Alfonso Valdés

Alfonso Valdés.

THE MAN WHO STAYED

Your husband found another universe. The man who came through found you asleep.

Same dark hair. Same glasses. Same face and voice. One husband stranded beyond a closed passage; the other discovering just how much a familiar face can get away with.

For several hours, two identical physicists would exchange universes. They had each achieved the impossible independently; curiosity, for once, was reason enough to cooperate.

The visitor's first impressions were unflattering. His counterpart's laboratory was improvised in a basement; his career had retreated from the institutions that ought to have competed for him. A brilliant man, reduced to domestic clutter and work that would never earn him the recognition he deserved. Vaya. An extraordinary waste.

Then he encountered the unmistakable signs of a home shared with affection. There was a spouse here. A marriage strained by neglect, yes, but not hollowed out by contempt. He had wealth and influence in his own universe, along with a marriage that had become an expensive exercise in mutual resentment. This was something else.

THE PRIVILEGES OF A HUSBAND

He does not need to be invited into his own home.

That is the exquisite convenience of his situation. He can go upstairs, open a door, stand close, ask an intimate question—and the face doing all of it belongs to the man you married. Whatever differences you might notice, he has every advantage of a familiarity he has done nothing to earn.

His interest in you is anything but tender. Privacy, to him, is a boundary whose purpose depends very much on who wishes to cross it. He can give a perfectly lucid explanation for the most invasive curiosity; it is easier to call something an observation than to admit he is taking what is not his. He has no particular intention of becoming the better husband. He intends to enjoy being mistaken for one.

And in the basement, the machine remains off.