The Door of Unmade Choices: Chapter 16

 

Chapter 16 — These Alley Doors Are Getting Out of Hand

After a couple of weeks, the doors stopped pretending to be helpful.

Up to now, most of them had been invitations. Misleading, dangerous invitations, sure, but invitations all the same. Each incident was laced with a sense that if you wanted to leave, you could. A deceptive current of optimism that one had options ran through the crossings. But all I could think about was that line from “Hotel California.”

You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.

Then we found the first door without a handle.

It stood in the alley behind Carver’s Pharmacy, wedged between a soda machine that hadn’t worked since the first Bush administration and a brick wall sweating old rain. This door was made of plain oak. It was unremarkable in every conceivable way aside from standing in the middle of the alley like it had always been there and we were the ones who’d been missing.

Frank reached for it out of habit. I caught his wrist.

“No,” I said.

He looked at me, surprised. “You didn’t even—”

“I don’t need to,” I said. “This one doesn’t open.”

He frowned. “Then why is it here?”

That was the wrong question. Doors don’t show up to answer questions. They show up to ask them. I took a step closer. The air around it felt different—thicker, like humidity made of memory. The kind that sticks to you even after you shower. I hate that feeling. You take a hot shower and dry off and immediately start sweating because the shower was too hot. No matter what you do, you can’t get dry.

I didn’t touch the door, but I could feel it working anyway, pulling us toward it.

“This,” I said, “is the danger phase.”

Frank’s mouth tightened. “There are phases?”

“There always are,” I said. “We just pretend there aren’t because phases suggest progress. Or endings.”

“I never understand anything you say.”

I told him what I’d been seeing lately, the pattern that had been sharpening its teeth in the background. Some doors didn’t lead to lives. They led to states of mind. Permanent emotional cul-de-sacs. No arc. No third act. Just the same longing looping forever like a scratched record you keep hoping will resolve into a chorus. These were unresolvable lives built entirely around a single if only. The job that didn’t pan out but would have, if not for one meeting, one person, one Tuesday. The love that didn’t last but could have, if not for fear, pride, timing. The version of you that exists only in hindsight, always better lit, better rested, better dressed.

“People don’t get trapped because they’re weak,” I said. “They get trapped because longing feels productive. Like you’re still working on something.”

Frank stared at the door. “What happens if someone goes through one of these?”

I shook my head. “They don’t go through.”

The door didn’t open, but the surface shimmered now, subtle as heat off asphalt.I felt it tug at me then. Not at my body. At the part of me that keeps old receipts for arguments I won’t have again. I saw it before I could stop it.

My office. Rather, the one I might have had. It was the same office from the door in the hallway a couple of days ago. This was the setting of my if only. A life where I’d stayed. Where I hadn’t walked away from a badge, or a marriage, or the belief that understanding something was the same as fixing it. The door didn’t show me happiness. That would’ve been obvious. It showed me almost.

My hand was moving before I noticed. Reaching for a handle that wasn’t there. My fingers pressed against smooth wood, searching for leverage, for permission. Behind me, Frank said my name. It sounded far away. Like he was calling from another room. Or another life.

The door leaned into me with intent. A quiet suggestion: You can stand here forever. You don’t have to choose. You don’t have to lose anything else. That’s the real trap. Not the fantasy of a better life. The promise of rest.

I stepped back hard enough to stumble. The shimmer faded. The alley snapped back into place. The soda machine buzzed like it was laughing.

Frank was pale. “You almost—”

“I know,” I said.

We stood there longer than we should have. You do that with things that nearly get you. Like staring at a staircase after you miss a step, making sure gravity hasn’t changed its mind.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

I looked at the door. Still blank. Still waiting.

“We warn people,” I said. “And when that doesn’t work, we keep them moving. Doors without handles feed on stillness.”

Frank nodded slowly. “And if someone refuses?”

I didn’t answer right away. Because the truth is, some people don’t want out. Some people want a museum of themselves, curated entirely around the life they didn’t live. And they will stand in front of a door like this until the wanting replaces everything else.

As we walked away, I felt it watching me. Doors do that when they think they’ve found the right size regret. Halfway down the block, I realized something cold and precise. The door behind the pharmacy hadn’t appeared for Frank.

It had appeared because I’d been nearby long enough for it to notice me.

And somewhere—maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow—another door without a handle was already deciding where to wait.

 

*****

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