Newt Run

  "Hazel," I say.

  "Yes."

  She speaks the word but it doesn't register; this is Kelly, looking at me with the same eyes and speaking from the same mouth. Kelly's face, and her voice, telling me that her name is Hazel. She's looking at me like I'm a stranger, as if we've never met before, and a dull weight drops in the pit of my stomach. I look for something to hold onto, but there's nothing there.

  "Are you alright?" she asks.

  "No," I say, stopping myself, and then just as quickly start again: "I'm fine. Listen, you don't have a twin sister do you?"

  "No... Why?"

  "Kelly..."

  "Please stop calling me that."

  "Alright, listen, you look like someone I know. I mean, you look exactly like her. It's like she's standing right in front of me, or you're her twin or something."

  "Ok," she says, and I watch as she takes a step away from me.

  "Can I buy you a coffee?" I ask, hearing the desperation in my voice.

  "I'm not sure."

  "I know there's no point in saying this, but I'm not crazy."

  She hesitates.

  "Alright," she says finally. Before she can change her mind, I move to the café and hold the door open until she walks through it.

  The place is smaller than it looked from the outside, just a single wooden bar with a half dozen stools set in front of it. A pair of middle-aged men are hunched over plates of food, and the bartender, a rail-slim man with gray, thinning hair is watching the news on a small TV set. Kelly and I walk to the end of the counter. On the way, I notice that one of the men is thumbing through a porn magazine, the glossy pages open to a shot of a busty girl half-falling out of a nurse's uniform.

  "You mind if I get a drink?" I ask Kelly. She shrugs. The bartender glances at us.

  "Whiskey," I say.

  "Coffee," says Kelly, and the bartender nods. She turns to me.

  "What's your name?" she asks.

  "Isaac."

  "Ok. So, I don't know what to tell you Isaac. I don't have a twin. I don't even have a sister."

  "Right."

  "So I don't know what to tell you."

  "Maybe you were separated at birth."

  "What, me and my twin?"

  "Yes. Or maybe you're Kelly, and you're just telling me that you're not."

  "Why would someone do that?"

  "To fuck with me, I guess."

  "This girl's the type that likes to fuck with people?"

  The bartender sets down our drinks along with a small brass pitcher of milk for the coffee. I take a sip of my whiskey. Kelly adds milk to her cup, and stirs in a spoonful of sugar from a glass jar on the counter.

  "I never thought she was that type, no," I say.

  "But you're entertaining the possibility."

  "That's right."

  "How did you know this girl?"

  "She was an exchange student from the capital."

  "So am I."

  "She's a painter," I say, not looking at her; I'm looking at the brown liquid in my glass, at my reflection in the mirror behind the counter, the rigid line of the bartender's back as he stares at the television, anywhere but her. Looking at her is like looking at something that's stepped out of a dream.

  "I'm studying biology," she tells me.

  "I can't see her studying biology."

  The girl looks down at her hands.

  "You're serious about all this aren't you?" she says, after a time.

  "Yes."

  "She was your girlfriend?"

  "Someone else's girlfriend."

  She seems to consider that. Abruptly, the man with the porn magazine bursts out laughing. He leans back on his stool, covering his mouth with his hand. The guy beside him, grinning, stares straight ahead, his wide shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. They aren't looking at us, don't even seem to be aware of us, but I can't help feeling they're laughing at me.

  I glance at Kelly's fingers wrapped around the white porcelain coffee mug, all of them stained orange to the knuckles. The skin dye is new, but it suits her, and I wonder how long she's been thinking of having that done.

  I finish my whiskey and call to the bartender for another.

  "I'd like to buy you a drink," I say to her. She smiles without letting it touch her eyes.

  "Alright. Maybe it'll help me sleep."

  The bartender pours our drinks and I tip my glass in her direction.

  "You seem pretty worked up about all this," she says, a bit of the old Kelly in her voice. It's only now, hearing something that I recognize from the other girl in her voice, that I'm able to conceive of the possibility that I might not be sitting next to her.

  "You really aren't her are you?" I say. She shakes her head.

  "Sorry."

  "It's not your fault."

  "They say everyone has a double out there somewhere."

  "That is what they say."

