Sunday, November 29, 2015
Doppelganger
It wasn’t “You really should meet X.
Looks just like you!”
We stumble into each other at a
railway station, both on hour delay,
big storm down the line. Have coffee.
“You have the same little scar under
left eye. Cherry tree branch in my case.
Snapped by a climbing companion.”
He doesn’t remember, or says he doesn’t.
We fit up other particulars as to taste in
food and other trivialities.
Is there a Rita to tear him to pieces?
I finally blurt.
Zoe, and not quite as serious, “But...a little
hyperbole?” he laughs at me.
“I catch myself sometimes too!” he adds.
Little time left, so he proposes that we learn
to think alike, compromise on Rita and Zoe.
Since he understates, while I...
Thus Rita catches a break.
I take his card, he mine.
“What a creep!” I announce to my private
compartment.
Labels: doppelganger, double, experience, girlfriends, marriage, rail, taste, wives, women
Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Both of You
Meeting Oneself
Anyway, there I am! I mean, if you count the
gray hairs he has exactly the same number.
Uncanny resemblance everywhere! And an office
manager too. Well, small wonder since a convention
of us.
We introduce, like looking into mirrors, though he's
not as shocked for some reason.
Exchange cards. He works for a small hardware
outfit twenty miles away.
When I tell Melody, she wants to see him. So, where's
the harm?
I call him up on his cell and we drive there the
following Saturday.
The girls get along okay, both caustic about the men.
Par for the course even when we’re not identical.
A few Sundays later, we go again. Well, we're invited.
Some major differences arise. I'm dying to get the Eagles'
score, and a beer, and his usual Sunday is listening to
old radio tapes and drinking tea.
Honest to God! So I witness something called
I Love a Mystery. Reggie is the one character I retain.
The ladies adjourn to her secret room where she shows
off quilts she has made.
“Well that's quite enough of that!” Melody erupts going home.
And it was. Except that my boss asks me to write an
article for the company newsletter about a famed
reorganization even then driving most of us nuts.
I figure I can get a quote from my strange twin: his firm
listed as one which a short while ago undertook this regimen
of identical marvels.
Uh uh. Nobody ever heard of him there.
I call the house, and real estate lady answers.
Been vacant a few months and they’re about
to rent it furnished! She, too, has never heard
of my double and his wife.
Well, who's crazy here?
No...really. I don't think...that. What'd be the point
of a practical joke? Makes no sense.
I think that whatever entity that couple's from,
they've been drawn back by their authorities.
So, “creepy experiment” is the closest I can come.
Yeah it freaks me out! But, since Melody wants never
to hear about them again, I'm at least on safe
ground there.
Labels: double, identity, twin
