Karen

Putting your hand into a garbage disposal is about as brassy as modern day life gets, picking and poking with soft, vulnerable fingers around the steel teeth designed to grind bone and gristle in seconds. For whatever reason, it didn’t bother Ian Ogelvy at all. Being an electrical current away from bloodshed and disfigurement was actually invigorating, although he would never admit it out loud. This was the suburbs.

            “Babe, let me get a plumber,” called his wife Karen from another room.

            “Thanks, Hon, but I’ve got it.” And one more stab later, he had it. Whatever was stuck in the disposal was dislodged. He flipped the machine on and off a few times, relishing the metallic scream and smiling triumphantly as Karen entered the kitchen.

            “Wow,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling herself to him. “You are the man.”

            He put his arms around her. “That’s right. And never forget it.”

            They kissed, and hands began searching, kneading….

The doorbell chimed. Ian and Karen reluctantly separated, giving each other “later” smiles. Not concerned with security on a bright, warm Saturday afternoon, Ian didn’t bother to check the peephole, but twisted the brass knob and pulled.

            A man stood on the front porch looking in at Ian. Not a stranger or a strange man, but a familiar man…who looked a lot like Ian.

            “Ian Ogelvy?” said the man, in a disturbingly familiar voice.

            “Yeah?”

            “I think…holy shit, now that I see you…”

            “What is this? What’s going on?”

“I think you might be my brother.”

            Ian couldn’t take his eyes off of the man. “Brother?”

            “Wow. Sorry. This is so fucking weird.”

            The man’s face captivated Ian, because it was his face, if he didn’t shave for a couple of days, gaunt and angular with a thin nose and a small cleft in his chin. He thought he might be in the midst of a nightmare, sleep paralysis, but the things he touched were real and solid even if the rest of the experience wasn’t. Before his mind fully resumed functioning, he invited the man into the house.

            “Who are you?” asked Ian.

            The man stood awkwardly in the entryway, hands buried deep in his jacket pockets. “I’m Michael…Mike…Carver. I live in Indianapolis and work at…I’m a sales manager at a Chevy dealership. My mother, well I was adopted so stepmother, passed away 6 months ago. While I was cleaning out her apartment, I found a picture in one of her dresser drawers.” Mike pulled the dog-eared photo from a pocket and handed it to Ian. A man dressed in hospital scrubs stood next to a window holding two newborn babies in the crooks of his arms. The one glaring oddity about the photo was that the man holding the infants was not joyous or even smiling, but wore a grim expression more suitable for a wake than a birth. Ian looked up.

            “What does it mean?”

            “Look at the date on the back.”

            Ian flipped over the photo. “May 13, 1990. That’s my birthday.”

            “Mine too. I’ve spent the last five months trying to figure out this mystery. I won’t bore you with details, but I discovered that I was born a twin, an identical twin, and that my brother and I were given up for adoption not long after birth. Why we were sent to different homes, I don’t know, but I was able to use online sources to track down the brother I never knew. And that brought me here.”

            Feeling dizzy and overwhelmed, Ian sat down on a bottom stair step wearing an expression of absolute astonishment. “Are you saying that I’m your brother? Your twin brother?”

            “My favorite movie is Scarface. My favorite TV show is The Walking Dead. My favorite meal is lobster drenched in butter. I drink Blue Moon beer out of a bottle and I never learned to like coffee. I wear briefs not boxers. I golf and read crime and mystery novels in my spare time. Any of this sound familiar to you?”

            “It all does.”

            “And I’m guessing you have a job that has something to do with automobiles.”

            “I run a parts store in town.” Ian’s eyes watered and his face flushed as the realization started to sink in. Before either one of the men could warn her, Ian’s wife Karen came out of the living and took three steps toward the front door when she gasped and dropped the laundry basket to the floor. Ian got up and went to her.

            “Hon, this is Mike. You’re not going to believe this, I’m not sure I do yet, but Mike thinks he’s my twin brother.”