  We drink silently.

  "It's been a weird night."

  "Yeah?"

  "Earlier I woke up in an apartment I'd never seen before. I had no idea where I was."

  "Strange."

  "And these clothes?" I say, tugging on the collar of my jacket.

  "Yes?"

  "Not mine."

  "They suit you."

  "Thank you. So did the apartment, and the really fucked up thing is that the more time passes, the more I feel like I belong in these clothes."

  "Sometimes it's like that. You wake up and you have no idea where you are, but after a while it comes back to you."

  "Yeah."

  "Was it like that?"

  "Sort of. But there was something else."

  I frown, struggling to bring it back, but it's like sifting through mist.

  "There was something wrong... with my face," I say.

  "Looks fine to me."

  "Thanks."

  She looks away, biting her lip.

  "I'm trying to imagine what it'd be like."

  "What? Waking up in a stranger's place?"

  "No. I've done that before. Meeting someone you think you know and having them tell you they're someone else."

  "It's not pretty."

  "Did you love her?"

  I look into my glass as if there might be an answer there, but there's no avoiding it, not when she's sitting right next to me and asking in her own voice.

  "Yeah I loved her," I say, and I watch as she considers that, takes it in with a mouthful of whiskey. She sets down her glass and orders us both another round. The bartender nods, but asks us to settle up now, obviously uninterested in running a tab.

  "I got it," I say, reaching into my jacket pocket for my wallet and coming up empty.

  "Shit," I mutter. The girl laughs, low and without humour, shaking her head.

  "I have cash," she says. "Don't worry."

  "I'll make it up to you next time."

  "Next time?"

  "Yes."

  She laughs again, not looking at me.

  "I didn't plan it this way," I tell her.

  "It's not the end of the world," she says, handing a few bills to the bartender.

  She doesn't ask me anything more about Kelly or what happened. Instead, she tells me about herself, how she left the capital because of the trouble and how she's only been in town for a week or so, staying with her uncle. I don't ask her about her work at the university or about anything else; I don't care. Everything she says feels wrong, as if she's reading from a script. A script written by someone she's never met and who didn't have her in mind when they wrote the part.

  I look away from her, at the man to my left, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed over his wide chest and his eyes closed, maybe sleeping. The bartender takes out a cigarette and lights it. Kelly asks him for one and he gives it to her, except that it isn't Kelly asking and it isn't Kelly who takes it from him – it's someone else, some other girl reaching out with Kelly's hand and putting the smoke to Kelly's lips.

&
nbsp; We drink without speaking and she finishes the cigarette. When she's done she tells me that it's been interesting but she has to go. She pays for us both and we leave the café. The snow has stopped falling and the night has grown very cold.

  "I'm sorry about the drinks," I say. She makes a small motion like she's brushing away a fly and then wraps her arms around her chest, shivering.

  "It's fine," she tells me.

  "What's your number?" I ask her.

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yes. I think so."

  "I don't have one in town yet."

  "Your uncle's?"

  She bites her lip and looks away, and then all at once she's taking a pen from her bag and a small notepad and scrawling a number on it. She tears the sheet from the pad and hands it to me.

  "Well," she says. "Guess I'll be seeing you."

  "I guess so."

  She makes a slight wave and turns her back to me. I watch her make her way across the bridge and disappear into the crowd on the far side of the river, and then I turn around.

  I start walking, trying not to think; the whiskey isn't sitting well and half a block further on a brown fist of pain doubles me over and I pour a night's worth of drinks and bile onto the snow. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and spit, kicking snow over the mess.

  The streets are quiet, and it isn't long before I reach home. I walk up the flight of stairs to the second floor of the building, catching sight of my reflection in the hallway mirror; there is a touch of something on my cheek, as if an invisible insect had lighted there. I frown, and make my way to the door.

  I take off my coat and struggle out of my boots. I walk to the bathroom where I turn on the tap and gargle with cold water, rinsing the taste of stomach acid and whiskey from my mouth.

  I look at myself in the mirror, but there's something off about the reflection, a kind of warping in the glass, and the right side of my face refuses to come into focus. I take a hand-towel from the shelf by the sink and use it to wipe the mirror. When I look again my face is clear.