Сара Пинскер - Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea - Stories

“There’s a Making Connections board over there.” The volunteer behind the table pointed to a poster on the far wall of the lobby. She sounded like she’d said it a hundred times already. “In case you come across somebody you absolutely have to meet. Judging from your face, you just found somebody on the list who intrigues you. Somebody who wears the same life as you, or near to it.”

It brought to my mind those grade-school puzzle pages with six or nine near-identical cats or robots drawn in a grid, where you were supposed to find the matched pair hidden among the ones with slight differences. In the same moment I had that thought, a Sarah perusing another copy of the list said it to me.

I looked her over. The invitation had said, “Be yourself.” We both wore jeans and Wonder Woman T-shirts, hers with a graphic from the 70s TV show and mine from the 2005 Gina Torres movie. We both had our hair pulled back in messy ponytails. The only difference I noticed was that her skin was much better than mine.

The volunteer didn’t bother to look down at the list when I highlighted my name and returned it to her. She handed me a program and a tote bag. “You can decide whether you want to bother with a nametag.”

I looked at the markers and stickers piled on the table. “Is there a point?”

“Not with a name like yours, unless you have a nickname you think is particularly original. Though it probably isn’t. There are a few non-Sarahs. They’re the only ones who really need to bother. Right at the beginning we tried making people choose a nickname, but the first eight tried their identical middle names, and then four had the same roller derby name, and three asked for the name they all used as counselors at Girl Scout camp, and we gave up.”

It didn’t seem worth it. I went over to the hotel check-in line, made slightly easier with individual registration numbers. The desk clerk was one of us too, in a business suit and a manager’s gold nametag that suggested this was probably her home reality.

“The credit card you registered with will be charged by a third-party billing company that’s handling the cross-world weirdness. Bill anything you buy to your room.” She spoke with an accent I couldn’t place.

“Where are you from?” I asked her.

“I live just over on the mainland. You?”

“Seattle.”

A sympathetic look crossed her face.

I tried to change the subject before she told me Seattle was gone in this reality too. “So why is this being held on Secord Island?”

“Everyone asks.” She smiled, showing gapped teeth. She’d never gotten braces. “It’s a sovereign island off the east coast of Canada. You know Canada?”

I nodded, wondering what variation had prompted that question.

She continued. “Sovereign island, at least in this reality, so the organizer didn’t have to worry about visas or passports. You’re all allowed here, then back to where you came from.”

“What if someone tried to skip off this island? Not that I would. I’m an insurance investigator. Professional questioner of motives.”

Another grin. “That’s why all the boats were sent away for the weekend. We’re stuck with you, or you’re stuck with us.”

She put a keycard in a paper sleeve and pulled out a pen. “Do you have keycards in your world?”

“Yeah.” I glanced at the number she’d written, committed it to memory, pocketed the card, and handed her back the sleeve to discard.

“You’re the only one so far to do that,” she said. “Congrats on being original.”

I gave her a little salute and went to find my room in the annex, the cheapest room available when I’d registered. Her directions led out of the original building and down an L-shaped hallway tacked onto the back. I passed a stressed-looking housekeeper pushing a cart full of cleaning supplies, then two Sarahs trying to wrangle a cot into a tiny room, under the direction of a third, who looked up and waved. They must have taken advantage of the room-sharing option in the questionnaire that followed the RSVP. I’d liked that offer; it meant the Sarahs who attended wouldn’t only be those with the time and privilege to do so. That had even gotten Mabel to tone down some of her teasing about the whole event.

Around the next bend, a different type of cold than the air-conditioned lobby, that of Canadian November penetrating a closed system. Someone had propped open the fire door at the hall’s end. I unlocked my door, dropped my bags in my bathtub, then went to get a look outside.

When I leaned out the fire door, I found two Sarahs smoking, shoulders hunched against a biting wind. A vivid bruise of a cloudbank pressed down overhead, making it seem much later than it was. The air tasted like cigarettes and salt water. We had a dramatic landlocked view of a loading dock and a couple of dumpsters, but I felt the sea lurking nearby. I felt oddly displaced, jet-lagged without the jet. Portal lag, maybe.

“Join us?” The curls spilling down her shoulders were dyed carrot orange, a color that said it was not trying for anything natural. They looked wild and luxurious, when I only ever managed feral at best.

The other looked less healthy. Beneath her toque, her cheeks were gaunt, and the No Good Deeds T-shirt under her bomber jacket swam on her. She held out a pack of American Spirits.

“I’m good,” I said. “But hey, No Good Deeds. They were a cool band.”

She grinned, showing yellowed teeth. “ARE a good band. Bam! Divergence point! In my world they’re on album number six and still awesome.”

“The hall isn’t getting too cold, is it?” Orange Curls asked. “The door locks if we shut it. I had to walk around the whole building earlier. It’s huge.”

The other lit a new cigarette off her old one, then stubbed out the butt with a worn combat boot. “I’ve got to go back inside in a minute anyhow.”

She didn’t look like she was in any hurry. I assured them it wasn’t too cold, mostly because I didn’t want to be That Person, which they probably knew. We didn’t like to inconvenience people.

“So why are you here?” Orange Curls was the chattier of the two.

“What do you mean? I got an invitation.”

No Good Deeds shook her head. “She’s asking what made you accept. Excitement, curiosity, wonder, a desire to exploit? Not that you’re limited to those choices.”

I thought about it. Mabel had said the whole thing was an exercise in narcissism.

She’d read the invitation, then tossed it on the table, laughing. “Who discovers how to access infinite realities and then uses that discovery to invite her alternate selves to a convention?”

“Some other me, apparently.” As I’d said it, I’d known it was true. “Why, what would you do?”

Her response came easily. “Talk to world leaders or scientists. Find out why one reality is running out of water and another is doing fine, or how one made the transition from fossil fuel to solar. Check in on the state of democracy. Something useful. Anyway, you hate decisions. This’ll just make you question every choice you ever made. Should you have gone to grad school? Should you have stayed with this ex or that one? How would your life be different if you’d managed to buy that horse you loved as a teenager? If I were you, I wouldn’t want to know the answers. I mean, you’ve got to go, obviously, but it’s a wasted opportunity if you don’t talk about some of that stuff.”

Everything she’d said was true, like usual.

I looked back at Orange Curls. “Curiosity. I guess I’m here because I’m curious. And maybe a little because if I stayed home I’d always wonder about it.”

The smokers shot each other a satisfied look.

“She’s asked twenty-one Sarahs that question now,” No Good Deeds said, “and that’s been the answer every time. Even the same phrasing.”