Dark Matter (11 page)

I look at her. “Earlier tonight, you told me that a conversation you and I had inspired your installation.”

“It did.”

“Can you tell me about this conversation?”

“You don't remember?”

“Not a single word of it.”

“How is that possible?”

“Please, Daniela.”

There's a long pause while she searches my eyes, maybe to confirm that I'm serious.

She finally says, “It was spring, I think. We hadn't seen each other in a while, and we hadn't really spoken since we went our separate ways all those years ago. I had been following your success, of course. I was always so proud of you.

“Anyway, you showed up at my studio one night. Out of the blue. Said you'd been thinking about me lately, and at first I thought you were just trying to hook up with an old flame, but this was something else. You seriously don't remember
any
of this?”

“It's like I wasn't even there.”

“We started talking about your research, how you were involved with this project that was under wraps, and you said—I remember this very clearly—you said you probably wouldn't see me again. And I realized that you hadn't stopped by to catch up. You had come to say goodbye. Then you told me that our existence was all about choices and that you had blown some of them, but none so badly as with me. You said you were sorry for everything. It was very emotional. You left, and I didn't hear from you or see you again until tonight. Now I have a question for you.”

“Okay.” Between the booze and dope and trying to unpack what she's telling me, I'm reeling.

“When you saw me tonight at the reception, the first thing you asked me was if I knew where ‘Charlie' was. Who's that?”

One of the things I love most about Daniela is her honesty. She has a direct link hardwired from her heart to her mouth. No filter, no self-revision. She says what she feels, without a shred of guile or cunning. She works no angles.

So when I look into Daniela's eyes and see that she's utterly sincere, it nearly breaks me.

“It doesn't matter,” I say.

“Obviously, it does. We haven't seen each other in a year and a half and that's the first thing you ask me?”

I finish off my drink, crunching the last melting ice cube between my molars.

“Charlie is our son.”

The color leaves her face.

“Hold on,” Ryan says, his words sharp. “I thought we were just having a stoner conversation. What is this?” He looks at Daniela, back to me. “Is this a joke?”

“No, it's not.”

Daniela says, “We don't have a son, and you know it. We haven't been together in fifteen years. You know this, Jason. You
know
this.”

I suppose I could try to convince her right now. I know so much about this woman—secrets from her childhood that she only revealed in the last five years of our marriage. But I worry these “revelations” would backfire. That she wouldn't see them as proofs, but sleights of hand. Parlor tricks. I'm betting the best approach to persuade her I'm telling the truth is clear-eyed sincerity.

I say, “Here's what I know, Daniela. You and I live in my brownstone in Logan Square. We have a fourteen-year-old son named Charlie. I'm a middling professor at Lakemont. You're an amazing wife and mother who sacrificed her art career to stay at home. And you, Ryan. You're a famous neuroscientist.
You
won the Pavia Prize.
You've
lectured all over the world. And I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but I don't have a brain tumor, no one is messing with me, and I haven't lost my mind.”

Ryan laughs, but there's an unmistakable twinge of discomfort in it. “Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that everything you just said is true. Or at least that you believe it. The unknown variable in this story is what you've been working on these last few years. This secret project. What can you tell us about it?”

“Nothing.”

Ryan struggles onto his feet.

“You're going?” Daniela asks.

“It's late. I've had enough.”

I say, “Ryan, it's not that I
won't
tell you. I
can't
tell you. I have no memory of it. I'm a physics professor. I woke up in this lab and everyone thought I belonged there, but I don't.”

Ryan takes his hat and heads for the door.

Halfway across the threshold, he turns and faces me, says, “You're not well. Let me take you to the hospital.”

“I've already been. I'm not going back.”

He looks at Daniela. “Do you want him to leave?”

She turns to me, considering—I'm guessing—whether she wants to be left alone with a madman. What if she decides not to trust me?

She finally shakes her head, says, “It's fine.”

“Ryan,” I say. “What compound did you make for me?”

He just glares at me, and for a moment I think he's going to answer, the tension draining out of his face, as if he's trying to decide whether I'm crazy or just being a stoned asshole.

And all at once, he arrives at his conclusion.

Hardness returns.

He says with zero warmth in his voice, “Good night, Daniela.”

Then turns.

Goes.

Slams the door behind him.

Daniela walks into the guest room wearing yoga pants and a tank top and carrying a cup of tea.

I've had a shower.

I don't feel any better, but at least I'm clean, the hospital stench of sickness and Clorox gone.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she hands me the mug.

“Chamomile.”

I cup my hands around the hot ceramic, say, “You didn't have to do this. I have a place I can go.”

“You're staying here with me. End of story.”

She crawls across my legs and sits beside me, her back against the headboard.

I sip the tea.

It's warm, soothing, faintly sweet.

Daniela looks over.

“When you went to the hospital, what did they think was wrong with you?”

“They didn't know. They wanted to commit me.”

“To a psych ward?”

“Yeah.”

“And you wouldn't consent?”

“No, I left.”

“So it would have been an involuntary thing.”

“That's right.”

“Are you sure that's not what's best at this point, Jason? I mean, what would you think if someone were saying to you the things you're saying to me?”

“I'd think he was out of his mind. But I'd be wrong.”

“Then tell me,” she says. “What do you think is happening to you?”

“I'm not entirely sure.”

“But you're a scientist. You have a theory.”

“I don't have enough data.”

“What does your gut tell you?”

