Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

“You are having it added to the portrait? What a wonderful idea.” Alice sat upright and patted her hair, which did nothing to make it look less tousled. “It will let Miss Amy, Mr. West and Mr. Arbuckle know it is now firmly entrenched in the nineteenth century.”

“Yes, thank you. I think they will appreciate it.”

“Let me think about a wish for a day or so. I am so happy now that to ask for more seems selfish.”

“Only a day or so, Alice, if you please.” He narrowed his eyes, considering his decision once again. “I want to send the coin on its way. I want it to go somewhere, anywhere else but here.”

Alice laughed. “You do not want to have a tussle with it over who is actually in charge?”

“You could put it that way. Not to put too fine a point on it, I am afraid of what will happen to Westmoreland if wishes run rampant.”

“But how will you, as you said, ‘send it on its way’?”

“Anne’s disgraced lady’s maid will be leaving Westmoreland. I thought that we could ask her if she would like to take charge of it, after explaining its peculiarities, of course.”

“Of course.” Alice thought about it. “What in the world makes you think she would be interested?”

“I hate to admit it, but I was holding the coin when the thought came to me. According to the butler, Martha has held the coin too. I suspect she made a wish.”

“Oh dear,” Alice said, raising her hands to her cheeks. “I see why you would rather the coin be somewhere else.”

“Thank you,” Weston said with real relief. He felt as though he were somewhere between a fool and a coward.

“I would suggest that you give Martha some financial support. Quietly, so no one thinks unkind thoughts. It may be a while before she is able to find another position.”

“An excellent notion. And a letter of reference from my soon-to-be countess would help as well.” He took her arm. “Let’s find her now and prepare her for an adventure so that we can begin on our own.”

Arm in arm, they left the library. Weston felt the coin warm his hand and knew they had made the right decision. They no longer needed a magic coin and, for more reasons than one, he would be happy to share its magic. He was certain that he and Alice would have quite enough adventures without it.

It happened so fast. The dumping. Jeremy and Macy were sitting on the patio of their favorite café, on a strangely balmy day in November, when Macy stood up, said she’d had enough and left.

Well, maybe she’d said a little more than that, but Jeremy couldn’t remember exactly, and the gist was the same.

At first he’d thought she was kidding. In general, women didn’t dump Jeremy Abbott, though that wasn’t why he’d been floored. It wasn’t until he saw her shoes heading past the table—he’d been looking at his phone at the time—and glanced up to see her striding toward the patio gate, curls bobbing, shoulders straight, purse bouncing off her hip, that he realized she’d been serious.

He looked back at her seat, half expecting her to still be there because the other scenario was too weird, but the chair canted outward exactly as if somebody had abruptly stood and ended a relationship.

She’d finished her omelet, he noted blankly. In record time. His was still half-eaten on his plate. And moments before, he’d been laughing at some joke she’d made.

Although in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a joke.

The most damning part was that he’d thought things were going well— really well. Well to the point of thinking, Holy shit, maybe this is IT.

No so for Macy, whose thoughts apparently ran more to the Exit, stage left end of the spectrum.

He’d have said he couldn’t have been more shocked, but that was before the next thing happened.

He kept an eye on her auburn head as it moved through the crowd, and he tried to stand to go after her. Because it was ridiculous—you don’t just end a nearly seven-month relationship with an I’m outta here over brunch. Where was the explanation, the It’s not you it’s me , at least a freaking apology for potentially, maybe, possibly hurting his feelings?

But he couldn’t. Couldn’t go after her, couldn’t get out of the chair, couldn’t, in fact, do anything except grab hold of the table while the most unbelievable feeling of suction rose through his legs to his torso and up across his chest like a flood tide.

Could he be having a heart attack? He was only thirty-four! Headlines and Facebook links and Sponsor My Walkathon email pleas flooded his mind with details about unexpected deaths, early-onset illnesses, it-could-happen-to-you disasters.

He looked at the people around him, obliviously chatting and eating and sipping coffee. He glanced at the breakfast congealing on his plate, the fork quivering beside it, his coffee jumping in the cup as if electrified.

His fingers ached as they clutched the edge of the table. His body compressed in on itself—collarbone into ribs, ribs into waist, waist into hips—like a giant wave pressing down on his shoulders, squishing him into a smaller and smaller square, like the paper-covered blocks his parents used to get out of their trash compactor.

Except he got smaller still, down to a shoe box, then a milk carton, until finally . . . finally . . .

He was inhaled by his smartphone. Into his smartphone.

It was like getting flushed down a toilet, or being sucked out an airplane window at thirty-five thousand feet.

He could only tell what was happening because, while everything else shrank, the cell phone got bigger and bigger, eventually looming like a skyscraper in front of him, until finally he was drawn into its center, tumbling down a darkened hallway until he ended up where he was now: an enormous cubicle-filled room.

The carpet beneath his feet was of the gray industrial type, the exact shade and texture of the cubicle walls, which were fabric with thick plastic supports. They were just like the cube he’d had in his first job out of college as a copyeditor. He tipped his head to look into the one directly in front of him. Just like those at his first job, a desktop wrapped the inside of three of the walls, a rolling chair in front of it. There appeared to be nothing else there, no computer, no printer, no in- or outbox, no paper, pen, nothing. It was a brand-new cube waiting for a brand-new employee.

It was so far from the sunny café patio, from the clatter of plates and the honking of horns, the slamming of car doors and the passing of pedestrians, the exodus of Macy . . . that he thought he must have passed out and be dreaming.

Except it didn’t feel like a dream.

For a moment the floor seemed to dip beneath his feet. Then he remembered to breathe, and shoved aside the ache in the center of his chest brought on by the thought of Macy. His hand reached for the phone holster at his belt and found it empty.

What had happened ? Had he died?

He turned his head, looked down a mile-long hallway lined with cubes, the doorless entries expressing nothing, and saw only a row of cavities in an oversized mouth. He walked a few steps over and peered into the next cubicle. An Asian guy wearing a plaid shirt and a thick black watch was hunched over his desk, gazing at a wall full of screens.

Thank god, he thought, the human presence calming him.

“Excuse me,” he said, moving toward the opening. “Hello? Excuse me.”

The guy didn’t respond, just moved his head fractionally from side to side as his gaze jumped from one screen to another. Had he not heard, or had he heard and decided to ignore him? Jeremy’s attention shifted to the wall of screens. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before. They had no edges, no glass, no seeming substance at all, except for the myriad images, charts, documents and moving pictures they seemed to be displaying. And there were dozens of them, some larger than others; a few were as large as televisions.