Chapter 7 - Duplicate

He wobbled to the nearest chair and sat down, or rather fell in it, if one wanted a more accurate description. He was still holding the champaign bottle in his hand and did his best to focus on the label in an attempt to figure out why it had gotten to his head so fast. Focus seemed beyond his current capabilities, so he just noticed the bottle was empty and let it drop to the floor with a hollow noise which reassured him the fall didn’t break it. 

He leaned back in the chair, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible, and fell asleep immediately, helped by the slowly dimming light. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping when he woke up, his head pounding and his mouth feeling like cotton balls. There was a blanket on the chair next to his, neatly folded so the edges aligned to form a perfect square.

Startled by the discovery, he jumped to his feet in a fight-or-flight response that bypassed his brain. 

There was nobody else in the room, and after he checked inside every cupboard and behind every door, he had the uncomfortable feeling of his privacy having been violated, even as he had no expectation of privacy living in this space. 

He didn’t even know how much time had passed since he first woke up in this lounge, there was no accounting for day or night in this place with no doors, no windows and no clocks, a place he had started to suspect was outside time itself somehow, like some sort of hub where different realities and timelines intersected.

His eyes rested on the paneling with an absentminded gaze, trying to admire the patterns for their own sake, rather than look for signs of what they could mean or where they could lead. He was drawn to one of them, far back into a corner, an Art nouveau pastiche with intricate flower motifs and long winding stems. 

He drew near to see it up close, careful not to touch anything, still waiting for whoever brought the blanket to show up unexpectedly from the kitchen and question his presence there. There was no logic to his concern since his return to this room didn’t seem to be anymore within his control than his leaving it. Besides, he had gotten used to considering this room his home base, and that made the other person the intruder. 

Still unstable from his hangover, he accidentally leaned on the panel, fell through the opening, and didn’t have a chance to get up before the door snapped closed behind him.

“Where on earth have you been?” his wife from before stood there watching him with a crease between her eyebrows, in obvious disapproval of his disheveled state and his lack of sobriety. 

He was still dressed in the tuxedo, but his shirt collar was unbuttoned and the bow tie hung undone, like a limp butterfly wrapped around his neck.

What did one answer to a question like that? What if he told her the truth? The worst that could happen was to get himself some well-deserved rest in a padded room, which promised solitude and quiet until he walked through a door at random and ended up back in the muzak lounge. Still hostage to his reason, he decided against it.

“I’m sorry,” he played for time, “the boys didn’t want to take no for an answer. They said it would not be more than two hours.”

“Helmuth, are you all right?” his wife looked worried. “You’ve been out for five minutes, at most. In fact, I can’t understand how you got dressed in such a short time, not to mention end up looking like this,” she pointed to his state of undress, appalled. 

‘Helmuth,’ he thought. ‘I’m Helmuth now? The Helmuth? I look nothing like Helmuth, do I?’

Suddenly he needed to find a mirror, to see if his face was the same, and while walking to the bathroom, to his wife’s increasing distress, he realized he didn’t know what he actually looked like, or what his name was, or anything from his real life, if he ever had one. Whatever face he saw in the mirror, it probably looked like Helmuth. 

Curiosity got the better of him, defying logic, and he locked himself in the bathroom to experience this seminal moment privately, for what it was worth.

The face in the mirror didn’t tell him anything. No inkling of recognition, no subtle knowledge, but he didn’t reject it either, this outer self he was bound to for now.

“Helmuth!” he heard his wife pound on the door, agitated. “Open this door right now!”

He would have liked to spend a little more time alone, to get his bearings, but the insistent pounding on the door intensified.

“Have you been in a fight?” the question welcomed him painfully loud as he opened the door to the sight of his wife’s face uncomfortably close to his own.

“No,” he hesitated.

“You look it,” his wife evaluated his state to see if she needed to call for help.

“It was nothing.” He had the spontaneous desire to make something up, just to see how far he could stretch the truth before the story collapsed onto itself for lack of detail and consistency. “This thug bounced into me on the street and I had the unfortunate inspiration to hold him accountable.” 

“But you’ve been drinking, yes?” his wife tested his sincerity.

“Just a glass, dear,” he admitted sheepishly.

“A glass of what? You smell like a distillery!” his wife protested, unconvinced.

‘The one time I tell the truth,’ he sighed, defeated. The fake story sounded more believable, so he went back to it. “I wish I knew! One of the guys asked me to try this concoction. He said he brought it from somewhere exotic. Worst idea of my life! I feel like a train hit me!”

“You should be more careful,” his wife immediately started doting over his righteous indignation, of which she approved. “You don’t know how it was made. What if it’s toxic? You’re lucky to get away so easy, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” he uttered the universal get out of jail sentence. It seemed to work, and while his wife was still torn between upset and worry, he noticed she was wearing an evening gown. He didn’t ask why, but she noticed his gaze and extrapolated on its meaning.

“Do you like it?” she turned around so he could see the garment from all angles.

“Such a beautiful gown,” he returned an open-ended comment, hoping to draw out more detail. Not that they mattered, anyway. Any moment now he’d walk through that front door on his way to wherever they were supposed to be going and end up back in the lounge.

“Yes, and so expensive too!” she looked guilty about it for a moment, and then her eyes stopped on his clothes and she went on the offensive instead. “You know this tuxedo was rented, right? I can’t imagine how we will get it to a state acceptable enough to return it. You certainly can’t wear it to the wedding. You look a fright!”

‘A wedding,’ he smiled vaguely, like he was watching a movie with an unexpected twist. “I guess I’ll just have to find something else to wear then.” He got up from the chair, wondering which one of the five doors in the hallway led to the bedroom.

“Don’t even joke about that!” his wife stopped him with a decisive gesture. “I can’t imagine Mrs. Davenport’s reaction if you show up in business formal to a black-tie event! I’d never be able to show my face at the club again! Rent another tuxedo. We will be late, but between two evils, you know?” she looked at him, pleased she had found a solution to the problem.

“If you think so,” he agreed. 

“Really?” she replied, surprised. “That easy? No protests?”

“I just want you to be happy,” he uttered get out of jail sentence number two.

“Of course you do, dear!” she kissed him on the cheek, purring with contentment. “That’s why I love you.”

He got up, without encountering resistance this time, and walked to the front door, while his wife shouted from behind.

“Since you’re going out anyway, can you get bread too? We ran out.” 

He wanted to ask what kind, but then reconsidered, because it sounded like a detail he was supposed to know, and sighed with relief when the door opened to muzak sounds.

He marked the panel with the same sign as the other door leading to that particular reality and questioned the rationality of trying to make a function out of random associations that seemed to sprout spontaneously from a chaotic set of alternate realities constantly in flow, shifting to make his markings irrelevant even as he was making them. 

‘There is no such thing as perfect chaos,’ he thought, but had to concede that even if he found patterns in this amorphous glob of goo, they would be too few and far between to inform him about its nature.