“So you really believe all that?” Seth asks. “That this is the real world, and everything else was a dream we were having with other people?”
She takes in a long breath. “I miss my mother,” she says, looking out into the dusk. “My mother when I was young, not who she turned into, not who she became after she married him, but from before. We used to have fun, just the two of us. We used to laugh and sing really badly.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “You know how all black women are supposed to have amazing voices? Like the world won’t let us run things or get any real power or be president or anything, but that’s okay because we can all sing like a choir of angels?”
“I never said –”
“Well, we can’t. Take my word for it. Me and my mama, God, we sounded like two lonely moose.” She laughs to herself. “Doesn’t matter, though, does it? When it’s just you and your mama.”
Seth stretches out his legs. “But you say all that wasn’t real.”
“You’re purposely misunderstanding,” she says, sounding frustrated. “I was there. My mama was there. Even if we were fast asleep in different places. It was real. If it hadn’t been real, why didn’t we sing beautifully?”
“There’s always beauty,” Seth murmurs. “If you know where to look.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Something someone I once knew used to say.”
She looks at him closely, too closely. “You had someone. Someone you loved.”
“None of your business.”
“And you’re wondering if it was real. You’re wondering if you really knew . . . him, I’m guessing?”
Seth says nothing. Then he says, “Gudmund.”
“Good Man? That some kind of nickname?”
“Gudmund. It’s Norwegian.”
“Yeah, okay, so you’re wondering if Norwegian Gudmund was real, aren’t you? You’re wondering if all those wonderful times really happened. If you were really there. If he was really there.”
Seth’s mind goes again to the smell of Gudmund on his fingertips. To the tapping of Gudmund’s fingers on his chest. To the kiss from those pictures, the pictures that everyone saw –
“He was,” Seth says. “He had to be.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Regine says. “That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it? They have to be, or where does that leave us?”
It’s grown darker, even in the short time they’ve spoken, the shadows in the store bleeding out to cover them.
“Here’s what I think,” Regine says, lighting a cigarette. “I think I’m the only real thing I’ve got, except maybe Tommy. Even here, in this place, because who’s to say this isn’t some simulation, too, some other level we’ll wake up from. But wherever I am, whatever this world is, I’ve just got to be sure I’m me and that’s what’s real.” She blows out a cloud of smoke. “Know yourself and go in swinging. If it hurts when you hit it, it might be real, too.”
“It hurt when you hit me.”
“That’s interesting,” Regine says, reaching above her to the counter, “because I didn’t feel a thing.” She flicks the lighter on to show him the piece of paper she’s brought down. “I’ve made a map back to where Tommy and I are staying.”
“But aren’t we –”
“It’s so you can find your way back to us after you go to the prison.”
“Don’t tell Tommy,” she says, lowering her voice. “Tell him you’re going back to your house to change clothes and you’ll join us later.” She looks at him sternly. “I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
He takes the map from her. He recognizes a road, peeling away from this side of the train tracks and heading north. There’s an X drawn on a side street and a number written below it for the address.
“You’ve got to add three to everything,” Regine says. “It’s actually three streets more north than that one and for the real address you add three to the first digit and three to the second. If you get caught, I don’t want it to find us.”
“What about the prison?” he asks. “The main entrance is way on the other side from my house.”
“You can’t get in that way,” Regine says. “It’s boarded and locked up like you wouldn’t believe, like they didn’t want anyone to get in or out no matter what happened. Which is probably true, I guess. What you want to do is –”
“What is that?” Tomasz’s voice comes to them out of the darkness, his tone suspicious.
“Map back to your house,” Seth says quickly.
“Why are you not coming with us?” The flicker from the lighter is enough to reflect his obvious worry back at them.
“If you didn’t burn my house down, I need to change clothes,” Seth says, and mimes smelling his armpit.
“Then why are we not coming with you? There is safety in numerals.”
“Numbers,” Seth says. “Safety in numbers.”
“Yes,” Tomasz frowns, “because grammatical rightness is exactly what we are talking about at the present moment.”
“I want to get back,” Regine says. “Too risky hanging around, all of us outside.”
“But he will risk it.”
“That’s his choice,” Regine says, standing up.
“I do not choose this,” Tomasz says. He opens and closes his hands into stubby little fists, the same way Owen used to when he was nervous about something, Seth remembers. Owen would stand there, impossibly vulnerable, so that you either wanted to pick him up and tell him everything was going to be okay or start slapping him for being so ridiculously available for harm.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Seth says, then he says. “I promise.”
“Well,” Tomasz says, perhaps unconvinced. “That is good.” He looks at Regine. “We should take supplies. Water. And food. And toilet paper. I found birthday candles, also. For when we are having birthdays.”
There’s a beat as they both stare at him.
“What?” he says. “I like birthdays.”
“How old are you both, actually?” Seth asks, curious.
Regine shrugs. “Before I woke up, I was seventeen. Who knows how old I really am? If time is even the same here as there.”