Me vs. Me (5 page)

I slither out from the sheets, lean up against the headboard and dig in. A girl's gotta eat, even if she is asleep. “And why is that?” I ask, digging into my omelet.

“Because as soon as you finish, you have to call your parents. It's not right.”

Yes! The man's a genius! I'll speak to my mom. She'll remember our conversation yesterday. She'll have to. Mothers know these things, right? They can sense if their children are losing their minds. I reach for the phone as I stuff another forkful of egg into my mouth. “I'm going to call her right now.”

He winks, hands me a napkin and sits down on the edge of the bed beside me. “There's a good girl.”

I dial her room at her hotel, but she doesn't answer. So I call her cell. “Mom? It's me.”

“Oh, so nice of you to call,” she snaps. Do I detect a hard line of sarcasm in her voice? “Anything you'd care to tell me?”

“What are you talking about?” I take another bite of egg. A drop of ketchup smears onto the bedspread. Cam rolls his eyes and points to the napkin.

“Alice called me this morning.”

I smack Cam's leg. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Why is it that I heard about my only daughter being engaged from someone other than my daughter? Huh?”

“Sorry, Mom. I didn't have a chance to call you yesterday.”
Was
it yesterday? I hear a smash and then a clang. I think she just threw the phone. “Mom?” I wait for her to pick it back up.

“I felt pretty stupid, Gabrielle. Pretty damn stupid. She called me to discuss the wedding, and I didn't even know there was a wedding! In fact I told her she was mistaken, since you were moving to New York—”

My heart races. “Exactly! Mom, I just spoke to you, remember? About the—” I lower my voice so maybe Cam won't hear “—move?” I called her yesterday. And discussed it. She has to remember—she's my mom. Moms have a sixth sense, don't they?

“Yes, just last week you said—”

Last week? No, it was yesterday! Or do I mean today? “What day is it?”

“It's Sunday. And it's been an awful day. First I was woken up at 4:00 a.m.—”

My blood runs cold. “Because of a fire alarm.”

Silence. “How did you know that?”

“You
told
me! Yesterday!”

“How could I have told you yesterday when it just happened?”

“You told me. Don't joke. You don't remember?”

“How could I have told you? You're pulling my leg. Was it on the wire? There better not have been a reporter there. I was in my bathrobe. Do you need a quote?”

“No.” My head hurts. How is this possible? I spoke to my mother and she told me about the fire alarm. Yesterday. Or today. Am I living each day twice?

“Anyway, Gabrielle, I'm upset with you. How you could get engaged is beyond me. How you could get engaged without telling me is despicable.”

This is way weird. My mom told me about the fire alarm yesterday.
Yesterday.
“I'll call you later,” I tell her and hang up. I look up at Cam.

He's looking at me strangely. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” I murmur. “You know my mother. Sometimes she makes no sense.”

“Didn't she want to talk to me? You know? Congratulations? Welcome to the family?”

“I'll be right back.” I hurry to the bathroom. I close the door firmly and press my back against the door. My head pounds.

When did this craziness start? When was the beginning of my double life? I retrace my mental steps. Today is Sunday in Arizona. I'm engaged. Yesterday was Sunday in New York. I wasn't engaged. The day before that was Saturday in Arizona. I woke up in the desert. We had brunch at Alice's. The day before that was
also
Saturday in Arizona. I
also
woke up in the desert. I told Cam I didn't want to marry him. I finished packing.

So what happened the night before that?

I shut my eyes firmly and try to visualize the night in question. The night that Cam proposed. The night we were lying in the back of the truck, watching the falling stars.

It can't be. It can't.

My wish? My wish. I wished I didn't have to choose. That I could live both lives. Stay with Cam and move to New York. Have it all.

I sink to the bath mat. It's not possible. Is it? How else can I explain what's happening? How else can I rationalize how I've been living two separate lives?

 

I tell Cam I need to borrow his truck to return to my place to pick up a few last-minute things.

“Like what?”

“Clothes, makeup…not that I have anywhere to put any of it.”

“I'll make some space.”

Instead of going to my apartment, I stop by the emergency room to see if there is something wrong with my head. Like a brain tumor. After a few hours, I finally get to see a doctor.

“Lately, I've been existing in two universes,” I tell him. “Is that a psychological condition?”

He rubs his chin, looks into my eyes with a flashlight and asks me if I've been under a lot of stress.

“A little,” I say.

“You look okay to me,” he says. “Try to get some sleep. Do you want antibiotics?”

“No thanks.” I decide not to tell him the whole story. It's not like he's going to believe me. If this is real and I'm not going bonkers, then someone else in the world must have gone through this, too. Someone who can tell me how to make it stop.

