At the first convenience store Jennie comes to, she goes inside and buy a single cigar and a mini BIC lighter.
Her coat is damp from the snow so she hangs it at the rack by the entrance and make her way down the counter.
The place feels gloriously authentic, as if it's always been there. The 1950s era vibe isn't from the red-vinyl upholstering on the booths and stools or the framed photographs of regulars on the walls down through the decades.
It comes, Jennie think, from never changing. The smell of the place is all bacon grease and brewing coffee and the indelible remnants of a time when Jennie would've been moving through clouds of cigarette smoke en route to a table.
Aside from a few customers at the counter, Jennie spots two cops in one booth, three nurses just off-shift in another, and an old man in a black suit staring with a kind of bored intensity into his cup of coffee.
Jennie sits at the counter just to be near the heat radiating off the open grill.
An ancient waitress comes over.
Jennie knows she must look homeless and strung-out, but the waitress doesn't let on, doesn't judge, just takes her order with a worn-out korean courtesy.
It feels good to be indoors.
The windows are fogging up.
The cold is leaving your bones.
The all-night diner is only eight blocks from Jennie's house, but she'd never eaten there.
When the coffee arrives, Jennie wraps her dirty fingers around the ceramic mug and soak in the warmth.
She had to do the math in advance.
All she can afford is this cup of coffee, two eggs, and some toast.
Jennie tries to eat slowly, to make it last, but she's famished.
The waitress takes pity on her and brings more toast at no extra charge.
She's kind.
It makes Jennie feel even lousier about what's going to happen.
Jennie checks the time on her drug-dealer flip phone, the one she bought to call Lisa in another Seoul. It won't make calls in this world—Jennie guess minutes aren't transferable across the multiverse.
8:15 a.m.
Jennie2 probably left for work twenty minutes ago in order to catch the train to her 9:30 lecture.
Or maybe she hasn't left at all. Maybe she's sick, or staying home today for some reason Jennie have not anticipated. That would be a disaster, but it's too risky for her to go anywhere near her house to confirm that the other her is not there.
Jennie pulls the fee out of her pocket and set it on the counter.
It just barely covers her breakfast plus a cheap-ass tip.
Jennie takes one last sip of coffee.
Then she reaches into the patch pocket of my flannel button-down and pull out the cigar and the lighter.
Jennie glances around.
The diner is now packed.
The two cops who were there when she first arrived are gone, but there's another one sitting in the corner booth at the far end.
Jennie's hands shake imperceptibly as she tear open the packaging.
True to its name, the end of the cigar tastes faintly sweet.
It takes Jennie, three tries to strike a flame.
She fires the tobacco at the end of the cigar, draw in a mouthful of smoke, and blow a stream toward the back of the short-order cook who's flipping hotcakes on the griddle.
For ten seconds, no one notices.
Then the older woman sitting next to Jennie in a cat-hair-covered jacket turns and says, "You can't do that in here."
And Jennie responds with something she would never in a million years even dream of saying: "But there's nothing like a cigar after a meal."
The lady looks at Jennie through her plate-glass lenses like Jennie must lost have lost her mind.
The waitress walks over holding a carafe of steaming coffee and looking massively disappointed.
Shaking her head, she says with the voice of a scolding mother, "You know you can't smoke that in here."
"But it's delicious."
"Do I need to call the manager over?"
Jennie takes another puff.
Exhale.
The short-order cook—a wide, muscled guy with ink-covered arms—turns around and glares at Jennie.
Jennie says to the waitress, "That's a great idea. You should go get the manager right now, because I am not putting this out."
As the waitress leaves, the old woman sitting beside Jennie, whose meal she ruined, mutters, "What a rude young woman."
And she throws down her fork, climbs off the stool, and heads for the door.
Some of the other customers in Jennie's vicinity have begun to take notice.
But Jennie keeps smoking, until a rail of a man emerges from the back of the restaurant with the waitress in tow. He wears black jeans and a white oxford with sweat stains down the sides and a solid-color tie whose knot is unraveling.
