Strange Case of the New Golden Gate: Three Coffees

The Bay Area’s greatest detective staked out the sidewalk in front of the Berkeley butcher shop. Twenty-four hours earlier, a woman had appeared on this spot — just appeared, with a quiet pop — then strode away confidently. Now, Annabel Scheme was bent on tracking her down.

Actually, it was me staking out the sidewalk, while Scheme got lunch from the worker-owned bakery down the street. She returned, red curls shining in the sunlight, carrying a plate of pizza (two slices, two slivers) and a cardboard carrier stocked with three coffees.

“Mushroom with lemon oil for me,” she announced. “And for you, Mr. Portacio … mushroom with lemon oil. They only make the one kind.”

I ate my slice. The mushroom was savory; the lemon oil was tangy; the worker equity was delicious. I wondered how Scheme and I were going to find our quarry.

“Stella Pajunas disappeared and reappeared in the same spot

exactly,” Scheme said. “So let’s assume this woman will do the same thing. Everything has rules. Physics has rules. Even magic has rules.”

Scheme had already searched the sidewalk for circles of salt or chalk and found nothing. So it was science, then.

We finished our pizza slices and waited. Scheme had warned me about this when I applied to be her assistant. The work, she said, was either rocketing at 90 mph or standing in place. “In my experience,” she’d said, “a successful investigation is 5% being smart, 5% cool gadgets and 90% the correct placement of your butt.”

My correctly placed butt was starting to hurt when Scheme elbowed me. “Here she comes.”

Striding up the sidewalk with the same cool precision we’d seen on the security camera was the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. She carried a boxy, fashionable bag, and I saw the glint of a watch on one wrist. To my brain, she looked like a normal Berkeley pedestrian, but to my armpits, she must have looked terrifying, because they were suddenly soaked. There was a small but nonzero chance this figure was a ghost, or a demon, or a robot sent back in time to kill someone.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t Scheme calling out, “Hi!”

The woman stopped. “You waiting to beam up, too?” Scheme said cheerily. “You can sit with us, if you want.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. She stood totally still, evaluating us, hand clutched tight around the handle of her bag. Finally, she spoke. “I know for a fact you’re not from the same place I am. But I’m impressed you know about it.”

“I can’t be the only one,” Scheme said.

“No.” The woman walked closer, her expression still curious, evaluating. “A cosmologist at Cal has it figured out, sort of. No one believes him.” She snorted. Maybe she was here to kill the cosmologist. Maybe she HAD killed the cosmologist.

“Well, I know you’re due to return soon.” Scheme plucked a cup from the carrier. “Maybe we can chat while you wait. Coffee?”

The woman looked wary. “Who are you?”

Scheme introduced herself, then me. A smile crept across the woman’s face. She took the coffee. “I know your name. In my timeline, you’re famous. You’re also dead.”

Scheme accepted this revelation with surprising grace. “And you are?”

“My name’s Lois. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Well, Lois, how does your world compare to this one? Besides the dead me, which is obviously a downgrade.”

“Oh, well, FIRST OF ALL, we didn’t fill in the bay.”

Right. I supposed that where she came from, San Francisco Bay was just a giant untouched body of water.

“Uh, yes. That’s the POINT. Do you not have any environmentalists here? I’ve been to a lot of different Bay Areas, and I have to tell you, this one is GRIM.” Lois sipped her coffee. “Sorry.” She wasn’t sorry. “So,” Scheme said, “is this just a hobby of yours? Reality tourism?”

“I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t have to. And” — Lois looked down at her watch — “lucky for all of us, my chariot has arrived!”

She squared up and her face took on the expectant look of a “Star Trek” character about to be transported. That was apparently Scheme’s cue; she leapt, tried for a tackle, but only succeeded in getting a hand on Lois’ boxy bag before the woman from another world nearly knocked her aside, using some kind of move — aikido? robot? — that sent Scheme tumbling across the pavement.

“Seriously?” Lois scoffed. She cinched her bag higher up on her shoulder and disappeared with a quiet, sucking pop.

Scheme leapt to her feet. “Well, that was a success.”

I had remained sitting, holding my coffee, while my boss attempted a tackle and a woman disapparated on the sidewalk in front of me.

“If so, we’ll find out soon,” Scheme grinned, catlike. “I dropped a transmitter in her bag.”

I thought the tackle had looked a little clumsy. Annabel Scheme had martial arts training.

She must have planted it during the scuffle. But surely, a traveler between worlds would, upon returning home, check her bag and discover, what — a bundle of electronics? Anyway, how could a bundle of electronics beam a signal between worlds?

“It’s not that kind of transmitter, Mr. Portacio.” Scheme reached up and unclasped one of her earrings. I noticed then that the other one was missing. She handed the remaining earring to me, half of the pair she always wore: tiny shards of pale green crystal.

“They’re made from one stone split in two. They sat in the earth together for, I don’t know, a billion years. They’re powerfully linked.”

So could we just … dial the other one, like a cellphone?

“Unfortunately, no. In fact, I have no idea how to contact the other earring. But I know someone who does.”

Scheme started up the sidewalk, tossing the paper plate into a wastebasket in front of the butcher shop. “Come on, Will,” she said. “We’re going to see a witch.”