The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells Read Online Free PDF

way. Many were wearing gauze masks to cover the lower halves of their faces, tied behind their heads. Below: scattered ancient cobblestones. Above: silver fishhook moon. Between: a bustling crowd of strangers calling to one another from windows, carriages, balconies, and doorways. Just one small thing had changed, such a small thing really.
    What difference could it make, the era in which we are born?
    “It’s beautiful,” was all I said, almost to myself.
    Two people began to sing along with a phonograph, a man’s voice and a woman’s. Ruth said, “We have to get going. He hates to wait. And take that ring off, don’t be so ridiculous.”
    I removed my ring to look at the engraving inside: NATHAN AND GRETA, 1909 . In this world, he had married me.
    Ruth’s hands emerged magically from her long sleeves and fluttered frustratedly in the air, then one snatched the ring from me.
    “It’s Halloween, and you’re young! And he’s far away at war, up to his own pleasures, bless him. Leo will be looking for you at the party.” Then she leaned in close and I could smell violets and cigars and the sweet cinnamony oil she must have used to dress her hair. “Free love, darling,” she said, patting my cheek.
    So, in this world, Nathan was at war.
    “Watch out, ma’am!” Heedless of the world around me, I had bumped into someone.
    “I’m sorry, I—”
    It was a young man dressed for Halloween as a genie. He smiled and touched my shoulder before moving on. His touch made me gasp. I tried to catch my breath as he made his way into the crowd.
    Ruth took my hand. “Come now, darling.”
    But I could not move, watching him walking away from me, chatting with his companion and laughing, disappearing into the crowd.
    I felt her tight grip on me. Her concerned whisper: “Greta? Are you all right?”
    “I know that man,” I said, pointing where he had been, a shimmer in the moonlight. I felt tears well in my eyes. “They’re alive,” was all I could say. “They didn’t die.”
    “Darling—”
    “That man,” I said, gesturing to the genie disappearing into the crowd. “His name was Howard.”
    How could I explain it? That the year before, I had seen him every day selling me half-price baguettes at the bakery. Same short blond hair, same pale beard, same ivory smile. Just as he used to look standing behind the counter, months before. And waving at me late at night on the street, in tight jeans and with his buddies. And on the photograph taped to his coffin.
    Laughing again, turning, looking around at me: familiar young men appearing in this unfamiliar world. Men who had died months or years before from the plague miraculously revived! There, in an army uniform, was the boy who made jewelry from papier-mâché beads; he died in the spring. And that one soldier, the stark blond Swede jumping from the streetcar, once sold magazines; he’d died two years before, one of the first: the cave’s canary. Who knows how many more were off to war? Alive, each one, alive and more than alive—shouting, laughing, running down the street!
    Of course: 1918, a world set long before the plague. A world in which they had not died.
    T WILIGHT HAD DESCENDED when we returned, carrying growlers of beer, to Ruth’s apartment—decorated, in this world, as a fairy-tale land. The ceiling was pasted with silver stars, and a cardboard gingerbread house stood at the entrance to the dining room, dotted with peppermint candies, some of which had already fallen to the floor. On the wall was a paper castle, and from it fell a waterfall of Rapunzel hair.
    I had been lost in thought amid the crowds of revelers. “Ruth,” I said. “I’m going to tell you something impossible.”
    “Not now, darling,” she said, leading me back outside. Yellow leaves blew in a spiral behind her. “Later, when we’re drunk.”
    “I’m not who you think I am. You told me once—”
    “Who is? I’m going to make the punch,” she said, squeezing my hand.