“Do you think it’s food poisoning? What did you eat?” David asks.
“Yeah, maybe.” I lean my head against the window, and David squeezes my shoulder before taking out his phone. When we get home, I change into sweats and crawl into bed.
He comes and perches on the edge. “Can I do anything?” he asks me. He smoothes down the comforter, and I grab his hand before he lifts it off.
“Lay down with me,” I say.
“You’re probably contagious,” he says. He puts the back of his hand on my cheek. “I’m going to make you some tea.”
I look at him. His brown eyes. The slight tufts of his hair. He never uses product, no matter how many times I tell him everyone needs it.
“Go to sleep,” he says. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
He’s wrong, I think. I won’t. But I fall asleep anyway. When I dream, I’m back in that apartment. The one with the windows and the blue chairs. Aaron isn’t there. Instead, it’s Bella. She finds his sweatpants in the top drawer of the dresser. She holds them up and shakes them at me. What are these doing here? she wants to know. I don’t have an answer. But she keeps demanding one. She walks closer and closer to me. What are these doing here? Tell me, Dannie. Tell me the truth. When I go to speak, I realize the entire apartment is filled with water and I’m choking on everything I cannot say.
Chapter Eight
“It’s nice to see you again,” Dr. Christine says.
The plant is still there. I assume, now, that it’s fake. Too much time has passed.
“Yes, well,” I say. “I don’t really know who else to tell.”
“Tell what?”
The truth of what I have learned. That what I saw in that apartment is from the future. It will occur in exactly five months and nineteen days, on December 15. I graduated as valedictorian of Harriton High, magna cum laude from Yale, and top of my law class at Columbia. I’m not gullible, nor am I a fool. What happened wasn’t a dream; it was a premonition—a prophecy sketched to life— and now I need to know how and why it happened, so I can make sure it never does.
“I met the man,” I tell her. “From the dream.”
She swallows. It could be my imagination, but it seems like it’s taking some effort. I want to skip this part, the part where we have to determine what it is and how it happened, the process. The part where she thinks I’m maybe a little bit crazy. Hallucinating, possibly. Working out past trauma, etc. I’m only interested in prevention, now.
“How do you know it was him?”
I give her a look. “I didn’t tell you we slept together.”
“Oh.” She leans forward in her brown leather chair. Unlike the plant, it’s new. “That seems an important part. Why do you think you left it out?”
“Because I’m engaged,” I tell her. “Obviously.”
She leans forward. “Not to me.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just didn’t. But I know it’s him, and he’s now dating my best friend.”
Dr. Christine looks at her notes. “Bella.”
I nod, although I don’t remember talking about her. I must have.
“She’s very important to you.”
“Yes.”
“And you feel guilty now.”
“Well, technically, I haven’t done anything wrong.”
She squints at me. I put a fist to my forehead and hold it there.
“You mentioned you’re engaged,” she says. “To the same man you were with when we last spoke?”
“Yes.”
“It has been over four years since I saw you. Do you have plans to get married?”
“Some couples decide not to.”
She nods. “Is that what you and David have decided?”
“Look,” I say. “I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen again, or happen at all. That’s why I’m here.”
Dr. Christine sits back as if creating more space between us. A pathway to the door, maybe.
“Dannie,” she says. “I think something is going on that you don’t understand, and that is frightening to you, as someone whose actual job it is to discover and prove causality.”
“Causality,” I repeat.
“If I do this, I’ll get this result.” She holds out her hands like a weighted Grecian scale. “This experience does not fit in your life, you have not taken any steps to have it, and yet here it is.”
“Well, right,” I say. “That’s why I need it to not be.”
“And how do you propose you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s kind of why I’m here.”
Predictably, our time is up.
I decide I need to go in search of the apartment. I need something concrete, some form of evidence.
Sunday, David heads into the office and I tell him I’m going for a run. I used to run all the time in my twenties. Long ones. Down the West Side Highway and through the Financial District, between the tall buildings and across the cobblestones. I’ve run the loop in Central Park, around the reservoir, watching the leaves change from green to yellow to amber, the water reflecting the seasons. I’ve run two marathons and half a dozen halfs. Running does all the things for me it does for everyone else—clears my head, gives me time to think, makes my body feel good and loose. But it also has the added benefit of taking me places. When I first moved to the city I could only afford to live in Hell’s Kitchen, but I wanted to be everywhere. So I ran.
In the early days of our relationship I used to try and get David to come with me, but he’d want to stop after a few blocks and get bagels so I started leaving him at home. Running is better alone anyway. More space to think.
It’s 9 a.m. by the time I cross the Brooklyn Bridge, but it’s Sunday, early, so there aren’t that many tourists out yet. Just bikers and other joggers. I keep my head high, shoulders back, focusing on my core pulling forward. My breathing is ragged. It has been too long since I’ve been on a long run, and I feel my lungs rebelling against the exertion.
I never saw the outside of the building. But from the view I’d have to place it somewhere close to the water, maybe near Plymouth. I get over the bridge and slow to a walk as I make my way down Washington Street toward the river. The sun has started to burn off the haze of the morning, and the water reflects in sparkles. I take off my sweatshirt and tie it around my waist.