             “No way,” she responded.

            Mike stepped toward Karen with his hand out. “Sorry to upset you.”

            She weakly took his hand, looking between faces as she shook. “I’m not upset. Shocked, dumbfounded, but not upset. This is blowing my mind.” She turned to her husband. “You didn’t have any idea you had a twin brother?”

            “None. Not a clue. I mean, there have been times during my life when I had this vague feeling, like some part of me was missing, like I didn’t have all my fingers or I didn’t have two lungs, strange sensations like that.”

            “I know exactly how you felt,” said Mike. “Because I had those too.”

            “So you came to Minneapolis to see Ian after all these years.”

            “I’m not even sure why, but it took me awhile to get up the nerve to meet him face to face.”

            Ian turned to his wife. “It’s amazing. We have the same favorite movies, TV shows, foods…freaking unbelievable. “

            “Well, come on in, Mike,” said Karen. “Would you like a soda or tea or a beer?”

            “A beer would be great.”

            The three sat in the living room talking for hours, with Mike and Ian discovering and marveling at the incredible parallel events in each other’s lives. During a lull in the conversation, Mike stood up and stretched.

            “Well, I should be heading to my hotel. Ian, maybe we could do lunch tomorrow.”

             “Hotel? No, you can stay here. We’ve got a guest room that’s already made up.”

            “I really don’t want to impose on you like this.”

            “Not a problem,” added Karen. “You’re family, as weird as that is to say. I’ll get you a clean towel.”

            Ian and Mike walked to the door.

“Bags in your car?” asked Ian.

“I took a cab here. I haven’t actually checked in yet, so…” He opened the door and picked up a worn backpack resting on the porch. “I’ve got everything I need here.”

“Great. Let me show you the room.”

Later that night, Ian and Karen lay in bed with their iPads.

“Wow. What a day,” said Ian. “I have a twin brother.”

“Mind blown. Seems like a nice guy.”

“I’d hope so.”

“Drank four beers, though.”

“Yeah?” Ian gave her a quizzical look.

“I don’t know. It seemed a little…”

“What?”

“I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be sitting down with people I’d just met and drinking four beers. That’s all.”

“I’m not following you. He wasn’t drunk.”

“Okay, I come from a small town and I know I can be a bit conservative. It’s just…a minor breach of etiquette. That’s all.”

“Etiquette? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word before.”

“Never mind. It’s no big deal.” Karen turned over and switched off her light.

The next evening after dinner there were new rounds of stories. Karen finally stood up.

“I’ve got to get up early tomorrow for a meeting, so I am going to head upstairs.”

It was Ian’s cue. “I’m just going to stay up a little longer. I’ll be there soon.”
            Karen smiled, but was a bit disheartened that Ian didn’t come to bed with her. The stories were getting tiresome, but she reminded herself, she wasn’t related to Mike. And how long was this guy planning to stay in their house? She’d have to bring that up again.

Ian returned from the kitchen with two new beers and set one down in front of Mike. He then plopped into a leather chair.

“It’s too bad we don’t know more about our real parents and why they gave us up for adoption.”

“Yeah. And why to different families? For some reason they didn’t want us to be together. Identical twins. Go figure.” Mike pulled a small joint out of his breast pocket. “Smoke?”

“Wow. Haven’t smoked pot since college. Sure.”

Mike lit the joint and passed it to Ian. They talked as they smoked. Karen come down the stairs in her bathrobe, glare at Ian for a beat, and then hiking back up to the bedroom.

All he could do was shrug. “Good stuff,” said Ian, experiencing a pleasant buzz he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Yeah. Some pretty tasty shit I picked up in Colorado.”

A short time later, Ian took a last long drink. “Listen, I’ve got to hit the sack.”

“Sure, sure. No problem. See you tomorrow evening.”

