Page 56 of In What World

I’m trapped inside a fun-house maze, where I can see my own reflection in this mirrored reality, but it also feels like itcan’t possibly be me.Ten years. Married to Marlowe Jenkins. Living in Garden Meadows.

“So…you’re…joint…grifters?” Marlowe asks, each word she speaks weaker than the last.

“We’re not grifters.” Psychic Priscilla locks eyes with me—me! Like I’m the one who said it!—and damn if I don’t wipe any kind of funny look I might have off my own face, because she’s giving me the best version of mytake me seriouslyexpression, which I only use when I really mean it.

“Come inside and we can show you,” Psychic Marlowe says.

“Horror movie line. Very grifter,” Marlowe mutters. When she feels the heat of the psychics’ stare, she throws up her hands. “I’m just saying. So it’s documented.”

“I love psychics,” I tell her, hoping to power through my disbelief and regain some of my usual spirit. And it’s true. I see a psychic in LA a few times a year. Last time I went, she told me I had a lot of travel coming up. I was thinking Paris. Maybe Amsterdam. Not throughout the space-time continuum!

Psychic Priscilla wraps her arm around Psychic Marlowe as we follow them inside. It kicks up my jealousy like dust, everything I’d tried to leave behind in the last life—and every life before it—tornadoing through my heart.

In my teacher reality, I showed no visible signs of any romantic relationship. When we searched for me in the last reality, there was nothing to find at all. In this reality, I have a wife, and that wife is Marlowe Jenkins.

My Marlowe has been acting sufficiently Marlowe about almost kissing me, which would normally be enough for me to write off that moment as another one of her mixed messages. She’s been sending them for as long as I’ve known her. But I’m witnessing proof that a world exists where those messages are coming in loud and clear—my Marlowe and I could love eachother. We could marry each other. It could last for ten years. We could get into the metaphysical arts together and dress like we have a personal stake in patterned floor-length capes for casual wear.

In the front room, we’re greeted by the smell of burning incense and the sound of a small indoor waterfall.

“Moving water is good for the spirit. Helps you process stagnant emotions,” Psychic Priscilla says.

There’s a sense of calm that goes beyond the waterfall or the wind-chimes-on-the-breeze music they have playing softly. It’s the calm this house has always held.

My Marlowe’s family never hosted any cast parties when we were in high school, but there were a few times we had to convene here, like when we planned our director gifts or needed to discuss random thespian society business. The space had a comfort that was apparent the second I walked through the door. There were always pillows and blankets everywhere, like her family had made forts on the floor and watched movies together the night before. No idea if that actually happened, but her parents would constantly come in and out of the living room to check on us and bring us snacks, so I liked to imagine it did.

Even Marlowe’s sister was nice. I didn’t have anyone in my own family to compare her to, but most of my friends had a disgruntled sibling somewhere in their house who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge us. Lana always said hello to everyone as we came inside. She asked how our day was going. Once, she offered me half of her cookie when she grabbed the last one before I’d gotten a chance to try any.

My Marlowe’s home felt like a place where a happy family lived. Wanted for nothing. And that was about as unattainable to me as a friendship with Marlowe in the first place, so I’vealways carried a quiet fondness for what it represented. Back here again, my ache for this kind of life is even greater than the last time I felt it. How can it be possible that I’m further from this at thirty-four than I was at eighteen?

Where my Marlowe’s family had a plain gray sectional, the psychics have a dark blue velvet one, covered in artful pillows and big, comfy blankets. A small black cat has curled itself up atop one and is sleeping peacefully.

“That’s Shadow,” Psychic Marlowe says.

“She showed up at our front door as a kitten, and she’s never left,” Psychic Priscilla adds.

“The cat distribution system loves us,” Psychic Marlowe says. “We have two others we found the same way.”

“Three,” Psychic Priscilla reminds her. “Don’t forget about Loafer.” She looks at us. “We gave Loafer to Marlowe’s sister. Even after a long introduction process, she did not integrate well with our little family, so we had to do what was best for her.”

“She’s a calico,” Psychic Marlowe tells me in a voice that says that should be a self-explanatory situation.

I nod like I understand, but I’ve never had a pet of my own, or any experience with having them show up at my doorstep, hoping to move in forever.

“You knew we would come,” my Marlowe says. She has her arms crossed. Her shoulders are almost at her ears.

Neither of the psychics says anything. They must know how much my Marlowe hates silence. That all it takes to get her going is to force some quiet, and she will explain herself until she feels like you understand.

“When you saw us, you said ‘Oh, hello! You’re here!’ Like you knew we’d come,” she explains, right on cue.

“I did,” Psychic Marlowe says. “I saw it.”

“Yousawit?” My Marlowe turns to me. “This is how you know this stuff is fake. There’s no way they knew we’d be here.”

“Maybe they did know,” I say. “How is that any weirder than anything else we’ve seen?”

“Wedidn’t even know we’d be here,” my Marlowe challenges.

Psychic Priscilla employs an eyebrow arch I forgot I could do—eyebrows are Marlowe’s thing—as she says, “Youarehere, so you must know to some degree that this isn’t fake.”