Miss Misery (12 page)

“Huh.” She stood with her arms crossed. She had a flat shine of perspiration on her forehead and flecks of ash on her white shirt.

“I don't know what's going on, Cath. You've been really nice to me. Thanks. But…I don't know you. I don't know these people.”

She kicked at the metal stair. “I thought you knew me too well.”

“Right. Well, one or the other.”

We stood looking at each other. I ran my hands through my crinkly, suddenly stylish hair.

“Please set up some sort of meeting for me, Cath. I need to make this stop.”

“OK, David.” She turned to go. “But I'm not sure that's what you really need.” She pulled the door open, and then she was gone.

 

The bright lights of the F train were making me nauseous, so I rode most of the way home with my eyes closed, pushing hard against the sockets with the heels of my hands until I saw nothing but skittering fireflies. So that was Miss Misery, I thought. No—that was Cath. They were both whirlwinds, but only one was real. And after just one night with her, I felt like the Kansas heartland, post-twister.

“My name is Sonny Payne. I'm homeless and I'm hungry.”

I looked up. We were at the Jay Street stop, and Sonny—the oldest and most reliable of the F-train panhandlers—had entered my car and launched into his routine.

“If you don't got it, I understand because I don't got it. But if you could spare some change, some food, a piece of fruit…”

When he passed me, this little old black man with the snow-white beard who had been riding the trains with me ever since I moved to this city and would probably remain long after I had moved, I dropped a pocketful of change into his gnarled hand.

“God bless you,” he said.

“Get home safe,” I said, whatever that might mean.

“You too,” he said. And moved on his way.

As I walked up the hill from the subway, I clenched and unclenched my left hand, wishing there was another hand there to fill my own. I loved Amy. I knew that. I thought of her, then: of the hundreds of times we'd made this walk together, what it felt like to laugh with her, sleep next to her, look after her. But below that was another feeling, a newer sensation that ran through my stomach like a zipper. It was the tangible memory of the evening that had just ended, the manic weightlessness of the VSC's world. Of strange new possibilities; of Cath's fingernails on my scalp.

I had wanted this, hadn't I? Recklessly, stupidly. And now I had to deal with it.

 

Back in my apartment, I deleted two messages from Watkins, drank three glasses of water, took four Tylenol, turned on the air conditioner, and got changed. I felt the early tremblings of a hangover in my skull and behind my eyes. With the lights still out, I flipped on my computer, signed onto Instant Messenger. A window popped open almost immediately.

Alone again, I thought about checking my diary, but now—with something legitimate to write—I suddenly didn't feel like it. Besides, I didn't want to know what the other me was up to. God knows I'd hear about it soon enough.

There's something else you could do, I heard my brain whisper. You could call your girlfriend. It was a thought. An idea. A plan, even.

But I couldn't bring myself to do it. What would I tell her? What could I possibly say?

Get yourself together, she had told me the night before she left. For me. For both of us. How could I call her and tell her that I couldn't even get
that
right. That instead of pulling myself together, I'd actually completely fallen apart?

 

With the calming hum of the AC in my ears, I climbed into bed. Better to go to sleep. To prepare for whatever was to come. More than enough had happened already today. Enough for two people.

My phone chirped from the bedside table.

I shut my eyes and buried my face in a pillow. Amy's side of the bed was no longer warm, and I couldn't smell her shampoo anywhere. It was hours before I fell asleep.

Hey bitch, it's Pedro. You screening your calls? Or do you not have to wake up in the morning now that you live all alone? Ha! Like that's stopping you. Look, dude, just wanted to say it was good seeing you out at that Fader party last night, and that chick you were with was super, super cute. Even for a fag like me. I'm glad you're not staying cooped up—and hey, your hair looked good too. Have you been working out? That's not me being queer; that's a compliment! Call me.

David, it's me. It's really strange that you haven't called. I thought you would miss me. I miss you…. I'm on my lunch break and I'm sitting in my apartment here and I'm in another country and I feel like I'm losing you. Why won't you call me? I don't understand.

