“Oh, hi. Sorry for the noise. I was having some trouble with my key.” Alice felt herself begin to blubber. “Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Emily said. “I’m working from home today anyway. Oh, wait, I have a package for you, hang on.” She opened the door wide, propping it open with a doorstop. Alice took the two steps down and looked inside, into her apartment. Gone was her bed; gone was her table. Gone was her mess and her clothes and her art on the walls. All of it was replaced with Emily’s glittery taste—a pink couch, a rug in the shape of a rainbow, a four-poster bed. Alice could see straight through to the garden, as if the apartment had doubled in size, like it was sitting in front of a mirror. Emily came back with a small box. “Here you go.”
Alice took the box and held it against her chest. She wasn’t sure where to go.
Emily put her hand on Alice’s wrist. “Dude, are you okay? You’re upstairs now, boss, remember?” She pointed with her eyebrows, and then a long finger.
“Oh, right,” Alice said. “Thanks for this.” She looked at the return address—it was from Sam, for her birthday. Late, as always. The tiara, and the photo, Alice could guess. “I’ll text you later, okay? Thanks.” She didn’t mention her father, because she couldn’t.
* * *
? ? ?
Her key opened the door at the top of the stoop. It was a duplex—she’d been in it before; her landlady had invited her over for dinner. Original woodwork, a beautiful curving banister. Her things were everywhere, and Leonard’s, too—there were posters on the wall that had hung on Pomander. She hadn’t noticed they were gone.
* * *
? ? ?
The plan was that Debbie would keep Pomander for now, until they decided what to do. Leonard had owned it outright, and Debbie still owed a mortgage on her co-op, and so the idea was that she would move in, but Debbie had offered it to Alice, too, if she wanted it. Alice had said no quickly—she didn’t think she could resist, if she were that close every day. Ursula would stay on Pomander, too, though Alice didn’t know if it would be possible to move her even if she wanted to bring her home. It seemed entirely plausible that the cat would vanish into a puff of smoke if one tried. As far as she knew, Ursula had never even been to the vet. It made her laugh to think about all the things that Leonard understood that she would never understand, the tiny things and the big ones. Her phone buzzed. She was going to turn it off, completely off, maybe even throw it in the bathtub. It was a text from a number she didn’t have in her phone: Hey Alice, it’s Kenji Morris, from Belvedere. Sam gave me your number. She told me about your dad. I know we haven’t talked in 1000 years, but you know I’ve been there. Give a call, anytime. Maybe Alice wouldn’t throw her phone in the bathtub just yet.
* * *
? ? ?
Any story could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on where you ended it. That was the magic, how the same story could be told an infinite number of ways.
* * *
? ? ?
Time Brothers, the novel, ended with a scene of Scott and Jeff at the breakfast table, the boys lightheartedly arguing over who had the most maple syrup, after they had successfully saved the world several times. There was no doubt that they would do it all again.
* * *
? ? ?
Dawn of Time ended with Dawn standing at the center of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. It was daybreak, with a pale sky over a silent city. Leonard spent half a page describing her face, and the way the pink sunlight reflected off the buildings. The year was purposefully ambiguous—Dawn, unlike the brothers, did not want to spend the rest of her life rocketing back and forth through decades and centuries. The reader hoped that Dawn had finally found her way home. Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap, but hope—hope was honest. Hope was good.
* * *
? ? ?
Alice walked over to her front window, which now was fully aboveground. She could see the brownstones across the street, and the sky overhead. The traffic on the BQE hummed away. She pressed her nose and forehead lightly against the glass. Forward, that was the idea. Until the future, whatever it was going to be.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who talked to me about the Upper West Side of our youth, about science fiction, about time travel, and about parents: Christine Onorati, Gary Wolfe, Olivia Greer, Julie Barer, Nina Lalli, and Sam Saltz.
Thank you to Gabi Zegarra-Ballon for being a loving friend to the whole family, and whose presence made the writing of this book possible.
Thank you to the staff of Books Are Magic, past and present—I have learned more from you than I could ever hope to teach you, and I am grateful for each of you every single day. Nick Buzanski, Serena Morales, Michael Chin, Colleen Callery, Lindsay Howard, Jacque Izzo, Shulokhana Khan, Natalie Orozco, Aatia Davison, Isabel Parkey, Kristina Rivero, Anthony Piacentini, Abby Rauscher, Eddie Joyce, and Nika Jonas—thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you to my people at Riverhead: Sarah McGrath, Geoff Kloske, Claire McGinnis, Jynne Martin, Delia Taylor, Nora Alice Demick, and Alison Fairbrother. Thank you to Laura Cherkas for copyediting a time travel book without making me cry. Thank you to Jess Leeke and Gaby Young and the team at Michael Joseph. Thank you to my dear, indefatigable agent, Claudia Ballard, and to everyone at WME: Tracy Fisher, Camille Morgan, Anna DeRoy, Laura Bonner, and Matilda Forbes Watson.
Thank you to Justin Goodfellow for always letting me ask questions, and to the entirety of the Penguin sales team for helping my books find their readers.
Thank you to all the bookstores around the world who have chosen to have my books on their shelves. I understand more than ever what it means to have a book in stock, taking up precious real estate, and it is an honor that I do not take for granted.
Thank you to everyone with whom I ever smoked a cigarette, sat on a stoop, ate at a diner, drank too much, and stayed awake all night. I can close my eyes and be there, electric with the excitement of being a teenager.
Thank you to my Mikey, for always making sure there was time (no easy feat this year), for being my tireless cheerleader, and for keeping the bookstore up and running in these uncertain and scary times. Thank you to my children, my constant companions, for being such wild, amazing creatures.
Thank you to my mom, for still putting small bowls of snacks within reach.
Thank you to Killer, to whom I have granted much deserved immortality in this book.
Thank you to the doctors, nurses, and staff at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for their vital work, which was made so much harder in 2020, when this book was written.
Most of all, thank you to my dad, for showing me what fiction could do, and for knowing that the real story is both here and not here, that we are both here and not here, and for receiving this book as it was intended, as a gift.
About the Author
Emma Straub is the New York Times–bestselling author of four other novels—All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures—and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.