to lift. In short order, he is running, sprinting down streets just coming to life with the dawn. He races past garbage trucks and newspaper deliveries and storefronts opening for the day. He outpaces early morning joggers. His arms piston and his legs burn, but he doesn’t care. He’s close. So close.
He rounds a corner, and then he sees it. The brownstone seems no different from the one where Amanda was shot, where Other Jonas lived, where he lived with Amanda in what feels like three lifetimes ago. He bounds up the stairs, his lungs heaving. A finger trembling with anticipation moves down the buttons of the building directory before settling on her name—CULLEN, AMANDA—on a sun-bleached label beneath a cloudy film of plastic. A metal button dusted with fingerprints next to it. Jonas’s finger hovers over it for the briefest of seconds. He imagines what he’ll tell her. How he’ll explain the impossible. How he’ll implore her to listen to his voice, to trust her memory of it. To believe him. He’s here. He’s back, and he’s alive, and he can’t wait to tell her all the details of his incredible story, but first he just needs to hold her in his arms and tell her that he loves her.
He pushes the button.
And waits.
He presses again. He’s shaking as though experiencing withdrawal. His ears are warm. His palms are sweating. He pushes the button a third time.
Behind him the door swings open, and a young boy, no more than ten, bounds out, a Dragon Ball Z backpack slung over his shoulder and a childlike spring in his step.
“She’s not home,” he offers before bounding down the steps.
The boy looks like Mr. and Mrs. Gomez. A nephew or grandson, maybe? Jonas springs after him. “Excuse me. What do you mean she’s not home?”
The boy stops. He glances skyward, looking toward the brownstone. “Mrs. Cullen. You were buzzing her, right?” Jonas nods. “She’s not home. She’s been painting in the mornings lately.”
It’s all Jonas can do to keep himself from hugging the boy. The wave of relief that hits him must unnerve the kid, because he says, “Are you okay?” The question comes out the way so many children’s questions do, without a sense that the answer is important.
“I’m fine. Do you know where she is? Do you know where she is right now?” Jonas can hardly keep the desperation out of his voice.
“I don’t know,” the boy answers.
Jonas’s mind wheels. He’s searched for Amanda in a multiverse of near-infinite realities only to have lost her in a city of over eight million people. Then an idea takes shape. “Do you have a phone I can borrow?” he blurts.
The boy hesitates. His parents have probably taught him not to share his phone with strangers. Nevertheless, he digs into his pocket and produces a five-year-old phone in a Power Rangers case. “I have to get to school.”
“Thank you,” Jonas says. “This’ll just take a second.” He searches for Amanda’s gallery. A few seconds of eternity pass before the phone confirms that Amanda is associated with the same gallery in this reality. He taps to get the phone to dial the number. It’s just past eight o’clock in the morning, before business hours, but Jonas is feeling lucky. Hope, that feckless stranger, is visiting him once more.
“Logan Gallery,” a male voice answers.
“Mitchell—” Jonas blurts, leaping at the voice.
“No, this is Vincent. Can I help you?”
Jonas breathes deep. Now comes the hard part. “This is Officer Stamper with the NYPD,” he says. “I need to locate Amanda Cullen.” He endures a pause on the other end of the line. “She may be going by Amanda Monroe.”
Another pause. “What’s this regarding?” Vincent asks.
“I can’t disclose that,” Jonas vamps. “She’s not in any trouble, but I need to speak with her immediately. In person.” He looks down to see the Gomez boy shifting on his feet, impatiently waiting for the return of his phone. “My understanding is that she’s out painting right now. Would you happen to know where?”
Another pause. Jonas holds his breath. Then, finally, Vincent responds. “At this time of day, she’s usually working. She likes the light.”
Jonas forces calm into his voice. “Do you have an address?”
Vincent does. It’s only six blocks away. Jonas is already plotting a course in his mind as he says, “Thank you.”
“She’s not in trouble, right?”
“No. No trouble at all.”
“She’ll be on the roof.”
“I know.”
“Wait. How would you kn—”
Jonas kills the line and returns the phone to the boy. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t know you were a cop,” the boy says. “Why don’t you have your own phone?”
“That . . . is a very, very long story,” Jonas says. “Thanks again.” With that, he takes off running.
Streets and avenues fall behind him as he runs, surrendering to his passage. For a blissful moment, it seems the universe has run out of tricks. But this time it doesn’t throw storms or earthquakes at him. It throws a parade. Entire city blocks are sectioned off by wooden blue sawhorses and police on horseback. Jonas darts through, ignoring shouted police commands and even weaving through a marching band.
He makes it another half block when he’s tossed into the air by a hand made of fire. Gravity smashes him back onto the sidewalk. He hears screams and astonished reactions. Still lying on the ground, he turns to see shattered concrete and traces of blue flame. Some kind of gas main explosion.
A passel of Good Samaritans is lifting him to a chorus of “Are you all right, buddy” and “Holy shit.” Jonas shrugs them off, muttering, “Thank you. I’m fine.” He hears incoming sirens. Someone tells him he should wait for an ambulance, but he takes off again.
His body protests as he sprints. But the pain is meaningless. He feels hope aborning. The universe may have been plotting his defeat, but it’s a fickle beast. It may have set Eva in his path to distract him, to stop him, to pull him off his pursuit, but Eva also helped him. The universe may be driven by fate but not with a singular mind. Jonas has faith. He has himself. He has the will to get to Amanda, to hold her in his arms again and never let her go.
He shoots across the street and once again finds himself airborne. In seconds, he’s landing atop the windshield of a taxi. As the glass spiderwebs beneath his weight, he thinks of how often he’s been hit by cars lately. The trick, he’s learned, is to go limp, relax the muscles, and let the impact absorb the kinetic energy. He ricochets off the taxi and lands in the street. The pain is intense, as usual, but it’s dampened under a cloud of adrenaline. Jonas throws himself to his feet and keeps running as the taxi driver unleashes a string of expletives such as can only be found in New York City.
Another gas main explodes nearby, but Jonas doesn’t even break stride.
Two more blocks.
I’m almost there, Amanda. I’m almost there.