By the general dishevelment of his appearance, Jennie is guessing he's worked all night.
Stopping behind her, he says, "I'm Nick, the manager on duty. You can't smoke that inside. You're disturbing the customers."
Jennie turns slightly in her stool and meet his eyes. He looks tired and annoyed, and Jennie feels like such a jerk putting him through this, but she can't stop now.
Jennue glances around, all eyes on her now, a hotcake burning on the griddle.
She asks, "Are you all disturbed by my fine cigar?"
Yesses abound.
Someone calls Jennie an asshole.
Movement at the far end of the diner catches her eye.
Finally.
The police officer slides out of the corner booth, and as he heads Jennie's way down the length of the aisle, she hears his radio crackle.
He's young.
Late twenties if Jennie had to guess.
Short and stocky.
A Marine-like hardness in his eyes and an intelligence too.
The manager takes a step back, relieved.
Now the officer stands beside Jennie, says, "We have a clean indoor air ordinance in the city, which you're violating right now."
Jennie takes another puff from the cigar.
The cop says, "Look, I've been up most of the night. A lot of these other customers have as well. Why do you want to ruin everyone's breakfast?"
"Why do you want to ruin my cigar?"
A flicker of anger passes over the cop's face.
His pupils dilate.
"Put that cigar out right now. Last warning."
"Or what?"
He sighs.
"That was not the response I was hoping for. Get up."
"Why?"
"Because you're going to jail. If that cigar isn't out in five seconds, I'm going to assume you're resisting arrest, which means I get to be a lot less gentle."
Jennie drops her cigar in her coffee cup, and as she steps down off the stool, the officer deftly whips the handcuffs off his belt and locks the bracelets around Jennie's wrists.
"Carrying any weapons or needles? Anything that could hurt me or that I should know about?"
"No, sir."
"Are you on any drugs or medication right now?"
"No, sir."
He pats Jennie down, then takes her by the arm.
As they walk toward the entrance, the other customers applaud.
His cruiser is parked right out front.
He opens the rear door and tells Jennie to watch her head.
It's almost impossible to gracefully duck into the back of a police car with your hands cuffed behind you. The officer climbs in behind the wheel.
Buckling his seat belt, he cranks the engine and pulls out into the snowy street.
The backseat seems to have been constructed especially for discomfort.
There's no legroom whatsoever, Jennie's knees are crushed into the cage, and the seats themselves are made of a hard plastic composite that feels like she's sitting on concrete.
As Jennie stares through the bars that protect the window, she watches the familiar buildings of her neighborhood scroll past, wondering if this has any hope in hell of working.
__________________________________
They pull into the parking garage of the 14th District Police Station.
The officer hauls Jennie out of the backseat and escorts her through a pair of steel doors into a booking room.
There's a row of desks, with chairs for prisoners on one side and a Plexiglas partition that separates them from a workstation on the other.
The room smells like vomit and desperation badly covered over with Lysol.
At this hour of the morning, there's only one other prisoner aside from Jennie—a woman at the far end of the room, chained to a desk. She's rocking manically back and forth, scratching herself, tweaking.
The officer searches Jennie again, and then tells her to have a seat.
He unlocks the bracelet on Jennie's left wrist, cuffs it to an eyebolt in the desk, and says, "I need to see your driver's license."
"I lost it."
He makes a note of this on his paperwork and then goes around to the other side of the desk and logs in to the computer.
He takes Jennie's name.
Social Security number.
Address.
Employer.
Jennie asks, "What exactly am I being charged with?"
"Disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace."
The officer begins to fill out the arrest report.
After a few minutes, he stops typing and looks at Jennie through the scratched up Plexi. "You don't strike me as a crazy person or an asshole. You don't have a sheet. You've never been in trouble before. So what happened back there? It's almost like...you were trying to get arrested. Anything you want to tell me?"