Back in my old apartment, I get comfy on the futon, laptop on my knees, and try to figure out what the hell has happened to me.

I Google
multiple lives
and get over forty-three million hits. There are mentions of reincarnation, cats and, inexplicably, real estate. But nothing about my weirdo predicament. I try
alternative lives
and get another thirty thousand hits. Most of these are scenarios of regret. About what could have/would have/should have been. Then I land on something called
Many-Worlds Interpretation.
According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse,
many-worlds
is defined as: “…an interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes the existence of multiple universes, all of which are identical, but exist in possibly different states.” Different states? Does that mean parallel universes?

I keep reading and reading and my heart pounds louder with every click, with every article. “These different states are caused by a divergence that splits the universe into two.” I discover that there is a whole theory in quantum mechanics (whatever the hell that is) that believes that whenever there is a choice, or a possibility, reality splits into a new world. Therefore, there is a new independent world for every different possibility. Anything that could happen does happen. There are books and information about this theory all over the Internet. There are over twenty thousand hits on this on Google. People have done experiments on this theory. Real scientists.

Could this really have happened to me? Yes. Yeeessss. My life verged the morning after Cam proposed. I'm not crazy. I am not crazy! What happened to me has been written about! Wahoo! Perhaps there's a support group?

I get slightly nervous when one of the sites says that communication between these distinct universes in not possible, because I am, in fact, communicating with myself.

I search for another hour without finding anything specific. Not that it would help. Even though there are thousands of pages about many worlds, they're all theoretical. There aren't any real-life examples. As though no one else has gone through anything like this.

No one except me.

I keep reading and searching and end up seeing a lot of phrases like
wave function collapse
and
relative state,
which make me wish I'd taken a science class in college. I spend the next three hours searching until my eyes are tired. I type in
green light, headache
and
wish,
but still, nothing.

I close my computer and lie back. What I've learned today is that while there are lots of theories about multiple lives, no one has ever written an account of it happening. But if so many people have thought about it, written about it, and theorized about it, isn't it possible? You can't rule something out just because it can't be proven, can you? There are like a million religions and none of them can be proven!

If the many-worlds theory is true, then everyone exists in multiple universes. There are many versions of me around, right now. There are many versions of everyone around, right now. Whenever anyone has to make a choice, a new version of her or him pops up. There's a me who never dated Cam in the first place. There's a me who went away to UCLA. There's a me whose parents never divorced.

That seems a bit insane. There can't be an infinite number of mes. Can there?

As a kid, I remember asking my dad how many stars there were. Living in California, he thought I meant celebrities and asked me if I meant movie, TV or both. When I clarified that I meant stars in the sky, he laughed and said, “It's infinite.”

“How can that be?” I asked him.

“They go on forever and ever.”

“But how?”

“That's just the way it is,” he said, playing with my hair. “Space, time, stars—they all go on forever.”

If all those things are infinite, then why can't versions of people be infinite, too? Why not choices? And if so, did I somehow stumble into the ability to exist in two of these worlds?

Or maybe I just stumbled into the ability to remain conscious in two of these worlds.

At four, I hear Lila's key in the door. “Hi, guys,” she says.

“It's just me!” I holler, closing the laptop. As nonjudgmental as she is, she'd still think I was nuts.

Lila goes through her cleansing/changing routine and then joins me in my room. “What happened to you? I thought your flight was this morning. Where have you been? What's going on?” she asks, sitting on the side of my futon.

I wave my bejeweled hand. “Change of plan. I'm not going to New York.”

Her jaw drops. “No way. I don't believe it.”

“It's true.” Half-true.

“Wow.” Smiling, she leans over and hugs me. “Congrats!”

“Thanks.”

“But Gabby, what about the new job?”

I shrug. “A person can't have everything.” Most people, anyway. Apparently, I am not most people.

She gives me a hopeful look. “Does that mean you're not moving out?”

I shake my head. “No, you're still getting your home office. I'm moving in with Cam.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Aw. You lucky girl.”

“You know what?” I say. “I might be.” I'd choose lucky over crazy, anyway.

 

On my way back to Cam's, I'm strangely invigorated. My wish came true. It
must
have. It's the only explanation. My body feels alive and tingly. I decide not to tell Cam about my self and my other self—it's not like he'd believe it. Who would? I barely believe it myself.

I find him in the backyard, surrounded by sawdust and some sort of table with a mirror.

“What are you doing?”

