There Are Doors

ways. Say the thing’s a door—or anyhow a doorway—and the first channel shows one side at the same time the other channel’s showing the other. Wouldn’t their frequencies have to come closer to each other? If there were a lot of channels, some would get so close they’d touch. Then you could turn the knob just a little and skip from one channel to the next, right? But if you wanted to go back, you’d have to turn the knob backwards. You couldn’t just keep twisting it in the direction you’d turned it the first time and get back. So that’s what we’ll be doing if we back through the door, turning the knob back. But I’d feel awfully silly.”

He said, “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

Fanny shrugged. “I didn’t think you cared about me. Only about your Lara.”

“Do I have to choose? Right now?”

She grinned again. “Yep.”

“Then I choose Lara.”

“Which means you’re going to have to let me pay for my own lunch.”

“Back out,” he said. “I mean it. It may not work—Lara’s note said you should do it right away, and we certainly haven’t. But at least we won’t be any worse off. You’d be as lost in my world as I was in yours.”

“That’s a myth,” Fanny said. “Isn’t it?”

“Isn’t what?”

“The lost traveler who meets somebody, or finds a city that no one else can ever find again. I’m not so sure I’d mind being one, even if the Department thought I’d gone over to the enemy.”

He said, “Those shows usually have sad endings.” He had seen Brigadoon on HBO, and he tried to recall how it had ended so he could tell her. Nothing remained in his memory but the name and the swirl of plaid skirts, the skirling of bagpipes.

That isn’t how it really is, he thought.

Fanny stood, taking her coat from the back of her chair. “Well, come on. Here goes nothing.”

“Right now? We’ve got to get the check.”

“Here it is.” She held it up. “The waitress put it here when she brought the water for my tea.”

He took it from her fingers (a bit too easily, he thought) and held her coat for her. He discovered that he did not really think backing through the door would work. He was home, in his own world once more after—what? A Saturday morning adventure? Some kind of a mental seizure? Things sort themselves out. He had said that.

His coat was on a hook near the table. It was, of course, still the heavy wool one he had bought in the hotel. Too heavy, probably, for the weather here. But the package of fifties he had bought for a dime from Mr. Sheng was real money now, as the still substantial remainder of the thousand he had found under the vase in his hospital room was not.

With a second bill from the packet he paid the new cashier, another of Mama Capini’s sons, a little older and a bit bigger than the one he had met in the men’s room. As a test he asked, “What do you think about the fight?”

“What fight?”

“Joe’s fight. I thought Joe was a customer of yours.”

The cashier chuckled and rang up their total. “You been talkin’ to Guido. He’s a crazy one, that Guido.”

He started to return to their table, but Fanny whispered, “I left the tip.”

“Backwards,” he told her. “Remember, we’ve got to walk backwards.” He took an awkward backward step toward the door.

“No,” Fanny whispered. “I won’t.” She caught his arm and spun him around.

Desperately he began, “You’ll be—”

“No, I won’t. The joke’s gone far enough.” She tugged at his arm.

Lara was standing across the street, snow blowing past her face as she studied the restaurant. He started toward her, and as he did he heard Mama Capini call, “Arrivederci!” behind them. At the edge of vision he saw Fanny look back, wave, and smile as she stepped through the door.

Then he was on the street, and alone. Snowflakes sparkled in the sun, blown from the rooftops by a spring wind. Lara had already turned away; as he watched, she vanished through the revolving door of a fur store.

Recklessly he dashed into the traffic.

Brakes squealed. A white truck like a huge refrigerator on wheels slewed sideways until it nearly struck his shoulder with its own. Triumphantly, he leaped across the curb and straight-armed the revolving door.

A sale was in progress; the furrier’s swarmed with women, many of them accompanied by husbands variously impatient. He raced among them, trying to decide whether Lara had worn a hat, whether her lovely hair had been on her shoulders or piled upon her head to form the covering he half recalled having seen while Fanny faded like a cheap photo at his side.

Twice he pushed his way completely around the store. Women were everywhere, with and without hats; none was Lara.

In desperation he snatched away a clerk, rescuing her from an angry-looking customer with blue hair who was disparaging two coats to her in tandem. He described Lara as well as he could.

The clerk shook her head. “Have you tried upstairs?”

He stared at her.