Page 63 of Meet Me in Another Life

Thora tilts her head. “Are you okay?”

Santi blinks. “You just walked through the wall,” he points out.

“Yeah. I’ve been busy.” Thora holds out her hand. He hesitates. Impatient, she grabs him and pulls him through solid stone.

It’s a strange feeling—a humming in his ears, a split-second gap in his existence—but not unfamiliar. Santi emerges into the dark interior of the lighthouse with the same wonder as when hepassed through the wall in the university to find himself under the stars. “A miracle,” he says under his breath.

“A mistake.” Thora lets go of his hand. “We’re not supposed to be able to get in here.”

“Not at ground level, anyway.” Santi climbed into the lighthouse as a teenager lifetimes ago, through a broken window in the lantern room. The interior is how he remembers it: a gray sketch, the lack of detail almost uncanny. Now, the monotony is broken by a mattress on the floor and a bucket filled with chip packets and bread. “You’re living in here?”

Thora nods enthusiastically. “I figured a landlocked lighthouse accessible only by mystic portal was the closest I could get to elsewhere.”

Something about the bucket strikes Santi as odd. He empties it out. He’s not imagining it. Three of the same oddly shaped bread bun, four of the same pack of paprika chips. The same exact apple with the same bruise on one side, repeated over and over. He looks up at her. “Where did you get all this?”

She grins. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

In the crowded aisles of the Alter Markt, Santi watches Thora reach out and take a bun from a bread stall.

“Thora,” he starts.

“Before you call the police, just wait.” She points steadily at the corner of the stall. When Santi looks again, another identical bun has appeared in the place of the one she took.

He blinks. He remembers a cup of coffee, unexpectedly heavy in his hand. “That happens every time?”

“Loaves and fishes,” Thora says, grinning.

Santi shakes his head in wonder. “How did you find this?”

Thora bites into her prize. “I’ve been here five years,” she says around a mouthful. “Plenty of time to learn all this place’s tricks.” She takes another bun and shoves it in her pocket. “Once you get the hang of it, they’re pretty easy to spot. You just have to look at things the right way.” She grabs his arm, her face lighting up. “Which reminds me. There’s one you have to see.”

He pulls back. “I can’t stay. Héloïse will be wondering where I am.”

“Héloïse?” Thora stares. “I thought you were finished with Héloïse. You said being with her didn’t feel fair.”

Santi rubs his eyes, still reeling from the twenty-five years that have passed and not passed since he and Thora last saw each other. He remembers moving to Paris, meeting Héloïse, their wedding in the Art Nouveau church in Montmartre under the impossible brightness of stained glass. Images, tied up with emotion, connected by the illusion of a self that experienced them. If his and Thora’s lives in the city are the melody, then perhaps the pauses also have meaning, like the rests in music. He shrugs. “We were already married when I arrived.”

It’s not an answer, and Thora knows it. But if she senses there is more he’s not telling her, she doesn’t seem to care. “Fine. But before you go and hang out with your fake wife, let me show you this one thing.” She tugs his hand, leading him through an alleyway back toward the clock tower. Santi drags his feet, but Thora is relentless. She leads him around the side, into the grassy courtyard where they once met as first-year students.

“There,” she says, pointing at nothing.

Santi tilts his head. “What am I looking at?”

“Observe.” Thora hefts the remainder of the bun and throws it straight ahead. As Santi watches, it disappears in midair. He stepsforward, fascinated. “It’s like—an invisible door,” Thora says. “It un-exists things.”

Santi’s eyes drop to the grass. A memory comes: searching for an hour with nail-bitten and dirty hands, not comprehending how something could disappear so entirely. “My hostel card,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I tried walking into it, of course,” Thora says airily. “But it doesn’t work on me. I assume it won’t work on you either.” She gestures. “Give it a try.”

Santi pauses. Maybe this is another trap Thora is leading him into, a second suicide. But he believes in treating the world as real. There is nothing here for him to be afraid of. He walks forward, through the invisible door.

Nothing happens.

“I call it the annihilation portal,” Thora says cheerfully. “There’s something therapeutic about it. One time, I got all my least favorite books from the library and just sat throwing them in one by one.” She settles cross-legged on the grass, picking up pine cones and tossing them to non-existence by Santi’s feet. It sickens him: the repetitive, angry motion, the nothingness left behind.

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