“Building you a vanity table for the bedroom,” he says, while hammering. “So you can have somewhere to put your makeup and jewelry and stuff. I got you a lamp, too, because I'm not sure there's going to be enough light…. Do you like it? I still have to build the bench.”

I am so touched, I almost cry.

While he finishes, we return to his parents' for Sunday night dinner. Afterward, we go straight to bed and I seduce him immediately.

“That was fun,” he says afterward. “Three nights in a row. Life is good.”

“Yes, it was,” I say, laying my head on his chest. His heart rate is beginning to slow.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asks.

Tomorrow! I start work tomorrow. In New York. A fiancé in Arizona and a new job in New York. I really do get to have it all—except a job here. “Try to get my job back.”

“My mom mentioned that she wants to start planning the wedding….”

“Of course she does.”

“Have you given any thought to getting married in May?”

“Whatever you want, babe.” Since I'm only half getting married, why not meet Alice halfway?

His eyes light up like a slot machine. “Really? And what about the church?”

Halfway does not include churches. Then again, maybe it can. If I ever get married in New York, I can do it any way I want. And to someone else. It wouldn't even be bigamy. Legally, that is. “Whatever makes you happy,” I tell him with a smile. But I'm still not converting.

He kisses my forehead and promptly falls asleep.

My thoughts are too loud and crazy to let me drift off. I'm wondering how to best take advantage of my fabulous science experiment.

Should I try out different hairstyles? Go blond in one reality, stay brunette in the other? What about different diets? No carbs in one, low-fat in the other, and see which version of me loses more weight? Invest in real estate in one, stocks in the other?

Check the winning lottery number in one, choose that number in the other? Though supposedly, the two universes have nothing to do with each other. The guy who wins in the first reality might remain a poor slob in the other. But it's worth looking into.

The possibilities are endless, and I'm going to enjoy every one of them. I'm going to live it up.

Life
is
good. Both of them.

Lights, Camera, Action!

I
'm late. How is it possible that I'm late for my first day of work? I have never been late for anything. I set my alarm for 7:00 a.m., a half hour earlier than I was supposed to get up. But it's already eight, which means the radio alarm was singing for an hour before I even heard it.

I jump into the shower, throw on my clothes (no time to debate: black pants, green sweater), flip through the news channels as I scarf down my coffee (plane crash in Bali, hurricane in the Bahamas, kidnapped girl found alive in South Carolina), grab my bag, notebook and clipboard, then run for the elevator. No time today to test out the subway. Taxi, it is. The best part of living in New York is that you can hail a cab from anywhere, unlike Phoenix, where they're as common as waterslides in the desert.

The cold air tackles me as I open the door. Damn, I really need to get myself a coat.

When I reach the street, I attempt to hail a cab, but a stream of occupied yellow taxis keeps passing me by. Hmm. How long is this supposed to take? Where are the empty ones? What if I'm here for hours and no cabs drive by and I miss my first day of work?

Oh, there's one! Hello? Hello! Why didn't he stop? How do I get them to stop? On TV, New Yorkers sometimes whistle. I don't know how to whistle.

I see one coming and I step into the middle of the street. A Honda turns the corner, almost running me over. But then I realize something. What if I die in one life? I'll still be around in the other. I think.

Just then an empty cab pulls up. He nods, and I get in. “Fifty-eighth and Broadway please,” I tell him.

And away we go. He chats on his cell phone while I watch the clock. Curtis Boland, the executive producer of
Ron's Report
told me I'd be working from about ten to seven-thirty every day, assuming there is no crisis. Since Ron's show tapes at six and airs at eight, I can leave after the post-tape meeting. But today, my first day, she wants me in at nine. It's now eight-fifty.

“Excuse me, sir?”

He continues chatting.

“Sir? Can you tell me how far away we are?”

“We're here,” he grunts and pulls over in front of The Gap, where a street vendor is selling Kate Spade purses (fake, I assume).

“Where?”

“Across the street.”

Oh. I pay him and face the tall, gleaming chrome-and-tinted-windowed TRSN building. A news ticker is featured prominently over the entranceway, informing me about the hurricane in the Bahamas. I have to maneuver my way past myriad flowerpots (security cameras, most likely) to get to the doorway.

I pull open the heavy doors and march toward the security desk, the click of my heels echoing through the room.

“May I help you?” the security guard asks, and after I show my ID, I'm told to go up to the tenth floor. The elevator doors are about to close and I throw my purse between the sensors to stop them. A woman clucks her tongue.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly and slide inside. I slither to the back of the crowded space and accidentally elbow someone directly in the stomach. “
Really
sorry,” I say.

“No worries,” says a deep voice. I look up at the man I attacked.

