Page 13 of Alone With You in the Ether

The gym was always quieter on Friday nights, which Aldo liked.

“Just the usual. Class this afternoon, and I have some work to do this weekend.” Exams to grade, which was never as bad as the outcry that followed. He’d also have to prepare a lecture for the following Monday.

He doubted his father actually thought he was going to do anything out of the ordinary; more likely, Masso was doing him the favor of reminding him what day of the week it was. All of this was Masso’s way of checking up on him, and Aldo did his father the favor of needing it. It calmed them both.

“And where are we today, Rinaldo?”

Aldo thought of the slope of Charlotte Regan’s hips. Her dress had an asymmetrical hem, full of sharp, neat lines. It suited her, seeing how she was also tall and full of lines. She reminded him of the buildings that had been constructed along the river. They were mirrors of the landscape, beautiful and sleek and discreetly reflective of the water itself.

“In a city,” Aldo said.

“A big city?”

“Yes.”

“And are we lost?”

“No.” Just dwarfed. “Hey Dad,” Aldo said, suddenly remembering something. “How long do people usually go to prison for counterfeit?”

“What, like bills? Counterfeit bills?”

He hadn’t thought to ask that, but he assumed so. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” Masso said. “Hard to imagine people still manage it.”

“True.” Masso sounded distracted. “Everything okay over there?”

“Ah… yeeeees, nothing to worry about.”

Aldo put on his helmet, throwing a leg over his bike. “Yeah?”

“Just… a shipment didn’t come this morning.” Masso barked something at someone, then returned to the phone call. “Where were we?”

“Dad,” Aldo said, “if you’re busy, you don’t have to call.”

“I know, I know. I like to.”

“I know you do.” Aldo looked up, a shadow coming over him. “I better go, Dad. It’s going to rain soon.”

By the time Masso and Aldo said their goodbyes, a few sprinkles had started. A Chicago autumn typically meant that sprinkles would rapidly become torrential rain. Aldo, who had grown up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and hadn’t known until moving to the Midwest that rain was something that could occur horizontally, was never adequately prepared. Maybe in the world where he’d asked Charlotte Regan to have coffee with him (something he didn’t drink and probably wouldn’t enjoy), he had also taken the bus.

This was why the multiverse was so unsatisfying, Aldo thought. He couldn’t step laterally into a version of himself who was prepared for rain, but maybe somewhere, in some other corner of time, he would’ve happened to plan this differently.

He was soaked through by the time he got to class.

“Exponential equations,” he said without preamble, his jeans clinging to the tops of his thighs. He turned to the board, picked up the marker, and shivered slightly.

THE NARRATOR, A STUDENT WHO HAS JUST ARRIVED: You can never prepare for weathering anything in Chicago.

“Regan. You coming?”

She looked up, reflexively obscuring her phone screen. “Where?”

Marc gestured over his shoulder. “Bathroom.”

It was too casual an invitation to be for sex. He must have meant drugs.

“You go ahead,” she said, and he nodded, leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

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