Parallelities (6 page)

The four giggling Omaha sisters looked enough alike, from their Kewpie-doll faces to their lush figures to their petite feet, to have sprung from the same floating scallop shell. One pair
were clad in identical bikinis while the other two wore, respectively, a third identical swimsuit but of a different color, and the fourth a one-piece net outfit that was more not there than there. Two were slightly taller than their siblings, one had a mole on her left thigh, another green eyes instead of blue, and Sherri herself wore the only piece of jewelry among them: a black coral necklace. The slight differences were almost as disturbing as the astonishing similarities.

He found himself wondering wildly if they by any chance happened to be dating three contentious cat burglars, and were they interviewing him because they needed a fourth to complete the ménage?

He swallowed hard. The part of him that had been rapidly warming was quickly turning cold. “Let me guess: You’ve never set eyes on one another before today?”

The radiant sisters exchanged a look and laughed. Simultaneously, of course. “Don’t be silly!” Sherri admonished him. “Girls, this is Max. He’s a reporter.”

Questions flew at him, none of which he heard. Searching faces and bodies for distinctions, he found only enough to emphasize their similarities. The four were not quadruplets, but they were far more alike than mere sisters. A growing unease was blossoming in his gut.

“Actually, we’re staying in the hotel down the street,” one of the girls told him. “It’s pretty amazing. It’s funny what you just said, because until we ran into each other in the coffee shop yesterday, we actually never had met before.”

The ascending chill was spreading from his belly to the rest of his body. “How interesting,” he commented flatly.

“I mean, it just blew us away,” declared a third member of the quartet. “We’re still trying to work it out. Our mother died two years ago, and all we can figure out is that we were separated at birth and raised by different families.” She adjusted her position on the sand. “It’s just like something you’d see on one of those tabloid news television shows.”

“That’s right,” added the one red-haired member of the group. “Isn’t it amazing that we could have all grown up in the same general area, near Omaha, and never run into one another until we met up right here in Los Angeles?”

“It’s remarkable, all right,” he agreed weakly.

“Of course,” Sherri pointed out, “we’re all trying to get into the movie and television business. Except Shari.” Her mouth wrinkled up delightfully. “She wants to be an auto mechanic.”

“That’s right,” chirped one of the blondes, who was equally as attractive as her three sisters.

“We all sat up most of the night talking,” Sherri informed him. “It seems that even our families were a lot alike.”

“Just fascinating.” He fought not to back away as they pressed close around him. He noted that even their body odors were slightly different, not quite identical. He was afraid he was going to throw up, but not from the collective feminine aroma.

“I think you’re kind of fascinating yourself, Max.” The
redhead sidled close until her arm was pressing against his side. “I’m not doing anything tonight. You live here, so you know the city. How would you like to take me out and show me around?”

“Well, I don’t…”

“And me,” declared the blonde next to her. It developed that all four of them had a sudden urge to go out with him.

“All of you?” he stammered. “Simultaneously? Like in, together?”

The sisters exchanged looks. “Why not?” Sherri wondered. “If we all want to go out with you why shouldn’t we all go out with you?”

“That’s right,” agreed blonde number three. She smiled invitingly. Corn-fed and fresh the four might be, but they were not shy. “Don’t worry, Max. We’ll go easy on you.”

The redhead was shaking her head. “That’s just what I was going to say. Honestly, it’s amazing how alike we think.”

“Yeah.” Max rose quickly to his feet, nearly losing his footing in the soft sand. He fumbled with the contents of the cooler. “Here, each of you take a soda. I’m sure you’re all equally thirsty.”

“As a matter of fact …” admitted the redhead as she reached for the proffered can, “I am. You’re so thoughtful, Max. It’s like you just
knew.”
Her eyes glittered in the bright sunshine. “It’s almost like you’re part of the family.”

“Oh, don’t say that.” Sending sand flying, he hurriedly
snatched up his towel and snapped the cooler shut. “Look, I’m really sorry. I may even be really crazy—but I can’t go out with you. Not individually or together.” He took a step backward and nearly fell on his butt.