"No. I am sorry I messed up your breakfast."
He shrugs. "There'll be others."
Jennie was fingerprinted.
Photographed.
They take her shoes and gives her a pair of slippers and a blanket.
When he's finished booking Jennie into the system, she asks, "When do I get my phone call?"
"You can have it right now." He lifts the receiver from a landline. "Who would you like to call?"
"My wife."
Jennie gives him the number and watch him dial.
When it starts to ring, he hands Jennie the receiver across the partition.
Jennie's heart is pounding.
Pick up, honey. Come on.
Voicemail.
Jennie hears her voice, but it's not her message.
Did Jennie2 rerecord it as a subtle marking of her territory?
Jennie asks the officer, "She's not answering. Would you hang up, please?"
He kills the call a second before the beep.
"Lisa probably didn't recognize the number. Would you mind trying one more time?"
He dials again.
It rings again.
Jennie's wondering—if Lisa doesn't answer, should Jennie risk just leaving a message?
No.
What if Jennie2 heard it? If she doesn't answer this time, Jennie have to figure out some other way to—
"Hello?"
"Lisa."
"Jennie?"
Tears sting in Jennie's eyes at the sound of her voice. "Yeah, it's me."
"Where are you calling from? It says Seoul Police on the caller ID. I thought it was one of those fraternal order charity things, so I didn't—"
"I just need you to listen for a minute."
"Is everything okay?"
"Something happened on my way to work. I'll explain everything when—"
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, but I'm in jail."
For a moment, it gets so quiet on the other end of the line that Jennie can hear the variety show Lisa's listening to in the background.
She says finally, "You got arrested?"
"Yeah."
"For what?"
"I need you to come bail me out."
"Jesus. What did you do?"
"Look, I don't have all the time in the world right now to explain. This is kind of like my one phone call."
"Should I call a lawyer?"
"No, just get down here as soon as you can. I'm at the Fourteenth District Precinct on..." Jennie looks at the officer for the street address.
"Black Pink Avenue."
"Black Pink Ave. And bring your checkbook."
The officer raps his knuckles on the Plexiglas and moves a finger across his throat.
Jennie says, "My time's up. Please get here as soon as you can."
"Okay."
"Honey."
"What?"
"I love you so much."
Lisa hangs up.
_________________________________
Jennie's lonely holding cell consists of a paper-thin mattress on a concrete base.
Toilet.
Sink.
Camera over the door, watching her.
She lies in bed with the jail-issue blanket draped over her and stares at a patch of ceiling that she's guessing has been studied by all manner of people in the throes of despair and hopelessness and poor decision-making.
What runs through her mind are the innumerable things that might go wrong, that could so easily stop Lisa from coming to her.
She could call Jennie2 on her cell phone.
Jennie2 could call her between classes just to say hi.
One of the other Jennies could decide to make her move.
If any one of those things happens, the entire plan will blow up spectacularly in Jennie's face.
Her stomach hurts.
Her heart is racing.
Jennie tries to calm herself down, but there's no stopping the fear.
She wonders if any of her doppelgängers have anticipated this move. Jennie tries to take comfort in the idea that they couldn't have. If she hadn't seen that belligerent drunk at the bar last night, obnoxiously hitting on those women and getting thrown out by the bouncer, it would never have occurred to Jennie to get herself arrested as a ploy to make Lisa come to her in a safe environment.
What led to this decision was a unique experience that was mine alone.
Then again, I could be wrong.
I could be wrong about everything.
Jennie gets up, pace back and forth between the toilet and the bed, but there's not much ground to cover in this six-by-eight-foot cell, and the more she paces, the more the walls seem to inch in closer until she can actually feel the claustrophobia of this room as a tightening in her chest.
It's getting harder to breathe.
She move finally to the tiny window at eye level in the door.
Peer through into a sterile white hallway.
The sound of a woman crying in one of the neighboring cells echoes off the cinder-block walls.
She sounds so far beyond hope.
