… Get out of here! And you get out of here! …
She toweled her hair, changed into her street clothes, and got out of there, leaving the place in a mess.
She worked her way down the hall behind the lounge … and into the main casino, staying on the carpeted throughway next to the wall so the security guys wouldn’t bother her. She hurried by the banks of slot machines, the roulette table, her hand on the wall to keep from getting lost in the wrong world.
… the roulette table …
… changed into her street clothes …
She couldn’t go home because she didn’t dare drive not knowing which car she was driving through which intersection and in what order. She thought she could sit in the Claim Jumper restaurant for a while, just have a salad, stay put, and wait out the storm. The restaurant was just off the casino floor, a short walk.
She saw herself up ahead, hanging a left into the restaurant. Okay. It looked like it happened, or was about to happen. She followed herself.
The hostess looked right through her, talking to somebody else. Mandy reached for a menu on the counter. Her hand passed through it. Wrong time. She ventured into the restaurant to do a quick visual search and spotted herself sitting in a corner booth, looking miserable and picking at a Cobb salad. All right, the corner booth. Now all she had to do was find the hostess who was here now.
She went back to the front, and the hostess noticed her. “Good evening. Table for one?”
“How about a corner booth?”
“We have one.”
When she got there, the miserable Mandy looked up and said, “I don’t want to talk to you! Go away!”
“You go away!” She immediately had to tell the waitress, “Not you, I was talking to a bug.”
The miserable Mandy dissolved. The booth was empty and the table was clean. Mandy sat down, ordered the Cobb salad, then anchored her hands to the tabletop to connect with the present world and wait until all the other worlds and times went away—if they ever did. The noise was terrible. Every voice, every spoken word, every jingle of a slot machine or clang of a jackpot was doubled and tripled upon itself, happening, having happened, going to happen, all at once. People walked by on their way to a table, then walked by again on their way to the same table, having the exact conversation as before. She overheard phrases from the tables around her several times before, while, and after they were spoken. Four people at one table sounded like twenty. She even heard conversations between people at tables that were empty, before the people arrived. She was sitting in the same restaurant again and again, all at the same time.
Oh, God, help me.
The waitress brought her salad, but it wasn’t there yet. She came again with the same salad, but Mandy could see the table through the leaves and plate. The third time, the salad was real. The fourth time she ignored it and paid attention to the third.
But she could hardly touch it. How many times would she take the same bite, how many times would she swallow it? Maybe this was going to be one of those mythological hells, sitting in the same restaurant eating the same salad over and over again, bite by repeated bite, for all eternity, full and hungry at the same time, the plate empty, the plate full. She almost laughed, she felt like crying. From outside herself she was getting a kick out of this comedy, but inside she was the hapless foil it was happening to, and that girl was quietly, privately losing her mind over a plate of salad.
She forked a few leaves into her mouth and chewed.
Someone approached the table. It was she.
Oh, why doesn’t she just leave me alone!“I don’t want to talk to you! Go away!”
The other Mandy felt just the way she did, she knew. “You go away!”
Mandy joined the other Mandy in telling the waitress who wasn’t there, “Not you, I was talking to a bug.”
The other Mandy dissolved.
The Mandy still sitting there slid the salad aside and propped her head in her hand.
Tears came to her eyes. She let them flow down her face, but she was too exhausted to cry.
She reached in her bag for her cell phone but withdrew her hand, leaving the phone there. It was just a thought: Call Dane.
But that was over, didn’t she remember? She would never see the ranch, hear his voice, or feel his touch again.
She picked at her salad because there was nothing else to do. If she stayed here and didn’t go anywhere else or interact with anyone, she shouldn’t be a danger. The medics or security or the police would find her eventually and take her where she couldn’t hurt anyone. Pills would make all the fear and hurt and disappointment go away.
This bite tasted new, like she hadn’t had this one before.
“Excuse me?” It was a quiet voice, just one, right here, right now. She looked up into the face of a lady she didn’t know. “Are you doing all right?”
Mandy noticed it was quieter. The only people talking were the people who were really there, having conversations as they happened. The restaurant looked and felt like the only one happening. She looked again at the lady, a gal in her fifties, she guessed, still dark-haired, well built, and fully aware of it. She had a man with her, no doubt her husband. He was bald and, well, retired-looking, but he took good care of himself and looked proud to be in her company.
Mandy wiped her eyes, feeling no need to mince words. “No, I’m not doing very well at all. Thank you for asking.”
The lady put her hand on Mandy’s. “We saw your show tonight. Listen, kid, you were entirely in the right and we were proud of you!”
The man said, “If you hadn’t decked those guys I would have.”
Fresh tears came to her eyes, but Mandy didn’t care. There would surely be a pill for it.
“No, no,” said the lady. “Don’t do that. You’re an incredible performer! Just incredible! We were so proud!”
You haven’t met the real me, whoever she is.
The lady was still talking. “We were surprised that more people hadn’t heard about you.”
“That’s going to change,” said the man with a smile.
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Mandy said glumly.
Now the lady sat in the booth, opposite her.
“Especially … well, maybe you won’t appreciate this, but you …” The lady shook a finger at her, wagging her head. “You look so much like …”
“Mandy Collins. I know.”
“A lot of people remember her, and you could be her daughter.”
“I’m not. I’m Mandy Whitacre.”
The lady smiled—in awe, it seemed—and exchanged a look with her husband. “Well, even that, that was something that caught our eye, your name, and then your face …”
Mandy started to say something about needing to finish her dinner and go home, it was nice to meet them, blah blah blah, but she only got as far as “Well, anyway—”
—before the lady kept going. “This is something only Terry and I would know about, our own little secret, but we used to know a Mandy Whitacre way back before you were born, and she was a magician, too, believe it or not, and that’s why we came to see your show. Your name was just so familiar, it was even spelled the same, and we just had to come and see, you know, what this Mandy Whitacre was like, and then”—the lady shook her head in wonder—“this is going to sound so unbelievable, but you look just like the Mandy Whitacre we went to school with. It’s just incredible.”
Oh. Right. Went to school with.Okay, now it made sense. By now there were so many Mandy Whitacres out there, one of them was bound to bring along some old friends to liven up the party. Mandy could guess the answer even as she asked, “What school?”
“North Idaho Junior College in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Of course, it’s called North Idaho College now, NIC.”
Sure, of course. That’s where Mandy Whitacre—at least the Mandy Whitacre she thought she was—went to college, and of course some old friends from NIC would just pop up in a restaurant in Las Vegas at this late hour and they’d run into each other. Mandy went with it. At least when the medics arrived and saw her talking to people who weren’t there, they’d know they’d found the right person. Funny, though, how all the Mandys were the same age as she but these two friends were old, and there was something about the lady’s voice … something about her husband’s voice …