“But why not?” The redhead rose from her crouch like a speeded-up stop-motion film clip of a blossom opening, a svelte vision of down-home Great Plains loveliness. “We all like you. Don’t you like us?” The four of them were staring at him with the same wistful, slightly hurt expressions. It was comely. It was intriguing.

It was downright creepy.

“Sure I like you. Who wouldn’t.” He spoke a little too quickly as he continued to back away. “It’s just that I’m not too sure about some things going on in my life right now and it wouldn’t be fair to lay it off on you ladies. Maybe another time, when I’ve got my head in order.”

“Whatever you say, Max.” An obviously disappointed and not a little confused Sherri concluded with a full-figured parting shrug, a gesture that did nothing to diminish his libido. Then her three sisters shrugged, in precisely the same manner, and that fully accomplished anything that the first shrug had not. Abandoning all pretense at politesse, he turned and ran.

“That’s a very nice but very flustered young man,” the redhead insisted.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” added the sister on her left.

“Of course,” agreed Sherri, and with that the four of them
once again fell to giggling, an a capella chorus of unrestrained feminine amusement.

Heedless of the heat, Max ran through the sand, across the parking lot, and nearly managed to get himself run down by a cable-company service truck while sprinting across Ocean Avenue. Taking the outside access stairs two at a time, he did not slow down until he was inside the familiar confines of the elevator. Fighting to catch his breath as it ascended, he bolted through the open door the instant the lift reached his floor. The hall was empty, but he ran anyway. He did not stop running until he was back inside his apartment with the door locked and securely bolted behind him.

Any other time, any other place, he would have gladly sacrificed the balance in his bank account for a date with any one of the Omaha sisters. The opportunity to go out with two of them would have made him wary. In his current state of mind, the presence of four nearly identical, interchangeable lovelies constituted incontrovertible overkill. They were not quite as indistinguishable as the three burglars had been. The differences were slight but noticeable. But the similarities were too similar, the duplication too uncanny. Considered in the light of the previous night’s intruders, they constituted a coincidence the likes of which made him want to run screaming, and not with unrequited passion.

It was bizarre. It was frightening. It was weird. And the only situation in which he had recently found himself that
equaled it in weirdness was the evening he had spent in the company of a certain Barrington Boles, gentleman surfer and would-be mad scientist. Good ol’ Barry Boles and his parallel-world Lego set. Focusing on Boles and his abortive demonstration was a hope, not an explanation, but at the moment it was the only one Max had. Other than the possibility that he needed glasses, of a very special and unimaginable type.

He needed some answers, and he needed them fast.

Abandoning the apartment, he risked traffic citations several dozen times as he raced up the Pacific Coast Highway and through Malibu, putting the Aurora through some maneuvers the engineers at GM had never envisioned. There was a different guard at the compound gate. Patient and skeptical, he refused to buy any of Max’s stories. Nor did the reporter’s obvious agitation help any. But the guard did agree, despite his better instincts, to ring Boles’s house. Evidently he was having a good day, or was in a particularly benign mood—or maybe it was the desperate, panicky look on Max’s face, the expression of a man drowning out of water.

Be home
, Max implored the unseen inventor.
Don’t have run off to Madagascar or someplace. Be home.

Still dubious, the guard put down his receiver and looked out at the distraught visitor. “He says to go on up.”

Max barely restrained the Aurora long enough for the electric gate to swing aside and admit him to the private
compound. He forced himself to take it slow climbing the winding road through the preserve of expensive homes lest some idle matron call Security down on a visiting reckless driver.

His anxious tone and words to the guard had produced the intended effect. Front door standing open behind him, Boles was waiting for him as the Aurora squealed to a halt in the circular driveway.

“Good to see you again, Max.” The inventor wore a golden California senior’s smile as he approached the car. His tan was the stuff of Chicago dreams. “What’s so important that it brought you back so soon? The gate guard said you looked downright nervous.”

“Nervous?” Max shut the door and hurried around the front of the car. “Yeah, you could say I’m a little nervous. I was robbed last night.”

