Page 30 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Because he wanted to leave you something to do.”

“Be serious.”

“Fine. Maybe because something like that would be undeniable. But filling my cup—only I experienced that. I can’t verify it against anything other than my own memory. And so I get to decide whether to put it down to a gap in my perception, or a miracle. And that decision—that’s what makes it about faith.”

“Why on Earth did you go into the sciences?” Dr. Lišková wonders aloud.

“Why did you?” he retorts. She shakes her head, sipping her tea, but he doesn’t let her escape. “I’m serious! Why did you become an astronomer? There must have been a moment when you looked at the stars, and felt—something. A sense of wonder.”

Dr. Lišková’s face closes down. “Wonder is the denial of a need for explanation.” She stands, turning abruptly to the door. “I need to get back to work.”

Santi watches her leave, feeling like she has left him alone on a precipice. He stays in the lounge to finish his coffee. He expects it to taste different, but it’s the same as always. He’s not sure if that makes it more or less of a miracle.

When he gets back to the lab, he senses the new error message before he switches the monitor back on. He sighs. “It crashed again,” he says heavily, before Dr. Lišková can ask.

“Can’t expect more than one miracle a night,” she says.

He has to smile. “I’ll ask God not to waste it on coffee next time.”

“Mm.” She’s gone, absorbed into her computer. As Santi pulls on his coat and leaves the lab, she doesn’t look up.

He walks home to his apartment in the Belgian Quarter and crashes into bed, surrounded by sketches of the stars he remembers. By the time he wakes up, it’s early evening. He showers, changes, and heads out through the sun-dappled streets of Neumarkt to meet his friends at Der Zentaur. The long, raucous table has an unexpected addition: Héloïse, Santi’s crush from the campus coffee shop.

“I met someone who knows her,” Jaime explains to him in Spanish, not bothering to lower his voice. “And yes, you owe me.”

The summer evening passes in a stutter of refilling glasses and sinking light. Santi slingshots from conversation to conversation, switching between English and German, lapsing into Spanish with Jaime whenever they don’t want the others to understand. As the tally of drinks marked on their beer mats rises, he spends more and more of his time watching Héloïse in the mirror behind the bar: the glow of her skin in the semi-dark, the way her braids swing when she laughs. He’s too far down the table to talk to her directly: she’s within his sight, but as unreachable as ever.

The girl sitting opposite gets up, leaving him a view of the window. At a table outside, two women are arguing. One lookstearful. The other sits drawn tight, arms crossed. It’s only when she shakes her head and turns to the window that Santi recognizes Dr. Lišková.

Their eyes meet through the glass. Santi freezes, convinced she sees him, but she turns back, reaching across the table to take the other woman’s hand.

Jaime bumps his shoulder. “What are you staring at?”

“My supervisor,” Santi says in slow horror.

Jaime laughs and slaps the table. “Guys! That’s Santi’s supervisor outside!”

As one, they turn their heads to the window. Santi crouches, hiding himself. “Stop! Don’t all stare at her!”

“She’s younger than I thought,” says Jaime.

“She’s hot,” says some guy Santi doesn’t even know.

“Looks like she’s having a fight with her girlfriend,” Héloïse observes. Wonderful:nowshe’s talking to him.

Santi covers his head. “Can you guys dig a tunnel to get me out of here?”

His plea is ignored. Vibrant speculation about Dr. Lišková’s love life ensues. Santi bites his nails and drinks his way toward a hoped-for oblivion. Through the window, his supervisor and her girlfriend mime a passionate unraveling. After a dilated, unreckonable time, the girlfriend gets up and walks away. Surely now Dr. Lišková will leave. But she stays, an angry ghost ordering glass after glass of wine, throwing it down her throat like it’s a poison she deserves. There is something obscene about seeing her like this, and yet Santi can’t stop looking. The girl opposite gets fed up of him peering over her shoulder and moves to another seat.

Finally Jaime shakes him. “Hey. We’re leaving.”

Santi looks up, disoriented. “Sure.”

“Do you want us all to huddle around you as we walk out? Like—human shield style?”

Santi considers it. “No, too obvious. I’ll wait here. Just—make a lot of noise as you leave. Then while she’s busy looking at you guys, I can sneak out.”

Jaime laughs, but he marshals the troops. Santi watches them stagger performatively outside, whooping and reeling across the cobbles. Dr. Lišková looks up jerkily from her nth glass of wine. Santi takes a breath, puts his head down, and walks quickly after his friends.

---