Page 35 of Meet Me in Another Life

He picks a street, follows it with his eyes half-closed. It leads him true: he comes out into the open green of the park with the sense of worlds abruptly ending and beginning, clumsily jointed. Wind chases the leaves past him, the city sliding away under hisfeet. As he crosses the park, flashes of sunlight break through where the mosque gleams, green space on one side and the postindustrial sprawl of Ehrenfeld on the other. The sun mingles with another light: heavenly fire, blazing invisibly bright at the corner of his eye. He takes the main road into the neighborhood’s heart. The landlocked lighthouse by the train tracks taunts him with a meaning he can’t grasp. A revelation is coming. Santi looks up at the sky, clouds fleeting across it like impossibly swift ships, and feels it building, inside him and out.

At the door of the hostel, he fumbles for his card, but his pocket is empty. He swears. He forgot: he lost the card this morning, in the courtyard next to the clock tower. One moment it was falling from his pocket onto the grass. The next, it had vanished. He combed the ground obsessively for an hour, but it was gone, as surely as if it had never existed. He imagines the card slipping out through a hole in the world and feels sick with vertigo. He presses the buzzer.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice, compressed by the intercom.

The hairs on the back of Santi’s neck stand up. “Hi. I—I lost my card.”

“Okay. One second.” The buzzer vibrates, and the door clicks open.

The woman behind the desk looks up as he walks in. Bleach-blond, short-cropped hair; stark blue eyes. “I guess you’ll be wanting a new card,” she says. Santi is about to tell her his name when she says, “Are you Santiago López?”

His skin prickles. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh, I—I’ve been looking through the files.”

His eyes drift to her desk, where only his file lies open in front of her. His life, distilled down to a few pages: the essence of him, the blueprint for all the Santis there could ever be.

She closes it hurriedly. “Give me one second,” she says, and wheels her office chair over to the card printer.

She’s humming under her breath, a tune Santi knows. His eyes pass over her desk. A starscape mug filled with strong tea. A photo of her with her arms around a smiling woman.

“Here you are, Mr. López.” She hands him the new card. “I’m Thora, by the way,” she adds. “Thora Lišková.”

He closes his eyes. “Fox.”

She coughs. “Excuse me?”

“Your name.” He opens his eyes, watches her face for clues. “That’s what it means.”

“Yes.” She half-smiles. “The other staff—they told me you like to know what things mean. So you speak Czech?”

“No.”

She frowns. “Your name means Wolf.” She blinks, confused. “I—don’t know how I know that.”

Santi feels the world shift under his feet. “What are you doing here?” he says softly.

“I’m a trainee social worker. I’m new here, I just started this morning—”

“No.” He cuts her off. “What are you doing here?”

“I...” She’s familiar, everything about her is familiar: the washed-out blue of her eyes, the frankness of her gaze. She’s about his age, although he knows he looks older. Life has been kinder to her, this time.

“You,” he says with sudden understanding. “You’re part of it.”

Her expression shifts to wariness. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do.” The conviction burns him: she is the revelation, and she knows it. He slams his hands down on the counter. “Tell me,” he shouts. “Tell me what’s happening to me.”

“Take it easy.” She reaches under the desk for the panic button.

He has seconds to get through to her. He leans across the counter, stares into her eyes. The words come to him as if he has said them before. “Don’t leave me alone in this.”

He sees something change in her face as the resident assistants pull him away.

Back in his room, they sit him down for a talk. They tell him he can’t threaten the staff, or he won’t be allowed to stay here anymore. They explain to him that one of the features of his illness is a tendency to see meaning everywhere, that his delusion about recognizing Thora is just another in a long list of symptoms.

He lets them think he understands. After they leave, he takes the knife from his jacket and slides it under the pillow: an old habit he can’t sleep without. He lies on his side on the narrow bed and stares at the wall, searching for patterns in the cracks until he falls asleep.

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