hip. That time they pranked Bert with sugar in the saltshaker, and he pretended he liked the taste so he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. That time—
“Matt’s gonna be pissed,” Esther said.
“We left a note,” Sloane replied.
“Yeah, I’m sure that will make it all better.”
“Just blame it on me. He already hates me.”
“Yeah.” Esther sighed and leaned back. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?”
The cab was the size of a small boat, boxy, with a hood ornament in the shape of a discus. It looked like a flying saucer to Sloane, but Kyros had struck up a conversation about college shot-put front-runners with the driver as soon as he sat down. Genetrix had, apparently, experienced a resurgence of interest in track and field in the last ten years. It had eclipsed baseball.
“So there’s only one baseball team here?” Sloane couldn’t get over it. “What do they call them, the Cubsox?”
“Chicago Cornhuskers,” Edda said.
“Cornhuskers?” Sloane couldn’t imagine the city without a crosstown rivalry, let alone the city rallying behind the cornhusker as a mascot.
“Sloane, you don’t even like baseball,” Esther said.
“Living in Chicago means liking baseball by proxy,” Sloane said.
“We need to come up with a plan.” Esther sounded impatient. “We can’t just show up on the guy’s doorstep and tell him we’re from . . .” She lowered her voice, checking the rearview mirror to make sure the driver was still talking discus with Kyros. “A parallel dimension.”
They coasted down Lake Shore Drive. Lake Michigan was the color of steel, and restless, crashing hard against the wall that held it back from the road. Esther drummed her fingers on her knee. Her fingernails had been manicured at Albie’s funeral, but the paint was flaking off now.
“We could call it a military thing,” Sloane said, glancing at the badge of the Army of Flickering on Edda’s jacket. “Say it’s top secret or something?”
Esther rolled her eyes. “Sure, that doesn’t sound at all absurd.”
“Don’t you know this man?” Edda chimed in. “Make your reason personal rather than official.”
“We know him, and we don’t,” Sloane said. “But I guess we could try to use information we have about him from before the likely point of divergence between universes. So—before 1969.”
“He got married when he was eighteen,” Esther said. “Had an older brother who drowned when he was sixteen. Born in Idaho . . .”
They went over everything they could remember from Bert’s early life as the taxi passed the Museum of Science and Industry, green dome and stately columns standing on pristine grounds, the same as it was on Earth. Beyond it were sprawling red-brick buildings with cracked sidewalks in front of them; long, low municipal buildings with glass-block windows; trees with bare branches that twisted among the power lines, all familiar sights. But every so often they passed something she would never have seen at home: a picket line outside a siphon retailer with people carrying signs that said MAGIC FOR ALL and ABRAXAS: ENEMY OF THE POOR and even MY MOM SOLD A KIDNEY TO GET AN ABRAXAS SIPHON; a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through that appeared to be a Howard Johnson’s, long defunct in her world; a high school called the Timuel Black School for Magic Theory and Practice.
They turned off 57th Street onto a side street packed with houses, and the taxi pulled up next to an old Craftsman home with the numbers 5730 painted above the front door. Esther and Sloane both stared at it while Kyros paid the driver with what appeared to be two twenty-dollar coins. Sloane had noticed people jingling as they walked or wearing little pouches hanging from their belts, but she hadn’t connected them to currency before.
They got out of the car, and the taxi pulled away from the curb. Sloane stared up at the old house, which was gray with white trim, the paint peeling, the lawn dull green and dusted with frost.
“You guys had better stay out here,” Esther said to Kyros and Edda.
Kyros looked dubious.
“If something bad happens, I’ll let out a bloodcurdling scream and you can come running. How’s that?” Sloane said.
“He’s just an old guy,” Esther said, more reassuringly.
“Fine,” Kyros said.
A shiver coursed through Sloane, and she forced herself to follow Esther down the front walk. A small collection of lawn gnomes stood around one of the stone planters, each of them wearing a red hat.
“So you’re his niece through his wife’s sister,” Esther said. “I’m ninety percent sure her name was Shauna.”