There was something in the way he said, “See you tomorrow evening,” that even the stoned Ian caught, a certain texture that subtly conveyed the idea that he might be planning to stay many more evenings. He could just ask Mike how long he was going to be in town, but felt as if it would be sending the wrong signals. Ian filed this episode away and floated upstairs to the bedroom, relieved that Karen was asleep and the lights were out. He reluctantly turned on the bathroom light to undress.

“I really don’t want you guys smoking pot in the house.”

“Why? It’s practically legal. Besides, you smoked in college.”

“We’re not in college anymore. Take it outside next time.” She turned her back to him.

He loved Karen, but it irritated him when she donned the tiara of the small town homecoming queen and became judgmental and priggish. No one but her would have problems with the two men smoking a joint in the living room.

Returning home from work the next evening, Ian stepped into the kitchen and immediately sensed Karen’s icy attitude.

“Hey,” he said.

After a beat she turned toward him, butcher knife in hand. “I want you to talk to your brother and find out when he’s leaving. I don’t care if it offends him. I want to know.”

“Did something happen?”

“He’s been drinking beer since around 3:00. He’s smoking cigarettes in his room, which is stinking up the whole house. He made himself breakfast and lunch and just threw everything into the sink when he was done. Hello, the dishwasher is right here. If you don’t talk to him about it, I will.” Before he could respond, Karen turned around and returned to chopping up vegetables.

“Okay, okay,” he said walking by her in the direction of the living room, forgoing the traditional after work kiss.

After a quiet dinner, Karen excused herself and went upstairs to watch TV. Ian began cleaning up while he and Mike Talked. A few minutes passed by and Mike put a finger to his lips and then pulled a fifth of whisky from his coat pocket. He found two glasses and poured each a drink.

“Aw man,” joked Ian. “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

“Nothing wrong with a little trouble now and then.”

“Like most people, I try and avoid it if I can.”

Mike downed his drink and poured himself another. “That takes the excitement out of life. Too many people grow into zombies when they become adults, going to work, coming home, watching TV, going to bed, rinse and repeat. There are times when you need to challenge yourself, break the rules, just as a reminder that you’re still alive. No?”

“I guess. I’m not a big risk taker anymore. I think that’s one of the things Karen likes about me. She hates surprises or when her plans get disrupted. I try, but I’m not really like that.”

“I know you’re not. We came from the same womb.”

Ian took a drink and cringed. “Whoa. That’s harsh.”

“It gets better. What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?”

Ian blushed. “I don’t know. I was a Boy Scout—“

“Of course you were.”

“And we had to cross this river gorge on a very flimsy rope bridge. I was scared shitless, but I crossed over. I made it. What about you?”

“Mmm. I was spending a little time in Bangkok, Thailand and I had the misfortune of looking like a well-known drug smuggler, so I was arrested and thrown into a Thai jail. Spent three days peeing and shitting into a bucket, eating food the roaches wouldn’t touch and getting the occasional smack in the head for no known reason. This guy who was traveling with me finally got the U.S. embassy to let the Bangkok police know that I wasn’t the guy they wanted. The kicker was that the prison goons were pissed off that I wasn’t the international star criminal they thought they had, so they beat the crap out of me just before my release. I wasn’t sure if I’d walk out of the prison or be carried out on a stretcher.”

“You’re shitting me,” said Ian, waiting for the “gotchya” laugh from Mike, but the mirror image sitting across the table simply smiled and took another drink. “Farthest from here I’ve been is California.”

“Let’s go to a bar,” said Mike.

“What?”

“A bar. Place where they serve alcohol.”

“I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

“Come on. One drink. Promise.”

Ian looked toward the stairs and shrugged. “One drink.”

Two hours later Ian and Mike stumbled out of The Cedar Inn into the crisp night air. As they careened down the sidewalk toward their car, a large bald man wearing a black leather vest approached them. Mike was on Ian’s left, and when the man started to pass by them, Mike leaned out and shouldered him.

“Watch where you’re going,” muttered the man, continuing toward the bar.

Mike turned around. “You watch where you’re going, douchebag.”

