Chapter 10: The Prime of Mrs. Victoria Chase
"The person I need to call is probably going to Justin's funeral right now," Max said. "To be honest, I'm kinda exhausted after… all that."
Chloe nodded. "Did you need me to drive you back to the diner?"
"It wouldn't make sense for me to go back to my car and go back to the hotel only to come back in a couple of hours. Is, um… is it alright if I crash on the couch?"
Chloe raised her eyebrows. "Max, every inch of me has been on every inch of you. You can sleep on my bed. It's not like I'm gonna be in it."
"I know," Max said. "I just don't want things to get weird… er."
"Then don't make things weirder," Chloe said. "Go to bed."
Max nodded. "Thank you."
"Goodnight," Chloe said as Max disappeared into the bedroom. She sank deeper into the recliner and tried to process the last half hour of revelation and tears in silence. Max had, at one point and if she was to be believed, the ability to rewind time. And that ability had now bled into the present day, and into her dreams.
The ramifications were so astounding to Chloe, so far-reaching and complex, that Chloe had to shake her head at times to reassemble them in her line of thought. But the one notion that throbbed beneath the cerebral considerations, the one thing that wounded her pride and broke her heart was this:
Max and I had a first kiss and I wasn't even there for it.
Chloe was surprised how much this hurt her. Chloe was no stranger to missed opportunities. In her lower moments, she considered herself the Heavyweight Missed Opportunities Champion of the World. But this was an opportunity she didn't know she had missed. Taken by an elsewhere version of herself, robbing her of the catharsis of having it taken by someone else.
An urge, as monstrous and irrational as it was needy and pure, arose within Chloe, elbowing aside all coherent thought in her mind like an eager hockey player that took no prisoners on the way to the opposing goalie. The urge to go into the bedroom and crawl into bed next to Max. To wrap her arm around her as she slept on her side. To breathe in the scent of the cheap conditioner in her hair. To kiss the back of her neck and feel her tense in Chloe's embrace. To once again take up the mantle of girlfriend and Big Spoon after three years of dishonorable dereliction. To nestle herself one last time in the warm and passionate gulf between The Then of anger and sadness and The Now of rootlessness and cynicism.
No.
Chloe got out her phone to banish the urge from within her. She (finally, at long last) looked up Justin Williams' social media accounts. Her first pass at Facebook hit paydirt, as she found a picture of Justin and the Mystery Brunette, complete with a helpful tag.
Margarita Newman.
She plastered that name on the inside of her memory as she clicked on that tag… and found that Margarita Newman's account was set to private. Chloe would call Dalton to see if he knew her and maybe get an address, if she was lucky.
As she shut her phone off, Chloe saw Max come out of the bedroom fully clothed save for her dress shoes, which she had in her hands.
"Sleep well, alkie?" Chloe asked.
Max nodded. "Your bedroom smells like weed."
"So the sky is blue, in other words?"
Max smiled.
"So," Chloe said. "Who are we calling?"
There exist, deep in the woods in and around Arcadia Bay, large houses that were erected especially for the influx of wealthy elites moving into town after Leonard International set up shop. They weren't assembled in neighborhoods, but were rather dispersed one at a time in the wilderness, like breadcrumbs dropped on the forest floor. They were prized for both their opulence and their seclusion, as the only thing that connected them to the outside world were their gravel driveways leading to the highway.
Denise Leonard owned one of these houses.
So did Victoria Chase.
Only daughter of the Seattle Chases, and literary agent of Kate Bradford (or Kate Marsh, as she had been known until she had married a young copy editor at her publishing house named Josh Bradford), Victoria shunned both her parents' pleas to move back to Seattle, and her client's pleas to move to New York, opting instead to live in Arcadia Bay, where she had graduated from Blackwell Academy, and where her husband worked. When asked why she elected to live in the wilds of Oregon instead of in a city suited to her line of work, her refrain was simple:
"I love my husband."
Given the hell she had put him through during their courtship, she figured it was the least she could do for him. Plus, she liked this house, surrounded on all sides by primal green. When the fancy took her, she set out in a t-shirt and jeans for the outer reaches of her property, camera in hand, taking pictures and nursing a dream that still burned within her.
Much like Max Caulfield, Victoria saw no need for higher education after Blackwell, having dropped out of Brown when the connections she had in the art world (namely the ones that introduced aspiring artists to publishing houses as potential writers and illustrators of children's literature) had paid off for her client Kate Marsh in clover undreamed of.
