Chapter 91 — Mica’s Bathroom
The Curve of Time, Chapter 91 —— Mica’s Bathroom, into which Saskia escapes.
Followed by some reflections on cats in my life.
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— 91 —
Mica’s Bathroom
Saskia had excused herself to the bathroom. And now, standing in front of the mirror, she searched for strength inside the galaxy of her eyes. She was following a chromatic thread to the edge of the universe and out through the orbital wrinkles at the corner of her right eye, when she noticed Fish’s reflection in the mirror.
Mica’s cat was behind her, asleep on a towel, atop the shelves under the window.
He turned to her, and she wiped a stardust tear from her cheek. “Do you think it would help if I knew what I was going to do?” she asked the cat. “Or, would it just become a self-fulfilling prophesy?”
Did the potential for multiple bites of the apple really change anything? From everything she’d seen, it hadn’t helped any of the hers that went back.
The epiphany felt not dissimilar to the close call she’d had a decade ago when a foothold had broken off on a climb she was on, sending her to the ground. As she’d looked up, she’d realized that in fact she was lucky it had all happened so close to the ground. That incident had changed her. It had been the shattering of her personal illusion of invincibility. Life wasn’t like a computer game; there really weren’t any do-overs. And now, it seemed the same was true, even for time travelers.
But would her fellow time travelers all realize this? Or was spacetime at risk of destabilizing? Black holes were made of matter folding in on itself in unfathomable ways. Could a cacophony of nudges splinter the universe too far? Was this the Fermi Paradox resolution Mica had guessed at?
The bar of soap sitting in the recessed ceramic dish by the tub reminded her of their earlier threesome, and she recalled callouses on her other self’s feet. Did she have those callouses too? That whole episode had happened at a more innocent moment. She hadn’t realized the chaos her actions had wrought. It was “celebratory sex” of a sort.
The words in her head sounded like “celibatory sex” and it made Saskia laugh. Fish looked up at her. Was “celibatory sex” even a thing? It suggested an oxymoronic act. Really, “celibacy” kind of covered the whole idea. Whatever the case, she liked the sibilance.
Still, the emotion, that her laugh unshackled, morphed into tears. She was an interloper here.
Fish tilted his head, and his soulful gaze reminded her of her own little guy. She missed Tomato.
She suddenly felt annoyed at her double for abandoning Tomato. But, as instantly, she remembered the Tomato of her own timeline. “Is my boy feeling abandoned too?” she asked Fish. Tears formed again, pooling at her lash line and trickling over. There was no way for her to return. No way for her to comfort her Tomato.
Fish wasn’t purring. It was unlike him, and Saskia wondered if he somehow knew she was not of this timeline.
Cat’s had sixth senses after all. Perhaps Fish could sense her betrayal of Tomato. She’d left a hole in that entire strand of the universe. She was a redundant double here, but it was only now that she realized she would be perpetually missed there, among those she’d left behind. There, she’d always be disappeared. A missing person. Eventually, a death without a body. No closure.
∞
Saskia lifted Fish from his nest and slumped to the floor. She cradled the cat in her lap. The tiles that her feet rested on reminded her of the first time she’d stood in front of her own bathroom mirror. That hadn’t felt real either. It had been such a step up in the world from the apartment she’d shared with two friends——they were great friends, but having your own space ...it was different. Her house——or, rather, it’s counterpart in her timeline——contained the first bathroom and kitchen that she hadn’t had to answer to others over. Leaving her toothpaste on the counter beside the sink had felt as if the mirrored glass might shatter at any moment and some demon audience would laugh at her for her hubris. The hubris of believing she was entitled to her own place.
Only, now, the feeling was reversed. Now, she missed having to consider someone else’s perspectives. Her Mica hadn’t moved in with her yet, but there was the possibility of sharing any night she chose with her. Suddenly that possibility was gone.
Here, she’d see doppelgangers of everyone, but her people would forever wonder what had happened to her.
Worse, the doubles here weren’t the comfort she had naively hoped. They were already in relationships with another Saskia. The Mica of this timeline wasn’t available to her, and her confession of an hour earlier, that she had felt like a fraud when she got her drivers license felt, now, like a fraudulent confession itself; it had not been a confession to her, but to the woman she thought she’d been talking to.
There was a knock at the door, and Saskia looked up.
Native Saskia poked her head in. “Hey, you alright?”
Saskia pulled a brave smile.
“You’ve been in here a while.”
Saskia recognized the concern in her double’s voice. It was genuine. Hell, had the tables been turned, she’d have felt the same way. She offered her double a conciliatory smile. “I’m sorry.”
Native Saskia sat beside her and reached across her lap to pet Fish.
And there they sat, in silent contemplation, time slipping away. Each with their apparent attention on the cat. Until——
“Do you think there’s a version of us for every possible decision?” Saskia asked. “However unlikely?”
It was a hypothetical you could never actually test; any version she encountered by doctoring her timeline——they would be so close to herself. And how far would you have to go to see an appreciable difference?
“I mean, . . . ” Native Saskia started, but drifted.
“Like is there an us who would repress her sexuality?”
Native Saskia tipped her head, and looked up from Fish to Saskia.
“Do you think Sienna could be happy with Wassily?”
“Is that a fantasy to make us feel better about sending her packing?”
But Saskia was following her own train of thought. “Do you think it’s possible to know how much our decisions matter? And are there different us’s, for every possible decision?”
“No.” Native Saskia shook her head. “Hard no on that one. At least— the only differences we’ve seen are ones where one of us has gone back and talked our double into a different course of action.”
Saskia bobbed her head. Made sense.
Native Saskia turned her attention back to Fish again. “Sienna and Wassily seem like they could work. I was never physically attracted to him, but he’s——”
A loud banging outside the bathroom interrupted her words——not immediately outside the bathroom, but further back inside Mica’s apartment. It was coupled with a muffled and angry shout. Perhaps from outside Mica’s front door?
That was chapter 91, Friends, I hope you enjoyed it!
For me it had an oddly topical resonance. As some of you probably know, one of our cats——Egg——went missing a couple of weeks ago.
We’ve had a bit of a bad run with our cats over the last few years. First, there was Clibs, our original orange tabby, who passed away well before his time, the victim of a tumor. That was a tough year, especially as we also lost a much younger cat, Fish, to a car. Yes, that Fish was the inspiration for Mica’s Fish. But, no, I’ve never had a cat named Tomato.
In any event, a year or so later, we also lost Fish’s sister, Chips, who simply disappeared one day. Chips had been getting increasingly independent, but I don’t think she simply struck out on her own——I’m more sanguine than that, and doubly so in the context of our local coyote population. In fact I saw one in our backyard the other day for the first time, and during the middle of the day!
Fish and Chips did force me to question the indoor/outdoor nature of our cats, but the joy our garden brings … well, as famed free-soloist climber Alex Honnold noted: “the goal of life isn’t merely to maximize the length of your stay”.
I wouldn’t want to be stuck inside either, and all of our cats have expressed, over the years, a strong desire to explore.
We hung up posters for Egg. I knocked on all doors in the couple of blocks surrounding our house, and my wife trawled the various social sites. After ten days, though, I had come to accept that Egg had likely succumbed to another coyote. And then, out of the blue, twelve days after he disappeared, a very skinny Egg came meow meow meowing at our side door one evening. His return was a visceral reminder to me, to appreciate every day. And, I can only assume that he must have gotten stuck somewhere, because he was ravenous, and is clearly happy to be home again.
It was a peculiar case of life mirroring art in a fun-house mirror sort of way, and it put me in a very appropriate space to write Saskia’s point of view for today’s chapter.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
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