The man stopped and pivoted. His face was broad and his expression grim. “You got some kind of problem?”

“That depends.”

The man walked back and stood with his nose inches from Mike’s, letting his thick, tattooed arms dangle ominously at his side. “You stepped into me, bitch. You got something to say?”

Kevin put a hand on Mike’s arm and tried to pull him away from the man, but Mike wasn’t moving. “Yeah, I got something to say…” Mike hit the man in the face with a hard right, sending him stumbling backwards into a car door and then to a sitting position on the sidewalk. The man recovered quickly and rose to his feet, his face red and contorted with anger, and immediately charged Mike. The two men grappled and swung at each other, but then the man knocked Mike backwards with an uppercut, and Mike fell and skidded on the concrete. The man then straddled Mike’s body and began throwing punches. Seeing his brother in trouble, Kevin swung his leg around and kicked the man in the head, sending the guy sprawling to the ground unconscious. Mike got up and walked to the man and angrily delivered another kick to his blood-smeared face. Ian grabbed Mike’s arm.

“Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

The brothers scurried to their car a half-block away as bar patrons crawled out to gawk at the unconscious biker. Now several blocks away, Mike held up his fist and Kevin tapped it with his own.

“Wow,” exclaimed Mike smiling broadly. “You saved the day, brother.”

“Wow is right. I haven’t had a shot of adrenalin like that in a long time.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Ian hesitated. He kicked a man in the head. The guy could be dead for all he knew. “Now stop it. I know what you’re doing. You’re starting to analyze it, wondering how bad the guy is hurt. Fuck that, Ian. If you hadn’t ended it he would have killed me and then gone after you.”

Kevin turned to Mike. “Why did you start a fight?”

“We started it, Ian.”

 Headlights washed through the interior of the car. Mike lit up a cigarette, being careful to keep it away from the bleeding cut on his lip. Trying to formulate a response was surprisingly difficult for Ian. They were both still drunk. Maybe he couldn’t trust his memory. Maybe he did have something to do with starting it. All he knew for sure is that he hadn’t felt so alive in years.

Karen was sitting up in bed reading when Ian walked into the bedroom. He decided to preempt his wife.

“Went to a bar with Mike.”

“And you couldn’t call me because…”

“Please don’t start.”

“Don’t start?” she said, putting the book down. “What’s going on with you? You never did anything like this before.”

“I went out and had a drink. You make it sound like I was robbing a convenience store. Going out for a drink is a normal thing that adults do sometimes.”

“It’s not something that you do. What happened to your pants?”

“It’s just some mud. Why do you have to get so bent out of shape over things like this? It’s not a big deal.” He got into bed, turned off his light and turned away from Karen. The air was suddenly infused with the smell of whisky and she blinked back tears.

Still in her bathrobe and slippers on a warm Saturday morning, the one-week anniversary of Mike’s unwelcome arrival, Karen entered the kitchen and seemed to interrupt a hushed conversation between the brothers. They wore guilty grins as she poured a cup of coffee. It was an unnerving silence.

“You guys are up early,” she said, pouring a packet of sugar into her drink.

 “I’m going to take Mike downtown, show him around the city,” said Ian.

“I thought we talked about shopping and then going to a movie,” responded Karen.

“Tomorrow. Promise.”

Without showing her disappointment, Karen picked up her cup and left the brothers to themselves. She heard the car roll out of the driveway a half hour later. Taking on the routine weekend chores that Ian usually helped with, she cleaned up the kitchen, vacuumed and then started on the laundry. As she picked her way through the dirty laundry, she started to drop Ian’s pants into the washer when she noticed the dark splotch around the cuff. Holding it out near the window, she saw it was clearly dried blood.

Hauling a full laundry basket as she passed the closed door to the guest room, Karen paused, argued with herself briefly, then set down the basket and cracked open the door. The blinds were pulled down, the bed was unmade and clothes lay in several piles. She inhaled noxious cigarette fumes as she opened the door wider and stepped across the threshold, immediately feeling in need of a shower. She glanced around and was about to leave when her eye landed on what looked like a leather-bound journal resting near the edge of the dresser. Picking it up and flipping through the pages, she stopped on a page and began reading.