Duuuuuude. Where the fuck are you, homes? It's Bryce. Do you know what time it is here in the City of Angels? It's seven in the morning, dude! I don't wake up this early. I don't drink smoothies and I don't go jogging. I don't even know what morning looks like. So why am I up? Because I just fielded a call from someone else's girlfriend who is in Europe for Chrissakes and is worried about her boyfriend who is either in Brooklyn or in massive denial. Or in the witness protection program. What's going on there, friend? Why is Amy calling me? Why are you calling no one? Inquiring minds, dude. What do they do? They want to know. OK. I'm going back to sleep.

David! How's my favorite MIA author? Ha, ha! It's Thom and I—

The Dolphin Diner was located on Tenth Avenue in Manhattan in a neighborhood that is slightly between Chelsea and the Meatpacking District—in every possible sense. It was an odd choice for a meeting place—certainly not any location I would have chosen (even though, apparently, I did). I had only ever been there twice myself, and neither time had been intentional. Once was right before moving to the city. I had come down from college to look at apartments and then gone to Penn Station to meet Amy. We had been so excited to see each other that we had walked west instead of east and ended up, hungry and exhausted, on Tenth Avenue. The other time had been a stupid night a year ago when Amy was visiting her parents in St. Louis and Bryce had convinced me to get drunk and take half of a Vicodin he had stolen from his mother's medicine cabinet. It had felt great for about twenty minutes, during which time I had agreed to go into the city with him to some bridge-and-tunnel club on the West Side and watch him flirt with girls. But as we left the subway, I suddenly became overwhelmingly dizzy and almost blacked out on the sidewalk. He basically carried me into the Dolphin, where I had three glasses of water and then took a cab home. Good times.

As I walked out of the C/E stop at Twenty-second Street, I glanced at my watch. It was 12:15—late, but I didn't care. If I really was meeting myself, then wouldn't both of us be late? It was kind of a prerequisite for Gouldian authenticity. The day was sunny but humid, and I felt an unpleasant dampness creeping down my back. The forecast had called for rain and so I—awed supplicant of the Doppler 10,000—was wearing a black rain jacket despite the ample sunshine. Better to be safe than not-sweaty. The people on the wide sidewalks were an odd mix of leggy models and lushy businessmen. None of them carried umbrellas. Secure in my meteorological superiority, I raced from the subway and cut westward along Twenty-second Street, doing my best imitation of a car in a video racing game: tailgating dawdlers, applying an imaginary hand-brake for sudden turns. I was halfway across Ninth Avenue when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket.

Great. Existentialism before lunch.

I cleared a pathway for myself under the shade of an apartment-building awning and typed while I walked.

I was waiting for the light at Tenth Avenue two minutes later when my pocket buzzed again.

Not an auspicious start to the day, I thought as I neared the diner. One never wants to finish second when one is playing with oneself.

 

The Dolphin—acclaimed and frequented for its painfully hip retro design—is actually the oldest business on its block. To the left of it is the “discount” outlet of an Austrian furniture firm that doesn't believe in couches priced under three thousand dollars—or pillows. To the right of it is a store specializing in nanny-busting video cameras that come encased in stuffed bears. I've often thought that the only reason the Dolphin stays afloat is because half of its customers have been going there for years and the other half think that it might be ironic but are too nervous to ask.

I felt a hiccup of panic in my chest as I pulled open the glass door. Nearly all of the diner's pink vinyl booths were full, which relieved me slightly—I'd learned from spy movies that the hero is never shot when he meets his adversary in a public place—but it also increased the sense that I was being watched. I scanned the tops of the diners' heads, looking for my own. Maybe this diner was a gateway to Bizarro World. Maybe I had been accidentally (and secretly) cast in a citywide remake of
The Prince and the Pauper.
Or maybe—please, God, maybe, I thought—this was all just a massive mistake.

“One for lunch?” I was at the counter now, and the largest, hairiest man I had ever seen was looking at me from behind a cash register that, underneath his meaty paws, looked like it was made by Fisher-Price. He had a name tag that read
STAN
, but I didn't believe it. If I had an impersonator, then clearly so did Bluto, Popeye's archnemesis.

“No…,” I stammered. “Not exactly. I'm meeting someone.”

“Ah,” said Stan/Bluto. “Your brother!”

Oh, Christ.

I started to say, “I don't have a brother,” but instead I followed Bluto's swollen, carpeted forearm to where it was pointing: the last booth against the far wall, where I was sitting, smiling, waving at me.

I stumbled a little, but caught myself.

“You OK?” Bluto looked genuinely concerned.