Jennie wonders if it's the same woman she saw in the booking room when she first arrived.
A guard walks by, holding another inmate by his arm above the elbow.
Returning to the bed, Jennie curls up under the blanket and face the wall and try not to think, but it's impossible.
It feels like hours have passed.
Why could it possibly be taking this long?
Jennie can only think of one explanation.
Something happened.
Lisa isn't coming.
_________________________________
The door to her cell unlocks with a mechanized jolt that spikes Jennie's heart rate.
She sits up.
The baby-faced guard standing in the doorway says, "You get to go home, Mrs. Manoban. Your wife just posted bail."
_________________________________
He leads Jennie back to the booking room, where she sign some papers Jennie don't even bother to read.
They return her shoes and escorts her through a series of corridors.
As Jennie push through the doors at the end of the last hallway, her breath catches in her throat and her eyes sheet over with tears.
Of all the places she imagined their reunion finally happening, the lobby of the 14th District Precinct wasn't one of them.
Lisa rises from her chair.
Not a Lisa who doesn't know Jennie, or is married to another man, or another version of Jennie.
Her Lisa.
The one, the only.
She's wearing the shirt she sometimes dances in—a faded pink checkered polo—and when she sees Jennie her face screws up with confusion and disbelief.
Jennie rushes to her across the lobby, wrapping her arms around Lisa, and Lisa'ss saying her name, saying it like something isn't adding up, but Jennie doesn't let go, because she can't let go.
Thinking—the worlds she have come through, the things she have done, endured, suffered, to get back into the arms of this woman.
Jennie can't believe how good it feels to touch her.
To breathe the same air.
To smell her.
Feel the voltage of her skin against hers.
Jennie frames Lisa's face in her hands.
She kisses Lisa.
Those lips—so maddeningly soft.
But Lisa pulls away.
And then pushes Jennie away, her hands against Jennie's chest, her brow deeply furrowed.
"They told me you were arrested for smoking a cigar in a restaurant, and that you wouldn't..." Her train of thought derails. She studies Jennie's face like there's something wrong with it, her fingers running through two weeks' worth of stubble. Of course there's something wrong with it—it's not the face she woke up to today. "Your hair isn't this long this morning, Jennie."
Lisa looks Jennie up and down. "You're so thin."
She touches Jennie's ragged, filthy shirt. "These aren't the clothes you left the house in."
Lisa can see her trying to process it all and coming up blank.
"Am I losing my mind or—?"
"You're not losing your mind."
Gently, Jennie take Lisa by the arm and pull her over to a couple of straightbacked chairs in a small waiting area.
Jennie says, "Let's sit for a minute."
"I don't want to sit, I want you to—"
"Please, Lisa."
They sit.
"Do you trust me?" Jennie asks.
"I don't know. This is all...scaring me."
"I'll explain everything, but first I need you to call a cab."
"My car is parked two blocks—"
"We're not walking to your car."
"Why?"
"It's not safe out there for us."
"What are you talking about?"
"Lisa, will you please just trust me on this?"
Jennie thinks she's going to balk, but instead she takes out her phone, opens an app, and orders a car.
Looking up at Jennie finally, Lisa says, "Done. It's three minutes out."
Jennie glance around the lobby.
The officer who escorted Jennie there from the booking room is gone, and at the moment, they're the only occupants aside from the woman at the welcome window. But she's sitting behind a thick wall of protective glass, so Jennie feels reasonably sure she can't hear them.
She looks at Lisa.
Jennie says, "What I'm about to tell you is going to sound crazy. You're going to think I've lost my mind, but I haven't. Remember the night of our anniversary? It was Monday and I was about to buy us dinner and ice cream?"
"Yeah. That was over a month ago."
"When I walked out the door of our house that night, that's the last time I saw you, until five minutes ago when I came through those doors."
"Jennie, I've seen you every day since that night."
"That woman isn't me."
Lisa's face becomes dark.
"What are you talking about?"
