They return my shoes and escort me through a series of corridors.
As I push through the doors at the end of the last hallway, my breath catches in my throat and my eyes sheet over with tears.
Of all the places I imagined our reunion finally happening, the lobby of the 14th District Precinct wasn’t one of them.
Daniela rises from her chair.
Not a Daniela who doesn’t know me, or is married to another man, or another version of me.
My Daniela.
The one, the only.
She’s wearing the shirt she sometimes paints in—a faded blue button-down spattered with oil and acrylic—and when she sees me her face screws up with confusion and disbelief.
I rush to her across the lobby, wrapping my arms around her, and she’s saying my name, saying it like something isn’t adding up, but I don’t let go, because I can’t let go. Thinking—the worlds I’ve come through, the things I’ve done, endured, suffered, to get back into the arms of this woman.
I can’t believe how good it feels to touch her.
To breathe the same air.
To smell her.
Feel the voltage of my skin against hers.
I frame her face in my hands.
I kiss her mouth.
Those lips—so maddeningly soft.
But she pulls away.
And then pushes me away, her hands against my chest, her brow deeply furrowed.
“They told me you were arrested for smoking a cigar in a restaurant, and that you wouldn’t…” Her train of thought derails. She studies my face like there’s something wrong with it, her fingers running through two weeks’ worth of stubble. Of course there’s something wrong with it—it’s not the face she woke up to today. “You didn’t have a beard this morning, Jason.” She looks me up and down. “You’re so thin.” She touches my ragged, filthy shirt. “These aren’t the clothes you left the house in.”
I can see her trying to process it all and coming up blank.
“Did you bring Charlie?” I ask.
“No. I told you I wasn’t going to. Am I losing my mind or—?”
“You’re not losing your mind.”
Gently, I take her by the arm and pull her over to a couple of straight-backed chairs in a small waiting area.
I say, “Let’s sit for a minute.”
“I don’t want to sit, I want you to—”
“Please, Daniela.”
We sit.
“Do you trust me?” I ask.
“I don’t know. This is all…scaring me.”
“I’ll explain everything, but first I need you to call a cab.”
“My car is parked two blocks—”
“We’re not walking to your car.”
“Why?”
“It’s not safe out there for us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Daniela, will you please just trust me on this?”
I think she’s going to balk, but instead she takes out her phone, opens an app, and orders a car.
Looking up at me finally, she says, “Done. It’s three minutes out.”
I glance around the lobby.
The officer who escorted me here from the booking room is gone, and at the moment, we’re the only occupants aside from the woman at the welcome window. But she’s sitting behind a thick wall of protective glass, so I feel reasonably sure she can’t hear us.
I look at Daniela.
I say, “What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy. You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I haven’t. Remember the night of Ryan’s celebration at Village Tap? For winning that prize?”
“Yeah. That was over a month ago.”
“When I walked out the door of our house that night, that’s the last time I saw you, until five minutes ago when I came through those doors.”
“Jason, I’ve seen you every day since that night.”
“That man isn’t me.”
Her face becomes dark.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s another version of me.”
She just stares into my eyes, blinking.
“Is this some kind of trick? Or a game you’re playing? Because—”
“Not a trick. Not a game.”
I take her phone out of her hand and check the time. “It’s 12:18. I have office hours right now.”
I type in the number to my direct line on campus and hand Daniela the phone.
It rings twice, and then I hear my voice answer with, “Hi, beautiful. I was just thinking about you.”
Daniela’s mouth opens slowly.
She looks ill.
I put it on speaker and mouth, “Say something.”
She says, “Hey. How’s your day going so far?”
“Great. Finished my morning lecture, and now I’m seeing a few students over the lunch hour. Everything okay?”
“Um, yeah. I just…wanted to hear your voice.”
I grab the phone from her and mute it.
Jason says, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I look at Daniela, say, “Tell him you’ve been thinking, and that since we had such an amazing time in the Keys last Christmas, you want to go back.”
“We didn’t go to the Keys last Christmas.”
“I know that, but he doesn’t. I want to prove to you he’s not the man you think he is.”
My doppelgänger says, “Daniela? Did I lose you?”
She unmutes the phone. “No, I’m right here. So, the real reason for my call—”
“Wasn’t just to hear the dulcet tones of my voice?”
“I was thinking about when we went to the Keys for Christmas last year, and how much fun we all had. I know money’s tight, but what if we went back?”
Jason doesn’t miss a beat.
“Absolutely. Whatever you want, my love.”
Daniela stares into my eyes as she says into the phone, “Do you think we can get the same house we had? The pink-and-white one that was right on the beach? It was so perfect.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and I think she’s right on the verge of losing her composure, but she somehow manages to hold the scaffolding together.
“We’ll make it work,” he says.
The phone begins to shake in her hand.
I want to tear him slowly apart.
Jason says, “Honey, someone’s waiting out in the hall to see me, so I better jump off.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
No you won’t.
“See you tonight, Jason.”
She ends the call.
Reaching down, I squeeze her hand and say, “Look at me.”
She looks lost, addled.
I say, “I know your head is spinning right now.”
“How can you be at Lakemont and also sitting here right in front of me at the same moment?”
Her phone beeps.
A message appears on the touchscreen, advising that our car is arriving.
I say, “I’ll explain everything, but right now we need to get in this car and pick our son up from school.”
“Is Charlie in danger?”
“We all are.”
That seems to wrench her back into the moment.
Rising, I give her a hand up out of the chair.