Hello there.

The man I attacked is hot. Hmm. That stomach I elbowed was pretty hard. Muscled, I'd say. He's tall, with short dark brown hair and big brown eyes framed in black wire glasses. Like me, he's wearing black pants and a light green shirt. Now
that's
what I call fate. He's also giving me a big smile.

I feel my cheeks burn and I quickly turn away. It's too early for me to even think about other guys. Stare at the floor, missy! Think about Cam, whose poor heart you broke two nights ago. Instead I glance at the outfits of the people around me. There's a lot of black happening, I'll tell ya.

The elevator stops on the third floor. Everyone except the hard-gut guy and me gets out. The tiny hairs on my arm stand up. Hello, sexual tension. I think. I probably shouldn't be having that elevator-tension feeling so soon after breaking up with Cam. The entire time Cam and I were together, I never even looked at another guy.

But now you're single!
a voice in my head screams. Excellent. Now not only am I existing in two worlds, I'm also hearing voices.

Regardless, the voice is right. I
am
single. I'm allowed to bask in the sexual tension with other men. In fact, I should smile. It's rude not to. Turn around. Ask him if he wants to show me the building…the city…his apartment….

I'm about to open my mouth, but I freeze. Excellent. I've forgotten how to flirt.

The door opens on ten and I step off. And then at the last second, I turn around. I can do it! I give him a big smile-for-the camera grin and a Miss America wave. And before he can return it, the doors close.

Well. At least I tried. Pretty cool that I'm in the building for five seconds and I've already spotted a cute guy. I love New York! He must work for TRSN too. A coproducer? A writer? We'll both be here into the wee hours of the night and one thing will lead to another and—

I show my pass at the door, and am suddenly in the newsroom. No one except the mega-talent has offices here since it's all open space: desks and cubes overflowing with papers, computers and screaming people. I might faint. I can't believe I'm here. I made it.

What if I'm not up for this?

I walk over to where Curtis told me Ron's crew is located and spot her waving at me from her desk. “I want that interview,” she says when I reach her. At first I think she's talking to me, but then I notice her mobile headset. “Throw in a book deal if you have to. Just get it. No, I don't want her talking to O'Reilly or Couric.”

Curtis is wearing faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt, a brown corduroy blazer and sneakers. Her skin is ghostly pale, as though she hasn't seen the sun in months, and she's not wearing any makeup. Her dirty-blond hair is tied back in a haphazard ponytail. I'd peg her as mid-to-late forties. She told me she's been working with Ron for ten years. She's the one who discovered him and brought him to TRSN to begin with. This show is her baby.

“Get her to talk to us. Do you hear me? I want the kidnapped girl. I don't have time for your pathetic excuses….”

As she berates whoever is on the other end of the phone, I look around the room and think about how I almost didn't make it here. As a kid, I had wanted to be an anchor (my dad used to tell me I had a face for television), so I decided to major in broadcasting when I applied to Arizona State. But when I got to school, I realized that everyone wanted to be an anchor and that the real power was behind the scenes, producing, so that's what I focused on. The summer of my junior year, I interned at the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, but decided that after I graduated I would move to New York. I don't know where my obsession with New York came from. Maybe from years of watching
Law and Order
, maybe from too much romanticizing about
Sex and the City
. All I knew was that I wanted to have a zip code that started with
1.
The spring before I graduated, I applied to every available and not-available entry-level job in Manhattan and flew down for informational interviews, where I was told again and again, sorry, we're hiring the interns from last year, why don't you work at a local station outside the city? When you have more experience, when you've grown your contact list, when, when, when…So I returned to Arizona, my tail nestled firmly between my legs, and took a full-time job there.

My new boyfriend Cam told me it was for the best since New Yorkers were crazy, and anyway, he wanted me on this side of the country. I jokingly warned him not to get too attached. At my graduation ceremony, I figured I would be in Arizona another year, tops. I took typical hat-throwing pictures with Lila, with Cam (who had just graduated from law school), with my mom and with my dad. (He had come even though I'd told him not to bother, not because I believed it wasn't worth the trip, but because I dreaded the fight that he and my mom would have if he did show up, which they had, and which I did my best to ignore.)

Lila and I kept our two-bedroom apartment in Tempe. (I had moved out of my mom's place in Scottsdale freshman year when Goodwin, husband Number Three, moved in. Lila's dorm room was right next door to mine. We became best friends at first by proximity, and then by habit. We moved into the two-bedroom sophomore year.) Even though I was earning decent money, I figured there was no point getting my own place, since I wasn't planning on sticking around.