Victoria did a terrible thing to Kate in their year together at Blackwell, for which she had sought repentance. The least she could do in pursuit of penitence was make Katie a millionaire… which she had, a ridiculous number of times over.
On this cool late afternoon in November of 2018, Victoria found herself on the sofa, having just come back from the funeral of Justin Williams, after her old friend Courtney Wagner insisted she go. The faces ranged from the familiar to the half-remembered to the completely foreign. She did not attend the wake.
Having changed into matching crème-colored slacks and a blouse, Victoria was swiping through old Fashion Week photos on her iPad when her phone rang. She answered.
"Hello?"
"Hi," said the person on the other end. "It's Max. Uh, Max Caulfield?"
A burn, small and slow, started building in Victoria's stomach. Max Caulfield had sent a man she had admired and respected to prison, and someone she had considered a brother to a mental health facility downstate. And while she could intellectually reconcile the fact that Mark and Nathan were horrible people who had done horrible things and that the world was better off with them in confinement, emotionally she couldn't square away the fact that Max Caulfield had taken things that belonged to her. This resulted in Victoria's inborn iciness getting turned up whenever the subject was Max.
"Max," Victoria said. "Here to ask more inappropriate favors of my client, or is this a social call?"
"Actually," Max said, "we wanted to ask a favor of you."
"'We?'"
"Hi, Victoria," said a female voice on the other end.
"Chloe Price," Victoria said. "Which of the three words that make up 'call me never' gave you trouble?"
"Victoria?" Max asked.
"Right. What is this favor, for which you decided to intrude upon my day?"
"Well," Max said as Victoria could almost hear her blushing over the phone. "We'd like to talk to your husband."
Victoria paused as the burn in her stomach got higher. Her husband was yet another sore spot between herself and Max.
"Why?" Victoria asked, importing every molecule of disapproval in her body directly to her voice.
"He's, uh… he's an authority on a subject that we're very interested in."
Victoria swallowed. "Very well."
She took the phone up the broad staircase to the second floor where her husband's study was located. He had taken a break from grading papers to retire to the futon, where his face was hidden behind a book (The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour). She spared a glance at the desk which featured the next two books he planned on reading (Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music) before looking back at her husband.
"Phone for you," Victoria said.
Warren Graham looked up from his book. "Who is it, hon?"
A year after they had started dating, Warren Graham asked Victoria Chase when she knew deep down that she loved him.
"After the third date," she had said.
"That soon?"
"Yes. That was the night I got drunk and yelled at Max Caulfield in the Blackwell dorm."
The first date had been the by-product of a dare from Kate Marsh, who, she had later said, had just wanted to see what would happen when two such dissimilar people went out. The second date was, on her part, the result of inquisitiveness about this strange boy Warren, who, unlike most of the horn-dogs who had been trying to get in her pants since her early teens, seemed more curious and bemused by Victoria than enamored or bewitched. Then came the third date, when they felt comfortable enough around each other to be honest. Warren revealed that though dating Victoria was (in his words) a hoot, there were still residual wounds from his feelings for Max Caulfield (who had gone off into the sunset with that punk chick with the blue hair) that needed to be dealt with.
"I don't mean, like, I'm still pining over her, or anything. I thought I could make her happy. If someone else can make her happier, then the job I wanted to do is done. It's just… I wasn't good enough. Having that in your head, it'd make anyone sad."
When she had gotten back to her dorm after the date, she had found that Courtney had smuggled a variety of alcohol and mixers into her room. It took an hour for Victoria to get her drunk on, and she thought of Max all the while.
Max. Max with the stupid fucking freckles. Max with the never-ending collection of ratty gray hoodies. Fucking Max with her fucking camera, taking stupid fucking selfies and ruining fucking everything. It's not bad enough that she sends my friends away, now she has to leave boot-prints in the guy I'm going on dates with. I don't care if her reasons were good. I don't care if she didn't mean to. She has finally gone way the fuck too far.