Boles’s expression turned instantly sympathetic as they entered the house. “No kidding? That’s a damned shame.”

“Damned might be the right description.” Max looked around and without being asked, fell onto a massive leather couch. Until that moment he had not really stopped running, physically or mentally. Now he was exhausted, but adrenaline flow kept him alert and talking as Boles took a seat opposite.

“So tell me what happened.” The inventor offered M&Ms from a silver container. Max waved them off.

“I get home last night and find a guy trying to take my TV for a walk. As I’m confronting him another guy shows up. He looks exactly like the first. I mean, exactly. While they’re arguing
about who’s who, a third kibitzer comes through the door and guess what—he looks just like the other two. Same build, same look, same voice, same clothes—they even argued alike. If you take their words and their actions at face value, they’d never met before that moment.”

He eyed the candy uncomfortably. What he needed was a good, stiff Scotch, not chocolate. But as long as he had Boles’s attention, he did not want to send him off to search the household bar. Health freak that the older man was, it was entirely possible that the only alcohol in the house resided in the medicine cabinet anyway. He put the craving out of his mind.

“Eventually they calm down. Then they tie me up and work things out among themselves, the downside being that they leave not just with my TV but also my stereo and my computer.”

Boles was nodding sympathetically as he listened. Not once during Max’s deposition had he laughed, or even smiled. “Fascinating. Maybe even remarkable. But what has it got to do with me?”

Max rolled his eyes. “Wait, there’s more. Today I go down to the beach and after ten minutes of lying in the sun this absolutely stunning lady materializes and tells me she’s thirsty. So I sit up right away and give her a cold soda. We start talking, everything’s going exceptionally well, and then guess what? It seems she has three sisters. Three sisters who all look almost exactly like. Not as alike as the three burglars, but
close. And you know what they tell me as I’m sitting there with my blood starting to congeal? They tell me that they’d never met before, didn’t even know of one another’s existence, until they met in a hotel restaurant the previous night.” He gazed fixedly at the inventor. “I don’t suppose any of this means anything to you?”

“Of course it does!” Boles was on his feet now, gesticulating excitedly as he paced rapidly back and forth. “They’re paras! First the thieves, then the girls.” He halted and stood staring at a high shelf of books, shaking his head slowly. “It works. The damn thing works.”

“There’s that word again.” Max sat up straight, his eyes never leaving his host. “Paras. Want to tell me what it means?”

Boles looked over at him. “As I told you when you were here yesterday, my intention was to break through the barrier, or barriers, that separate parallel worlds, and find a way to enter one. The system did just that, but instead of allowing us to enter, it permitted the inhabitants of those parallel worlds to cross over into ours. And not just those of one parallel world, but in the case of your burglars, two, and in the case of the young women, three.” His eyes were alight. “Who could have imagined such a result? Astonishing! Extraordinary!”

“Weird. Almost as weird as the stuff I write. I wonder while we’re sitting here how many other people out there are running into newfound twins and triplets and quads and so forth.”

“I can tell you. Zero. Nobody.” Boles’s excitement gave way to an intense, focused curiosity. “You and I were the only ones present when the field was activated. I was behind the console and you were, as I recall, quite close to the field arch. It is not only possible but likely that you are the only one who has been affected, Max.”

The reporter’s expression narrowed. “Affected? What do you mean, ‘affected’?”

Boles weighed his answer carefully before replying. “Based on what you’ve just told me, my guess is that instead of being narrowly focused and harnessed within the confines of the arch, the field seems to have expanded far enough to encompass your position where you were standing at the moment of maximum sustained convivial interaction. Furthermore, the result seems to be that instead of you entering the field, the field seems to have entered you. Interesting. Parameters will have to be redefined. Somewhere in the equation a letter needs to be flopped.”

“Flop my ass,” Max muttered. “Talk to me in English. What’s this about a field entering me? What are you trying to say?”

Boles was scrutinizing him in much the same way an entomologist in Peru might look upon an entirely new, highly attractive, but possibly toxic species of beetle.