The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

30

“Wednesday night we went to sleep in one world,” I said, “and Thursday morning we woke up in another one.”

“This one.”

“Right. And certain things were different and others were exactly the same, but the lives we found ourselves leading were the same lives we’d led all along. Barnegat Books was doing better for the lack of online competition, but it was still the same humble establishment, and it still had the same affable fellow on a stool behind the counter.”

“And the Poodle Factory had the same altitudinally-challenged lesbian washing dogs. So?”

“So Thursday morning I showed up, fed my cat, and sat behind the counter.”

“The way you always do.”

“Right,” I said. “What about Wednesday?”

“Huh?”

“I know what you and I did Wednesday, back in our former universe. But what was going on in this universe, before you and I somersaulted into it? The bookstore didn’t just spring into existence when the world went Tilt. It was already here, with books on its shelves and a cat snoozing in front of its window. Who fed Raffles Wednesday morning? And the day before that, and so on?”

“He didn’t look as though he’d missed many meals.”

“But who fed him?”

I let her think about it. She took her time, and I watched thoughts and emotions play across her face.

Then she was looking at me. “Paula’s,” she said.

“Paula’s?”

“Remember how I couldn’t wait to get there? Then I got there, and there it was, right where it used to be, and I felt this sense of relief.” She frowned. “And then I stood there with one hand on the door and I was afraid to go in. ‘Carolyn! We thought you were dead! Where’ve you been the past couple of years?’ And that was my best-case scenario, Bern. Maybe I’d be walking into a room where nobody knew me from Eve.”

“But you steeled yourself and opened the door.”

“I bit the bullet,” she said, “and it turned out to be a gumdrop. I knew most of the women in the room, and they knew me, and they didn’t have trouble recognizing me. They waved or nodded or said hello, but nobody made a fuss over me, because they’d seen me last week or the week before.”

I thought about it. “Right,” I said. “That makes sense.”

“It does?”

“The only way Paula’s could be where it is,” I said, “is if it never went out of business, not in this universe. And if it was there all along, why would you stop dropping in for a couple of pops and a quick look around?”

“So Paula’s never disappeared, is that what you’re saying?” I watched her try to get her mind around it. “It was the same old place,” she said, “and the same old crowd, but with enough differences to get your attention. There were two women I hadn’t seen in ages, ever since they moved to Magdalena, New Mexico. Except they didn’t, they were still living in the same two rooms on Commerce Street.”

“That must have been a fun conversation to have.”

“It was a little awkward, but it would have been worse in a coffee shop. In a bar where everybody’s drinking, a fuzzy memory’s not such a big deal. And it was a good thing I ran into the Magdalena girls early on, because it prepared me for seeing Angie Berkowitz.”

“An old flame? A bad break-up?”

“No, just a friend from the bars. But the last time I saw her was a year and a half ago at Redden’s.”

“What, on Fourteenth Street? The funeral parlor?”

“She was the guest of honor, Bern. Toxic shock syndrome, and it happened so suddenly that nobody could believe she was dead, but the open casket removed all doubts.”

“And this evening—”

“She’d put on a couple of pounds,” she said, “but all in all she looked fine. It was a shock to see her.”

“I can imagine.”

“But not a toxic one, and I caught myself in time to keep from telling her she looked natural, which is what everybody kept saying that afternoon at Redden’s.”

What they say about beer — that you can’t own it, you can only rent it — is no less true of tea. When I got back from the bathroom, Carolyn was sitting on the edge of the bed, untying a shoe.

“I felt right at home in Paula’s,” she said. “There were things I had to adjust to, like Angie being alive, but isn’t attitude adjustment what keeps all those distilleries in business? I may have remembered the world a little differently than Paula’s other patrons, but aside from that I fit right in.”

“Looking back,” I said, “you always did.”

She put the shoe down, uncrossed her legs, crossed them the other way, and dealt with the second shoe.

“Because I’m a Villager,” she said, “who gets nosebleeds north of Fourteenth Street and the bends south of Houston. And I’m a lesbian. I’m a Greenwich Village lesbian, Bern, and that’s what I’ve been since the first time I got off the D Train at West Fourth Street and walked into a bar on Minetta Lane.”

She had the shoe off. She went on holding it in both hands while she told me how she’d felt walking into a lesbian bar for the very first time, all the fear and all the excitement.

Listening, I felt something myself. Not quite fear and not quite excitement. I decided it was anticipation. I was waiting for something, but what was it?

“I remembered that feeling tonight,” she said, still holding the shoe. “Bern, it’s late. Next thing you know it’ll be time to open your store.”

“You think they’ll let me? It’s a crime scene.”

“You’ll have show up, if only to feed Raffles. I think we should go to bed.”

“God knows I’m tired,” I said, “but I’m also wired. I don’t think I could sleep.”

“Good,” she said, as she let go of the shoe. “Neither could I. Who said anything about sleeping?”

What I’d been waiting for, of course, was for the other shoe to drop. And it did, and after the asterisks had twinkled like stars in every available universe, we both slipped off to sleep.

By ten o’clock we were up and dressed and eating French toast and bacon at the diner on Hudson.

“I’m still a lesbian,” she said, over a second cup of coffee.

I told her I was beginning to think I might be one myself.

“Last night in Paula’s,” she said, “there was this dark-roots blonde who really made the cheap look work for her, and I thought she was cute and I guess she thought I was, too, and we flirted a little.”

“I’m shocked.”

“I’ll bet. Anyway, things were moving right along, and while it was a long way from a sure thing, there was a good chance I might go home with her. And I didn’t think we’d get out of bed in the morning and race off to Bloomingdale’s to pick out drapes, because there were already a few things about her I found irritating—”

“But she was cute enough to brighten an hour or two.”

“Right. But what I kept wishing was that my buddy Bernie would show up.”

“Really?”

“Really. And then you did. And a couple of women stopped their conversations and shifted into Wary Glance mode, and I looked, and it was you. And just like that I relaxed, and I hadn’t even known I wasn’t relaxed to begin with.”

“The most confusing of all possible worlds,” I said.

“It’s a puzzle, all right. Last week I was bouncing back and forth between Henrietta’s and the Cubby, while some other Carolyn Kaiser was hanging out in Paula’s.”

“I know how I spent this past Sunday night,” I said. “I sat home and watched Billions, and by ten Monday morning I was at the bookstore. But that was in another universe, and this world’s Bernie Rhodenbarr was stealing little jade animals a block below Canal Street.”

“Where’d he go? Now that you’re here, what happened to him?”

“Beats me.”

“And what happened to the other Carolyn? Did she disappear in a puff of smoke the minute I turned up?” She sighed. “I’m out of my depth here, Bern. The only thing I know is there’s at least one cat in a bookstore on Eleventh Street. He hasn’t got a tail, but he’s got an appetite, so let’s save a few minutes and take the bus.”

“The bus?”

“I already checked,” she said. “I’ve still got a SubwayCard.”