I sip the chamomile tea, savoring the hit of warmth as it slides down my throat.

“We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we're a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.”

She takes my hand in hers, and even though she isn't Daniela as I know her, I cannot hide from how madly I love this woman, even here and now, sitting in this bed, in this wrong world.

I look over at her, those Spanish eyes glassy and intense. It takes all my willpower to keep my hands off her.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

I think back to the man who took me at gunpoint. To that lab. To the team that followed me back to my brownstone and tried to apprehend me. I think of the man smoking a cigarette under my hotel room window. On top of all the elements of my identity and this reality that don't align, there are very real people out there, beyond these walls, who want to find me.

Who have hurt me before and possibly want to hurt me again.

A sobering thought crashes over me—could they track me here? Have I put Daniela in danger?

No.

If she isn't my wife, if she's only a girlfriend from fifteen years ago, why would she be on anyone's radar?

“Jason?” And she asks again, “Are you afraid?”

“Very.”

She reaches up, gently touches my face, says, “Bruises.”

“I don't know how I got them.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Who?”

“Charlie.”

“This must be so weird for you.”

“I can't pretend it's not.”

“Well, I told you, he's fourteen. Almost fifteen. His birthday is October twenty-first, and he was born premature at Chicago Mercy. A whopping one pound, fifteen ounces. He needed a lot of help his first year, but he was a fighter. Now he's healthy and as tall as I am.”

Tears well up in her eyes.

“He has dark hair like you and a wonderful sense of humor. Solid B student. Very right-brained, like his mama. He's into Japanese comics and skateboards. Loves to draw these crazy landscapes. I don't think it's too early to say that he has your eye for it.”

“Stop it.”

“What?”

She closes her eyes, and the tears squeeze out of the corners and spill down her cheeks.

“We don't have a son.”

“You swear to me you have no memory of him?” I ask. “This isn't some game? If you tell me now, I won't—”

“Jason, we broke up fifteen years ago. Well, to be specific, you ended it with me.”

“That is not true.”

“I had told you the day before that I was pregnant. You needed time to think about it. You came to my loft and said it was the hardest decision you'd ever made, but you were busy with your research, the research that would ultimately win that big award. You said the next year of your life would be in a cleanroom and that I deserved better. That our child deserved better.”

I say, “That is not how it happened. I told you it wasn't going to be easy, but that we'd make it work. We got married. You had Charlie. I lost my funding. You quit painting. I became a professor. You became a full-time mother.”

“And yet here we are tonight. Not married. No children. You just came from the opening of the installation that's going to make me famous, and you did win that prize. I don't know what's going on in your head. Maybe you do have competing memories, but I know what's real.”

I stare down at the steam rising off the surface of the tea.

“Do you think I'm crazy?” I ask.

“I have no idea, but you're not well.”

And she looks at me with the compassion that has always defined her.

I touch the ring of thread that's tied around my finger like a talisman.

I say, “Look, maybe you believe what I'm telling you, maybe you don't, but I need you to know that
I
believe it. I would never lie to you.”

This is possibly the most surreal moment I've experienced since coming to consciousness in that lab—sitting in bed in the guest room of the apartment of the woman who is my wife but isn't, talking about the son we apparently never had, about the life that wasn't ours.

I wake alone in bed in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, the darkness spinning, the inside of my mouth sickeningly dry.

For a full terrifying minute, I have no idea where I am.

This isn't the alcohol or the pot.

It's a much deeper level of disorientation.

I wrap the covers tightly around me, but I can't stop shaking, and a full-body ache is growing more painful by the second, my legs restless, my head throbbing.

The next time my eyes open, the room is filled with daylight and Daniela is standing over me, looking worried.

“You're burning up, Jason. I should take you to the ER.”

“I'll be fine.”

“You don't look fine.” She places a freezing washcloth across my forehead. “How does that feel?” she asks.

“Good, but you don't have to do this. I'll grab a cab back to my hotel.”

“Just try to leave.”

In the early afternoon, my fever breaks.

Daniela cooks me chicken noodle soup from scratch, and I eat sitting up in bed while she sits in a chair in the corner with a distance in her eyes I know too well.

She's lost in thought, mulling something over, and doesn't notice that I'm watching her. I don't mean to stare, but I can't take my eyes off her. She is still so utterly Daniela, except—

Her hair is shorter.

She's in better shape.

She's wearing makeup, and her clothes—jeans and a form-fitting T—age her down considerably from thirty-nine years.

“Am I happy?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“In our life that you say we share together…am I happy?”

“I thought you didn't want to talk about it.”

“I couldn't sleep last night. It was all I could think about.”

“I think you're happy.”

“Even without my art?”

“You miss it for sure. You see old friends finding success, and I know you're happy for them, but I also know it stings. Just like it does for me. It's a bonding agent between us.”

“You mean we're both losers.”

“We are not losers.”

“Are
we
happy? Together, I mean.”

I set the bowl of soup aside.

“Yeah. There have been rough patches, like with any marriage, but we have a son, a home, a family. You're my best friend.”

She looks straight at me and asks with a devious smirk, “How's our sex life?”

I just laugh.

She says, “Oh God, did I actually make you blush?”

“You did.”

“But you didn't answer my question.”

“I didn't, did I?”

“What's wrong, is it not good?”

She's flirting now.

“No, it's great. You're just embarrassing me.”

She gets up and walks over to the bed.

Sits on the edge of the mattress and stares at me with those huge, deep eyes.