“Great,” Elisa says. She takes Jean’s hand. She turns to Billy and offers him an uncertain smile. It’s intended to be reassuring, he guesses, but Billy can see the fear in it. It’s maybe the most readable expression he’s ever seen on her.
“It’ll be all right,” he says, as Elisa and Jean run into the light. He’s not sure if she hears him. They whirl apart into blobs and little flaring squibs and then they’re gone.
“Listen to me,” says Keith, taking Billy by the shoulders. “A Fiat Gate is serious magic. It can be confusing. Just stay focused on the mental image of the Right-Hand Path headquarters.”
“Check,” Billy says.
Billy’s dad takes Jørgen’s hand, makes sure Jørgen is ready, and then the two of them enter the portal, boil away into vectors.
“Don’t let them wipe your memory,” Billy says, to the empty hallway.
Billy looks at the portal or gate or whatever, remembers he’s not supposed to look directly at it, looks away, looks at it again. He takes a step forward. Okay, he thinks. Let’s do this.
And then he passes through and his mind becomes a mirrored disco ball, glassy and faceted, refracting brilliance in a thousand different directions.
Yikes! Billy thinks.
But even thinking that is a good sign: it means that Billy can at least maintain a thought among the dazzling optics and shrieking noise. Which means—presto—he can visualize the Right-Hand Path headquarters.
The image that comes to mind is the cell he woke up in this morning, which causes him to remember, just for a second, what manipulative dicks they were. This causes him to frown, or it would, if he had a body at the moment, which he doesn’t. A frown of the mind. This makes him remember joking about being immanent when Denver said that he hadn’t been present. Now he’s not even immanent: ha ha.
It occurs to him that he could use the warping luminescent matrix that he’s falling through to fling himself straight to Denver’s apartment, just show up, as he’s been longing to do all day. Show up, apologize for everything. He tries to remember her schedule, tries to remember if today is one of the days when she goes in to work at the video archive.
Today’s Saturday: she doesn’t work; Billy does. Except he probably got fired today. He feels a momentary pang for his life as it was, wishes, for just a single self-pitying second, that none of this had ever happened, and that he was just at work, with Anil, making sandwiches, the same way he’s done every Saturday for the past year and a half.
And the light assembles itself into an image, like a melting film in reverse. Only it’s not the image of the cell in the basement of the Right-Hand Path headquarters. It’s the image of the kitchen at the sandwich shop. Anil is there, working, his hands dipping deftly into steel bins of cut onions and shredded lettuce. And Billy is there. He can kind of see himself from the outside for a second before he realizes that, no, really: he’s actually, physically there. Not in the light. In his body. In this kitchen.
“Son of a bitch!” Billy says, presented with one more piece of conclusive evidence about his inability to focus on a goddamn thing for more than one goddamn second. He pounds his fists against his temples, once, solidly, as though attempting to physically drive some sense into his skull.
Anil jumps.
“Billy?” he says, blinking. “What the fuck? Where have you been? Everyone has been freaking out worried about you.”
“Really?” Billy says, a little flattered at this unexpected piece of news.
“Yes!” Anil says. “Well, everyone except Giorgos, he’s pissed at you and he says you’re fired. But everyone else! You seemed so out of it at the reading, and then you fucking wandered off—we thought you might have gone into some kind of fugue state. I expected to hear from you in six months, saying I live in Wisconsin now. I run a dairy farm with my wife, who is kind, and simple. You can imagine our dismay.”
Billy tries it. “Dismay?” he asks, seeking confirmation.
“Sure,” Anil says.
“Even Denver? Would you characterize her reaction as—dismayed?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Anil says. “Denver thought we should call the cops and get them looking for you. I’m happy to say that saner heads prevailed, but, yes, dismay; I would say that that describes it.”
Billy takes a moment to enjoy this, but only a moment, and then panic pulls the rug out from under it.
“I fucked up, Anil,” he says. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“News flash, Billy,” Anil says, “you are supposed to be here. You were supposed to be here five and a half hours ago. I’ve been doing this fucking shift by myself. In conclusion: I’m glad you’re alive, but you remain a major-league asshole. Put some fucking gloves on and help me with these tickets.”