“Ah,” I said, but my mouth was dry. “Yeah.” My voice cracked. “It's just that he's…”

The me at the booth was shrugging now, laughing behind his eyes. My eyes.

“I know how it is!” Bluto laughed and clapped me on the shoulder so hard I thought I felt my collarbone buckle.

“You do?”

“Brothers!” He laughed again. “Sometimes they don't get along so good!”

I swallowed hard and made my way down the aisle toward the booth.

Sitting across the table from yourself isn't anything like looking in the mirror. It should be, but it isn't. Have you ever tried to surprise yourself in a mirror? You can't. It's like trying to tickle yourself—no matter what you do, you always know what to expect. So looking in the mirror becomes, for better or worse, a con job. The best you can do is primp and preen, show off the most flattering views possible of yourself, showcase your finest expressions. We don't look in the mirror to be surprised. We look in the mirror to be reassured.

Which is the exact opposite of sitting across the table from yourself in a crowded diner on a sticky Tuesday, the third day of July. A mirror mimics you. A doppelgänger, however, mocks you.

The person who was sitting across from me
was
me in every appreciable way except reality. We were the same height, the same weight. Had the same shade of brown hair, the same dark brown eyes. We had the same knotty fingers and the same hard chin. We even had the same beard bald spot—a thin line along the left jawbone. We had the same voice, the same vocabulary, the same wave. We even had the same handshake.

“Hello, you,” said my doppelgänger.

“Hello, me,” I said. And felt like passing out.

The doppelgänger reached across the table and pinched my arm, hard.

“Ow!” I yelled. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Because you were wondering just then if you were dreaming, and I thought I'd disabuse you of that notion in the quickest way possible.”

I rubbed my arm. It seemed that I was a bit of an asshole.

“So,” I said as calmly as possible. “What the fuck is this?”

“This?” he said theatrically. “This is lunch.”

I stared at the doppelgänger more closely then and started to make out the differences. For one, there was no way my ears were that big. There was also a hardness in his look that seemed unfamiliar to me. A cruel focus to his eyes, which were ringed by dark, purple circles of exhaustion. His stubble was quickly advancing to the far side of being a beard, and his hair was artfully collapsed and dribbled down the sides of his face in thick sideburns. His shirt was a flimsy white button-down with light blue stripes that looked cheap but was clearly obnoxiously expensive. Worst of all, I had a sneaking suspicion that underneath the table his pants were leather.

“Like what you see?” he asked. “Because I certainly don't.”

“Nice,” I said. “You need a shave. And some sleep.”

“Thanks, Dad,” he said.

“And a breath mint wouldn't hurt either. You smell like cigarettes. And rum.”

“Kahlúa, actually,” he said. “Disgusting, I know, but that's who sponsored that party last night. An open bar is an open bar.”

“Who are you?”

“Isn't it obvious that I'm you?” The doppelgänger picked his teeth with a fork.

“No, that's ridiculous.
I'm
me. Where did you come from?”

“Jesus, you haven't gotten laid in a long time, have you?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

The doppelgänger snorted and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

“Hello?” I said, trying to mask the quaver in my voice. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Man, if you don't know…”

A beehived waitress arrived tableside bearing an enormous plate.

“Hey hon, here you go,” she said, placing a platter of burger and fries in front of the doppelgänger. She turned to me. “Did you want to order anything? He said you wouldn't mind if he ate first.” She paused. “Jesus, you two sure look alike!”

“Um,” I said.

The doppelgänger speared a french fry with a knife. “You should get something,” he said. “You look skinny.”

“So do you,” I said.

The doppelgänger winked. I turned to the waitress, who was slowly shifting her eyes from one version of me to the other.

“I'll just have a Coke, please.”

When the waitress was gone, the doppelgänger upturned a bottle of ketchup and splashed red all over his plate.

“If you wanted coke, David, you should have just asked me.”

I watched him lift the burger to his lips and take a sickeningly large bite. Bloody beef juices ran down his chin.

“Jesus,” I said. “Is that a hamburger?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, wiping undaintily at his mouth.

“B-but,” I stammered.

“What?”

“I'm a vegetarian!”

I realized I had yelled this when all of the tables around us fell silent, knives and forks clattering. Directly behind me, a baby started to wail. I couldn't believe any of this was happening.