"She's another version of me."
Lisa just stares into Jennie's eyes, blinking. "Is this some kind of trick? Or a game you're playing? Because—"
"Not a trick. Not a game."
Jennie takes her phone out of her hand and check the time. "It's 12:18. I have office hours right now."
Jennie types in the number to her direct line on campus and hand Lisa the phone.
It rings twice, and then Jennie hears her voice answer with, "Hi, beautiful. I was just thinking about you."
Lisa's mouth opens slowly.
She looks ill.
Jennie put it on speaker and mouth, "Say something."
Lisa says, "Hey. How's your day going so far?"
"Great. Finished my morning lecture, and now I'm seeing a few students over the lunch hour. Everything okay?"
"Um, yeah. I just...wanted to hear your voice."
Jennie grabs the phone from her and mute it.
Jennie2 says, "I can't stop thinking about you."
Jennie looks at Lisa, say, "Tell her you've been thinking, and that since we had such an amazing time in the Keys last Christmas, you want to go back."
"We didn't go to the Keys last Christmas."
"I know that, but she doesn't. I want to prove to you she's not the woman you think she is."
Jennie's doppelgänger says, "Lisa? Did I lose you?"
Lisa unmutes the phone. "No, I'm right here. So, the real reason for my call—"
"Wasn't just to hear the soothing tones of my voice?"
"I was thinking about when we went to the Keys for Christmas last year, and how much fun we all had. I know money's tight, but what if we went back?"
Jennie2 doesn't miss a beat.
"Absolutely. Whatever you want, my love."
Lisa stares into Jennie's eyes as she says into the phone, "Do you think we can get the same house we had? The pink-and-white one that was right on the beach? It was so perfect."
Lisa's voice breaks on the last word, and Jennie think Lisa's right on the verge of losing her composure, but she somehow manages to hold the scaffolding together.
"We'll make it work," Jennie2 says.
The phone begins to shake in Lisa's hand.
Jennie wants to tear the other her slowly apart.
Jennie2 says, "Honey, someone's waiting out in the hall to see me, so I better jump off."
"Okay."
"I'll see you tonight."
No you won't.
"See you tonight, Jennie."
Lisa ends the call.
Reaching down, Jennie squeezes Lisa's hand and say, "Look at me."
She looks lost, addled.
Jennie say, "I know your head is spinning right now."
"How can you be at the university and also sitting here right in front of me at the same moment?"
Her phone beeps.
A message appears on the touchscreen, advising that their car is arriving.
Jennie say, "I'll explain everything, but right now we need to get in this car"
"Are you in danger?"
"We all are."
Rising, Jennie gives Lisa a hand up out of the chair.
They move across the lobby toward the precinct entrance.
A black Escalade is parked at the curb, twenty feet ahead.
Pushing through the doors, Jennie pulls Lisa along the sidewalk toward the idling SUV.
There's no trace of last night's storm, at least not in the sky. A fierce north wind has raked away the clouds and left in its wake a brilliant winter day.
Jennie opens the rear passenger door and climb in after Lisa.
Jennie asks the black-suited driver to take them to the farthest and strangest place she could think of.
"Please get there as quickly as you can," Jennie says.
The windows are deeply tinted, and as they accelerate away from the precinct, Jennie constantly look over at Lisa.
Their driver pulls out of the parking lot and into a street that's been plowed clean of snow, the pavement drying out under the bright winter sun.
A couple blocks down, they pass Lisa's navy Honda.
Two cars ahead of hers, Jennie sees a woman who looks exactly like her sitting behind the wheel of a white van.
Jennie glances through the rear window.
There's a car behind them, but it's too far back for Jennie to see who's driving.
"What is it?" Lisa asks.
"I want to make sure no one's following us."
"Who would be following us?"
Jennie's silence was enough to be an answer.
Lisa says, "Where are we going?"
"We'll go someplace safe," Jennie whispers, "Where we can talk in private. Then I'll tell you everything."