“I mean after you get off, whenever that is.”
If she says yes, Amanda will kill me. I’m already late meeting her back at the hotel. We’re supposed to return to the box this afternoon.
But Daniela isn’t going to say yes.
She’s biting her lip like she always does when she’s nervous, no doubt trying to come up with some reason beyond a blanket, ego-destroying “no,” but I can see she’s drawing a blank, that she’s working up the nerve to drop the hammer on my foundering ass.
“You know what?” I say. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’ve put you on the spot.”
Fuck.
I’m dying.
It’s one thing to get shot down by a total stranger.
Another entirely to crash and burn with the mother of your child.
“I’m just going to go now.”
I head for the door.
She doesn’t try to stop me.
AMPOULES REMAINING: 16
Every Chicago we’ve stepped into this last week, the trees are looking more and more skeletal, their leaves stripped and rain-pasted to the pavement. I sit on the bench across the street from my brownstone, bundled up against the bitter morning cold in a thrift-store coat I bought yesterday for $12 with currency from another world. It smells like an old man’s closet—mothballs and analgesic cream.
Back at the hotel, I left Amanda scribbling away in a notebook of her own.
I lied, told her I was going out for a walk to clear my head and get a cup of coffee.
I see myself step out the front door and move quickly down the steps and onto the sidewalk, heading for the El station, where I’ll take the Purple Line to the Lakemont campus in Evanston. I’m wearing noise-canceling headphones, probably listening to a podcast—some science lecture or an episode of This American Life.
It’s October 30 according to the front page of the Tribune, a little less than a month since the night I was taken at gunpoint and ripped out of my world.
Feels like I’ve been traveling in the box for years.
I don’t know how many Chicagos we’ve connected to so far.
They’re all beginning to blend.
This one is the closest yet, but it still isn’t mine. Charlie attends a charter school, and Daniela works out of the house as a graphic designer.
Sitting here, I realize I’ve always looked at Charlie’s birth and my choice to make a life with Daniela as the threshold event that caused the trajectory of our lives to swing away from success in our careers.
But that’s an oversimplification.
Yes, Jason2 walked away from Daniela and Charlie and subsequently had the breakthrough. But there are a million Jasons who walked away and didn’t invent the box.
Worlds where I left Daniela and our careers still amounted to nothing.
Or where I left and we both found moderate levels of success, but failed to set the world on fire.
And inversely, there are worlds where I stayed and we had Charlie, which branched into less-than-perfect timelines.
Where our relationship deteriorated.
Where I decided to leave our marriage.
Or Daniela did.
Or we struggled and suffered along in a loveless and broken state, toughing it out for the sake of our son.
If I represent the pinnacle of family success for all the Jason Dessens, Jason2 represents the professional and creative apex. We’re opposite poles of the same man, and I suppose it isn’t a coincidence that Jason2 sought out my life from the infinite possibilities available.
Though he’d experienced complete professional success, total fulfillment as a family man was as foreign to him as his life was to me.
It all points to the fact that my identity isn’t binary.
It’s multifaceted.
And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn’t just the inverse of who I am. It’s an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life between the extremes of me and Jason2.
Reaching into my pocket, I take out the prepaid mobile phone that cost $50, money that could have fed Amanda and me for a day, or put us up in a cheap motel for another night.
With my fingerless gloves, I uncrumple the torn-out sheet of yellow paper from the D section of the Chicago Metro phone book and dial the circled number.
There’s something horribly lonely about a place that’s almost home.
From where I sit, I can see the room on the second floor that I assume serves as Daniela’s in-home office. The blinds are open and she’s seated with her back to me, facing a giant monitor.
I see her lift a cordless handset and stare at the display.
Not recognizing the number.
Please answer.
She shelves the phone.
My voice: “You’ve reached the Dessens. We can’t take your call, but if you—”
I hang up before the beep.
Call again.
This time, she picks up and answers before the second ring, “Hello?”
For a moment, I don’t say anything.
Because I can’t find my voice.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“What number are you calling from?”