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

She shook her head. “Sorry, that must have been somebody else. I haven’t been to the bar. Sober ten years.”

There was more than one older Sarah, or more than one who looked older than the rest of us. A good reminder not to make assumptions, even here.

Three Sarahs stood clustered around the registration desk, as promised. I didn’t see the host, but I was pretty sure she was still behind me in the dining hall. I’d already spoken with her anyhow. So a committee of five, minus the host and the dead woman. They all wore silk; I guess they didn’t sweat the dry-cleaning bills.

They agreed to talk to me one at a time, in the lounge seating area between registration and the bar. The bar was starting to fill up again, but it wasn’t yet too noisy for conversation. A knot of Sarahs with guitars gathered on the other bank of couches, but the odd timbral similarity of their voices made them easy to tune out. They’d found a way to eke joy out of the situation, and for a moment I envied them.

I’d have saved time by talking to them all together, though; their answers might as well have come from the same mouth.

Q: Where were you between four-thirty and six PM?

A: Registration, then the cocktail party, then up to take a nap and shower. I figured a shower would be worth being a little late for dinner.

Q: Were all of you at the cocktail party?

A: Yes! I think. At the beginning, anyway.

Q: Including the one who passed away?

A: Yes. I think. It’s hard to say. We were mingling.

Q: When did you first realize something was wrong?

A: When the hotel manager came to find us, toward the end of dinner.

Q: Us?

A: The committee. She found all of us except—her.

They all gave the same weight to “her” that the host had upstairs.

Q: What did you do then?

A: Figured out which of us she was. Cried. Freaked a bit. Talked about what to do next.

Q: How did you figure out which of you she was?

A: Um, a roll call. I know that sounds silly, but I can’t tell any of the other four apart without asking them questions or knowing what they’re wearing. I had friends in seventh grade who were identical twins, and I never had a doubt which of them was which. This is different.

Q: Did anyone use the radios to contact any of you?

A: Not that I heard? I might have been in the shower.

Q: Is there anything else you know about her that might be helpful? Anybody who she was angry with? Anybody who was angry with her? Jealousies, rivalries?

A: There’s no point in a cross-world rivalry. We were all a little jealous of R0D0, of course. She made the breakthrough we were all trying to make. But not R1D0.

Q: Do you know your divergence point from the others on your committee?

A: Eleven days before the big discovery, R0D0 and R1D0 made a mistake in an equation. The rest of us got it right. It was the mistake that was the key. The three of us differ in ways barely worth mentioning, all within a month of each other: a hospital visit, a sprained ankle on a run, a birthday party the rest of us skipped.

Q: What about R0D0 and R1D0, then? Where do they diverge? Would there be any reason for the host to be jealous of the deceased?

A: If anything it would be the other way around. They diverged an hour before the discovery. R1D0 went out for an anniversary dinner with her girlfriend; R0D0 cancelled dinner and stayed in the lab. If I were R1D0, I’d have carried a little resentment over that, but if she did, she never showed it. Anyway, someone said it was an accident, right? Is there any chance it was anything else?

“She hasn’t been examined,” I said. “She’s got one hell of a knock to her head.”

I left it deliberately vague, to see if any of them gave anything away. They all gave me the same look, stressed and relieved, hopeful and guilty about that hope. I found myself wishing all of my insurance interviews were with Sarahs. My job would be much easier if I recognized every expression on everyone’s face.

I was desperate for something to break one of them from the pack, but nothing came. Even their divergence points were mundane. They were the same person. I thanked them for their help and let them go. They had all looked genuinely upset. I had believed all of them, and the identical answers were as good as corroboration. They were all willing to help, but convinced it was an accident. They couldn’t figure out why I was still asking questions when the answer seemed obvious.

In their shoes, I’d be desperate to believe it was an accident too. Better than thinking somebody might have it in for me. If I were one of them, I’d be terrified and trying to hide it. I’d be looking around every corner for a killer, trying to live up my last moments, to settle accounts, just in case; except we were all trapped for the weekend, unable to contact anyone we loved or go anywhere.

I was one of them. Without the science background, without the urge to be the first or the best or whatever it was driving them. Which was an interesting line of questioning I hadn’t followed at all: What was driving them? Why were they so ambitious, when the rest of us weren’t? What had made them go into quantology? Could any of them still make the same discovery, for their world, or had the host Sarah spoiled it for everyone? I looked over to see if they were still standing by registration, but they had all gone.

The bar was half full, and when I slid onto the nearest empty stool, the bartender handed me a tumbler of bourbon, neat, without my needing to ask. The guesswork was gone from his job: there was a plastic cup over the handle for the stout. I hoped he had another keg somewhere that he hadn’t had time to tap yet. Down the row, six other Sarahs sipped from identical glasses.

“Cheers,” said the Sarah next to me, holding up her drink. She was wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt too, an Alex Ross illustration, deflecting bullets. She looked exhausted, like she’d spent the evening deflecting bullets herself. “It’s hitting you too, huh?”

“Hitting me?”

“The difference question. You’ve noticed a thing about yourself, or a thing about someone else here that isn’t true of yourself. You can’t quite tell if you should feel bad about it, if it’s a flaw in you, if there’s something you did wrong along the way. You thought one more drink might let you fall asleep without it keeping you up all night.”

We clinked glasses.

I wandered back to my room still mulling it over. Wind whipped down the chilly hallway, but I saw only one figure silhouetted against the open door, with her mass of flaming curls.

“Where’s your friend?” I asked, leaning out. A gust hit me hard enough to knock me off balance; in its wake, the air was heavy with the promise of rain. The smoker whirled to face me when I spoke. “Sorry if I scared you. I was the one who chatted with the two of you out here earlier, in case you can’t tell.”

She shrugged. “Haven’t seen her. I heard she found the body. Maybe she needs some alone time. I know I would. Drink?”

She held a flask out to me, and I took it with a nod of thanks. Bourbon. Cheaper than the stuff the bartender had served, but still decent. Another gust of wind tore the top of a dumpster off its hinges and sent it tumbling over the loading-dock wall. We both watched it cartwheel away.

“New question for tomorrow,” she said, taking her flask back. “You get to test it first. What are you most afraid of?”

My answer was instant. “Everything. Earthquakes. Bombs. Random violence. Falling tree branches. Losing people I love. Cancer. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This storm. Missing out on something because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. Missing out on something because I’m afraid. I try not to let it control me—my job helps desensitize me a little—but… yeah. Long answer to a short question. You?”