Alicia

May 23, 2012

Long, straight dark brown hair. Pretty, but wore too much eye makeup. Twenty-one according to ID. Lonely and unfulfilled like all the rest. Had to do it at her apartment, which I never like, but there was no other choice. She was still fun.

She turned to another entry.

Megan

August 5, 2012

Shoulder length sandy blond. Petite with nice breasts. Swore too much and had a tattoo of an old boyfriend’s name. Thought I wanted to hear her boring life story. A screamer.

A car door slammed shut somewhere outside. Heart fluttering, Karen put the diary back where it was and stepped out of the room closing the door quietly behind her. She could hear the men walking through the kitchen, and they all met at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, guys,” said Karen, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “Have a good time?”

She caught them exchanging a subtle glance. Ian smiled. “Yeah, it was fine.” They both had their hands in their coat pockets.

“You’ve got a nice downtown,” added Mike. “Clean and safe looking.”

Karen wasn’t sure how to take that comment, so she just smiled and made her way around the men and back to the laundry room. Ian and Mike went upstairs and into the spare bedroom.

Later that evening, as she and Ian lay in bed reading, Karen set down her iPad. “Ian, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“No. I went into the spare bedroom to see if I needed to pick up or throw anything out and I…I came across Mike’s journal. I know it’s uncool to check out someone’s diary, but well, I did it anyway.”

Ian looked at her. “You were messing around in his private stuff?”

“It’s our house and it was just the journal. That’s all. But Ian, it had page after page of women’s names, their physical descriptions and then, ick, stuff about the sex they had. But I got the feeling…I don’t know, there was something else going on there.”

“What are you talking about? So the guy has a little brown book. What does that prove?”

“But he didn’t have phone numbers or addresses or emails. Not even last names. That would have been more normal. These seemed more like…conquests. You know?”

“No.”

“They sound more like things then people.”

“He’s a guy, Karen. A single guy. Okay, maybe he’s not the most sensitive male on the planet, but I’m not hearing anything weird or creepy here.”

“Every time I say anything about Mike now, you get defensive. Yes, I think the journal is a little creepy.”

“I’m sorry you don’t like Mike, but this is all in your head. You’re reading all kinds of stuff into it. Anyway, he’s leaving day after tomorrow.”
            Karen’s face brightened. “Really? Oh, that’s awesome. Okay.” She leaned over and gave Ian a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll get our lives back.” He nodded and went back to his book.

Sunday morning light slipped through the bedroom blinds. Karen opened her eyes and stretched and then turned over to face her husband, but found only a pillow. She threw on clothes and went downstairs to the kitchen, where she found a note on the table: Doing some more sightseeing. Be back early afternoon. “One more day,” she repeated over and over. “One more day.”

As hard as she tried to distract herself, she couldn’t stop dwelling on Mike’s journal and what bothered her so much about his entries. They’re not going to be back for hours, she thought, and made her way upstairs to the guest room. Everything looked as it had yesterday, and the journal was right where she left it. Setting the spine in her left palm, she began thumbing through the pages again. Names flittered by, Angela, Jean, Candy… She stopped on a page titled “Sarah.”

Sarah

March 10, 2013

Long, thick brown hair, shiny and clean. Sad hazel eyes that reflected too much bad luck for a kid so young. She had bruises on her upper arms. I didn’t want her to suffer anymore, so I made it quick.

Karen looked up. The phrase, “made it quick,” was so unnerving. He had a quickie with her? What would that have to do with her past suffering? The two elements of the sentence just didn’t seem to go together. She flipped through pages again until the names stopped. Moving back a page, she came to the last entry, and her heart froze solid. It read: Karen.

“Hey,” came Ian’s voice calling from downstairs. “Come on down, Karen. We’ve got a surprise for you.”