Victoria, under the influence of mojitos, rage, and righteousness, stood up. She left Courtney's room and walked down the hall to where Max slept. She knocked on the door. And when Max answered, Victoria did willingly and with malicious aforethought proceed to yell at, bawl out, dress down, and upbraid Max Caulfield in full view and earshot of everyone who lived on that floor. Drill Sergeants equipped with thesauruses and rhyming dictionaries could not have matched, let alone surpassed, the litany of profanity that Victoria heaped upon the clearly confused Max. The highlight of the tirade, and the one most quoted by the rest of the dorm in the coming days and weeks, was:
"I know you were too busy eating bullets and blue-dyed pussy to give Warren the time of day, and you know what? That's great. That's fine. That works well for me. But you broke the little gomer's heart, and I'm the one stuck picking up after you. I don't pick up after anyone. IT'S NOT MY FUCKING JOB!"
It was immediately after she had said this that a realization, as liberating as it was horrifying, hit her with the force and temperature of a bucket of ice water.
I'm not really all that mad at Max. I'm defending my boyfriend's honor. That's what I'm doing right now. The thing… that I am doing… is that…
This was an entirely new prospect for her. She'd viewed people in general (and men in particular) as things she would have to react to, dominate, finesse, because the one major pitfall of being rich and pretty was that rich and pretty were all people saw. And that she could have actual positive feelings about another human being that had nothing to do with family, convenience, or her own overweening senses of inadequacy and guilt, was beautiful. And terrifying. And confusing.
So confusing, in fact, that she immediately broke off from the stunned Max and left for the stairwell.
"Yelling at Max made you realize you loved me?"
"Yeah."
"How so?"
"Because picking up after other women isn't my job. It shouldn't be anyone's… But I did it for you. You must have been worth it."
She leaned in and whispered into Warren's ear.
"That, and you're the only one I know who hates Sword Art Online as much as I do."
Three years after Victoria's drunken tear, she and Warren had married. It forever sealed the relationship that had been called "adorable" by Kate Marsh, "kinda creepy" by Juliet Watson, and "an affront to both God and American Liberty" by Brooke Scott.
"You have a science question?" Warren asked. He looked at the watchful gaze of his wife on the other side of the room.
"Yeah," Chloe said over the phone. "Scientifically speaking, how the hell did you land Victoria Chase?"
"You shush," Max said. "What do you know about timelines?"
"Timelines?" Warren asked. "Plural?"
"Yes," Max said.
"Umm…" Warren said. "I'm the science teacher at Blackwell. Quantum physics kinda isn't my field. We're dissecting frogs tomorrow."
"I know," Max said. "It's just, um… Back in the day, your wild guesses used to be right."
Victoria rolled her eyes and drew a finger across her throat.
"Okay," Warren said, smiling. "I'll try to help you out however I can."
"Alright," Max said. "So… hypothetically…"
"I should certainly hope so."
"What? Oh, right. Let's say a bunch of alternate timelines were opened a few years ago before an event sealed them all off. Would it somehow be possible for those timelines to… like… bleed through into ours now? Like, through dreams or something?"
Victoria mouthed words that Warren found easy to read: What the fuck is she talking about?
"Again, I have to say, I'm a science teacher and an amateur sci-fi writer. Anything I say after this point will pretty much be me talking out of my ass."
"You're writing sci-fi?"
"Max," Chloe said. "Focus."
"Oh, right. You were saying?"
Warren rubbed his forehead. "Do you know what alveoli are?"
"Those little pasta things they serve at the Olive Garden?"
"Jesus," Chloe said. "I know what alveoli are."
"You shush," Max said again. "What are they?"
"They're in your lungs," Warren said. "See, lungs aren't like balloons, they're made up of a ton of these alveoli, which are little air sacs in your lungs where the gas exchange takes place, turning the oxygen you inhale into the carbon dioxide you exhale."
"So…"
"So, all these alveoli cause the lungs to inflate. They do so simultaneously. Timelines, I would imagine, are like alveoli. If one opens, they all open. If those opened timelines from years ago are bleeding through here, then that means someone is screwing with the timeline now."
The pause at the other end of the line was long.
"Did… that answer your question?"
"Yeah," Max said. "Thanks, Warren. You've been a big help."
Max hung up without saying goodbye. Warren looked at Victoria, who was grinning.
"You almost dated that," she said. "Nerd."
Max put the phone down. She looked lost.
"Someone is fucking around with time," Max said. "And for the first time, it's not me."
"If Warren's to be believed," Chloe said. "Seriously, how could he know all this?"
"He knew what was going on five years ago in another timeline," Max said. "That makes him the authority."
Chloe gawked at Max. "Says who and since when?"
"I dunno," Max said. "Just go with it."
Max rubbed her face. "You up for a road trip tomorrow?"