I started the new job, liked the job and got promoted from assignment editor to producer eleven o'clock news, to producer 6:00 p.m. news, to executive producer 6:00 p.m. news. I was good at my job. I could smell a story. Maybe
smell
is the wrong word. When something big is going on, my mouth gets zapped dry. I don't know why, but that's what happens, that's when I know I'm onto something. My dry mouth has never been wrong. Anyway, I bought the Jetta, Cam made me a bookshelf, and after two years, I started settling into my life. I had my boyfriend, my job, my bookshelf. I got to go into work at nine and come home at five-thirty, watch my newscast from my couch. I started to think that maybe I didn't need to move, that I could settle in Arizona.

And that was when a dark-haired Melanie Diamond, a twenty-five-year-old Phoenix elementary school teacher, was photographed leaving a hotel room with the very married, very “it's all about family values” Senator Jim Garland.

My mouth was drier than the desert.

Every producer in the country wanted to talk to Melanie. And like everyone else, I called her. I pleaded with her to tell me her story.

“I know you must be going through hell,” I said repeatedly to her answering machine. “And the last thing I want is to make it worse. But until you tell the world your side of the story, it's not going to go away.”

That night she called me back. “There's something about your voice,” she said, sounding a little lost and overwhelmed. “You sound a bit like my sister. Like someone I can talk to. Get your butt over here.”

So I got the interview. I brought a camera to her place and got her to tell her side of the story. Afterward, when the cameraman was gone, she ordered me to stay for coffee and I did. She told me about how she hadn't left her house in two weeks. How she never expected this to blow up in her face. How she can't believe what a jerk the senator turned out to be. I told her about Cam, about my messed up parents, about my dream of going to New York. And I knew that we were going to be more than interviewer and interviewee. We were going to be friends.

After the show ran, every station in the country picked up my story. My exclusive interview. The details Melanie had given me. Illicit trips to Greece, promises of marriage. A tearful, black-haired Melanie, swearing that the bald and sweaty Garland had sworn he was married in name only, that he and his pig-nosed wife Judy didn't even sleep in the same bed. I edited the pig-nose part out of my interview. I also edited out my own questions—like I always did in this type of interview. Producers stayed behind the scenes.

As the weeks passed, I became the one who listened to Melanie cry about how she would never love anyone again, and promise that she would. I found her a lawyer through Cam's firm when her school threatened to fire her for the negative publicity.

As the weeks passed, doors that had been bolted only two years before were suddenly swinging wide open. Because of my newfound notoriety as the producer who got the Melanie Diamond exclusive, job offers around the country started flooding in. Opportunity. Cash. Health benefits.

“I'd like to talk to you about working for us,” Curtis said via cell phone.

I'd watched Grighton's show—as a news producer you have to watch everyone's show—and I thought he was smart, tough and intimidating. And I wanted to work for him. But most importantly, he wanted to hire a young, female producer who could deliver. Me.

And here I am.

“…Report back to me at eleven,” Curtis says to whatever poor soul is on the phone with her. Then she lowers the headset to rest around her neck and stares at me. “So, Gabby, you made it. Welcome to national news.”

In the next hour, I'm given a desk, a computer and a BlackBerry.

Curtis tours me around the building, barking out orders. “Morning meeting is at eleven, afternoon meeting at three, post-show meeting at seven-ten. All take place in the seventh-floor conference room. Ron hates tardiness, so don't be late. Ever. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“He also detests guests who stutter, so don't book them.”

“That's fine.” N-no p-problem.

She shows her pass to the security guard and we enter a small puke-green room. “The green room. Obviously.”

In Arizona, the green room, where the guests wait to be interviewed, wasn't actually green. But I always thought that was kind of lame. This one has a watercooler, a coffee brewer, a loaf of banana bread, a TV and VCR, and a blue leather couch.

“If he catches a grammar mistake in the script,” Curtis says, “he'll think you're illiterate. Watch out for sloppiness. And always get your facts right. He's known as one of the most trusted newsmen in the nation for a reason. Us.”

“Got it.”

She presses her finger against her lips. “Control room,” she mouths and opens the door.

No one looks up as we sneak inside. Jane Hickey's morning show is filming.

I love control rooms. I always feel like I'm in the center of the world. Two rows of producers at their computers face a wall of television monitors. The center monitor shows the two smiling blondes, Cameron Diaz and Jane, discussing Cameron's new movie. The monitor beside her shows the police chief in South Carolina, the one who found the kidnapped girl. As soon as Jane finishes her interview with the movie star, the feed will switch to the police chief. Built into the side walls are fifteen television monitors showing the news on every other news station in the country.