Walk-Out Closet

Everyone over the age of two knows how doors work. You can open a door and go from one space to another, and from the other to the one. That’s it. Nothing more. Except for the door that stood open in front of Scott.

The landlady had insisted that his new apartment was laid out exactly like the model unit. The model unit’s walk-in closet only had one door, though. This second door had to lead outside his apartment. By the location of his corner apartment, it should lead directly outside.

He had opened it, hoping to be pleasantly surprised by a secret balcony, only to see another bedroom beyond the door. Leaving the door open, he rushed out of the closet, into the bathroom that shared an outside wall with the closet. The small, frosted glass window in the bathroom let in the light of the sun, dappled shadows from the large trees swaying in the breeze. There was nothing where the room on the other side of the closet would be.

Scott returned to the closet and looked at the apartment on the other side of the second door in his closet. It had to be an optical illusion of some sort. He opened one of the boxes he’d been about to unpack and pulled out a plastic hangar.

He tried to tap on the mirror or screen or whatever lay beyond the door. There was nothing. He tossed the hanger, thinking that it might go back a foot or two. The hanger sailed halfway across the other bedroom and clattered to the floor.

“Hello?” He leaned through the doorway. “Anyone here?”

When there was no answer, he stepped through and picked up the hangar. The bedroom looked like the one he’d just left, but oriented on the other side of the building.

He looked around the apartment that shouldn’t exist. The sound of voices from the hallway, one of them the landlady’s, ended his exploration early. He returned through the closet to his own apartment.

Scott shut the second door, and decided he would get a lock for it and just pay for the damages out of his deposit. He dropped the hangar back into the box he’d just opened, except it was still sealed tight.

Looking around the room, everything seemed as he remembered it…maybe? He wandered through the apartment, stopping in the kitchen. He’d stashed the new yellow broom next to the fridge. It wasn’t his first choice for colors, but it was the last one the store had in stock.

His freshly signed lease was still sitting on the breakfast bar. He checked beside the fridge. The broom was there, but it was a powder blue. This was not his apartment…at least, not the one he’d been in just ten minutes ago.

Scott returned to the bedroom and began going through the boxes. He recognized most of the items, with a few minor inconsistencies. He put on a pair of sneakers, grabbed his wallet off the bed and dropped his keys into his pocket.

He looked through the wallet. Everything looked normal, except that he had two-hundred-thirty dollars in cash. He never carried cash unless it was a necessity, and he’d had none when he’d first stepped into the apartment.

If he’d gone through the door into another universe, did that mean that coming back through didn’t return him to his starting position? Scott needed to think about it, and more than that, he needed a drink.

“Day drinking,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. “If it doesn’t solve the problem, at least it makes it seem less daunting.”

He left the apartment and walked to the corner market. It looked the same on the outside, but he’d only seen it when coming to view the apartment and then when moving in.

The sign on the door read Lotto, Deli Sandwich’s & Cold Drink’s…complete with the superfluous apostrophes. Scott took a deep breath and promised himself he wouldn’t let it annoy him. There were bigger things at play here.

He found the alcohol where he expected it, in the locked cabinet behind the cashier. “A bottle of the 12-year Irish whiskey, please.”

“ID?” the woman at the register asked.

He showed his driver’s license, and she motioned him to turn it around. He did so, and she scanned the barcode on the back and seemed satisfied with the sound the register made.

She unlocked the cabinet, removed the only bottle of its kind, and locked the cabinet before placing it near the register, out of his reach. “That’s seventy-one-fifty,” she said. “Anything else?”

Scott shook his head. “No thanks.” He placed a hundred-dollar bill on the counter.

The cashier ran a pen across the bill to ensure it was real, then wrapped the bottle in a paper bag and passed it across the counter followed by his change. “New face,” she said. “You just moved into the Argo?” she asked.

“The Argo?”

“River Greens Overlook apartments,” she said. “RGO…Argo.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“See you around then, Scott,” she said. “I’m Tiffany. And since you aren’t buying a bottle of hooch, you’re either rich or not a full-time drunk. Both of which are rare around here during work hours.”

“Yeah, just moving in today,” he said.

He went back to his apartment and looked over everything again. The broom was still powder blue. He cracked the bottle and was about to swig directly from it when he stopped himself.

A minute of digging through the two kitchen boxes brought him to the rocks glasses. He pulled one out, wiped the inside with the paper towels it had been packed in, and poured himself two fingers of whiskey.

It was smooth and warmed his insides. Carrying the glass, he went back into the bedroom and looked in the closet. The second door was still there, and still closed.

He drained the glass and went back to the kitchen for a refill. While there, he checked the drawers for anything that might have been left behind.

In the back of one drawer, he found a piece of sidewalk chalk. It gave him an idea.

Scott went to the bedroom and marked the floor just outside the closet with a 3. He entered the closet and marked the floor there with another 3. He opened the door and looked at the bedroom beyond. Reaching through with just one hand and the chalk, he marked the floor there with “4?” and pulled his hand back.

The marks in the closet and bedroom remained unchanged. Still clutching the chalk and drink, he stepped halfway through the door.

Looking back, the marks seemed the same. He took a deep breath and stepped through the rest of the way.

The floor in front of him still carried the same mark. The floor in the closet and the floor in the bedroom beyond were marked 11.

He knew this was bad, but he wasn’t sure how bad. He erased the question mark from the floor, leaving the 4, then checked the kitchen. The broom was still powder blue, but his signature on the lease agreement looked off, and there was no bottle of whiskey on the counter.

Scott wondered about the other versions of him. Were they trapped, going through the same thing he was? The reversed apartment layout felt wrong, so he took a deep breath and headed back to the closet.

Time to step into number eleven, he thought. He began drawing a line from the middle of the bedroom into the closet, and as he stepped through the door, he found the line continuing into the bedroom, right past the number 11.

On looking back, the line was there, running past the number 10 rather than 4. How many times have I done this? he wondered. He hoped this time there would be a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen. There was, but it was half empty. He poured another two fingers and checked the broom…pink with flowers.

Scott picked up the lease agreement and didn’t recognize the signature at all. He flipped it over to write a message to one of his other selves, only to find one already there.

“My name is Scottie, 31 years old, born in San Francisco, California, Mexico. Every time I go through the second door in the closet everything changes. I am just trying to get back home. I no longer think it’s possible, but I keep trying.”

Scott went to the bedroom and looked through the boxes. Women’s clothing. He left the apartment and went to the corner market. The sign on the door read, Lotto, Deli Sandwiches, and Cold Drinks. Well, that was at least a positive change.

He walked in. “Tiffany, right?”

“Do I know you? Oh, wait, you look just like the woman that was in here earlier. Are you her brother?”

“Uh, yeah.” He headed to the soft drink cooler and selected something high in caffeine. He brought it to the counter where she scanned it, and he tried his bank card on the machine, but it was rejected.

“Machine’s acting up again,” Tiffany said. “Do you have cash?”

Scott pulled out the change he’d gotten earlier and laid a twenty on the counter.

“What’s that?” Tiffany asked. “Foreign money from somewhere? We only take dollars. North American dollars.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I must’ve grabbed my travel wallet. I’ll come back for it later.”

Scott returned to the apartment and looked at the message again. He turned over the lease agreement and checked the particulars. This was no longer California, USA, but was “Western Coastal Territory, NA.”

He sat in front of the closet with the remainder of the bottle. He would wait until another version of himself showed up. Maybe stop himself…herself?…before they stepped all the way through to see if “trading” universes was possible.

If another version of him didn’t show up, well, at least it would take a while to enjoy the rest of the whiskey. He would let his future, empty-bottle self figure out the next move then.