My Vanishing Twin Page 7

  At the same time, he felt uncomfortable stirring Eleanor, even with a gentle comment about how much he had enjoyed himself. This felt far too intimate and vulnerable for two people that just did whatever it was that they had just done. He would not, for example and after all, tell a check-out clerk upon the purchase of some groceries, “That was incredible. Did you enjoy it, too?”

  He also did not feel right, however, simply asking for his bill at the risk of reducing whatever had just transpired into nothing more than a mere conversation with a grocery clerk. There was, after all, the distinct possibility that Eleanor viewed this encounter as entirely separate from her business practices, as something much, much more than just that. Or even just moderately more than that. But she still might very well have done whatever she had just done simply because she felt like doing it.

  Or, even more so, perhaps whatever just occurred really meant something to her. Perhaps she felt the same longing that Walter had felt, building, tugging, and looming.

  To this end, Walter considered saying absolutely nothing at all right now, instead simply waiting for her to awaken on her own. And then to see what happened. Granted, this was, by default, precisely what he was already doing, but he was now considering doing so deliberately instead.

  Whatever his next move, however, Walter’s tenacious shame made one thing readily apparent to him: whatever it was that had just happened here today was absolutely and entirely untenable. And while he clearly could not completely eliminate the last hour of his life from existence altogether, he was nevertheless best to figure out a way to make it seem as though the last hour of his life had been eliminated from existence altogether. Especially to anyone that knew him.

  Just then Eleanor stirred, rolling onto her side and, at long last, releasing Walter.

  She settled right back into repose, exhaling and easing off toward slumber again.

  “Hello there,” Walter coughed up before instantly deriding such a ridiculous choice of words given the moment and the circumstance. But he had to say something because returning to the moment he had just been in would be absolutely more than any human being with even a semblance of a heart could possibly bear. And he was precisely such a human being at the very least.

  Eleanor inhaled sharply and her eyes popped open.

  She let out a sigh.

  Then she reached up onto the nearby coffee table and retrieved a pair of glasses which Walter had not noticed until now.

  He had never even known that Eleanor wore glasses.

  He had always had a thing for women in glasses.

  Not all women in glasses. But certain women in certain glasses.

  And as Eleanor pushed her hair back out of her face, making room for her frames before sliding them on and looking up at Walter with a smile, it became insurmountably clear to Walter that this woman and these glasses both fell squarely within the realm of the thing he had always had.

  And just like that, Walter wanted Eleanor all over again.

  4.

  “I want to get my MBA,” Twin declared across the next morning’s breakfast table.

  He had prepared eggs Benedict as an excuse to make hollandaise sauce, which he had read was rich and delicious. He had also freshly squeezed a trio of citrus juices.

  Veronica swooned with pride over Twin’s announcement, failing to suppress an excited smile, which prompted Walter to ask…

  “You know about this?”

  “Isn’t it great?” she answered.

  Walter took a few bites of his eggs, which, of course, were fucking delicious.

  “Don’t you need a bachelor’s degree to go to graduate school?” he finally responded.

  “That’s where we can help him,” Veronica blurted out before Twin could speak.

  “Only if you’re comfortable with it,” Twin clarified.

  “We’re not already helping him?” Walter asked Veronica before trying the tamarind juice with, as Twin had described, “a splash of salt and cayenne to give the citrus a bit of a pop at its end.” The juice was, of course, the most refreshing thing Walter might ever have tasted in his life. “What do you want an MBA for anyway?” he added.

  “I have discovered that I have a deep passion for business. I want to become a businessman.”

  Walter considered these words before replying…

  “You have been alive eleven days. How do you have a deep passion for anything?”

  “This,” answered Twin in complete earnest, “is what I was born to do.”

  Walter went back to his food, buying himself a pause to figure out how to react.

  “Technically,” Veronica ruined Walter’s strategic silence, “Twin doesn’t have a name. And technically, he’s the exact same age as you are.”

  Walter looked up from his plate, confused as to why these two facts were relevant individually as well as what each one had to do with the other.

  “And you have a bachelor’s degree,” Veronica added.

  “Only if you’re comfortable with it,” Twin clarified again.

  “You want him to enroll as me?” Walter recoiled.

  “As Walter Braum, anyway,” Veronica corrected.

  “How is that not me?”

  “Walter Braum is just a name. It is not who you truly are. In your soul. Many people probably have that name. He would enroll as himself. He would just use that name.”

  “So…as me.”

  “Technically, yes. But he would be his own man on his own life trajectory.”

  “What the crap is that supposed to mean?” Walter derided, looking back to his Goddamn delectable plate of food.

  “What if I want to get my MBA?” he eventually offered.

  “Do you?” Veronica fired back.

  “No,” he answered. “But what if I do? Someday?”

  “You hate business.”

  “I hate selling hotel amenities. But I do it. I do all sorts of things that I hate. Maybe I will want to do an MBA someday, too. Even if I hate it.”

  “It’s okay,” Twin explained gently. “It was just an idea.”

  “This was your idea?” Walter asked of Twin, a bit sharply.

  “It was just a passing thought I had on the topic,” Twin backpedaled, growing quickly nervous. “I’m sorry. I thought it was…innovative.”

  Walter struggled to take all of this in.

  “How do you even know about master’s degrees?” he asked, attempting to start back at the beginning, before Veronica had turned Twin’s request into a cause.

  “I researched them,” Twin explained.

  “How?”

  “The library.”

  “Where is the library?”

  “There’s one four blocks from here.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “The Internet.”

  “How do you know how to use the Internet?”

  “It’s fairly self-explanatory.”

  “But how did you even hear about the Internet to begin with?”

  “A man named Morrison told me about it. I met him at Brinker’s Cafe the other morning. I was there for breakfast.”

  “And you just go to breakfast? You like breakfast, huh?”

  “Sometimes. I like talking to people. And I love bacon.”

  “Bacon’s good,” Walter muttered before getting back onto whatever track he was on. “With all due respect, Twin, why are you so Goddamn interested in so many Goddamn things?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “And do you really want to get tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in debt and half-way through an MBA program before you figure out that business is…mundane? I’ve lived thirty-five years and there are few things, if any, that didn’t start out really interesting to me that ultimately turned uninteresting.”

  Veronica lowered
her stare into the top of the table, shaking her head bitterly.

  “That was the other part of this plan that we needed to run by you,” Twin countered.

  “It’s a wonderful idea,” Veronica chimed in, not helping at all.

  “What do you have to do with this, Veronica?” Walter seethed. “This is my identity we are talking about.”

  “It’s only your name,” Veronica shot back.

  “The thing of it is,” Twin went on, “technically speaking, you would be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in debt.”

  “Your name, anyway,” Veronica added.

  Walter stopped talking and crinkled his brow.

  “Now,” Twin pressed on, “I would, of course, assume the responsibility for paying off these debts. And I have prepared a report detailing the projected increase in my earnings potential relative to achieving the degree.”

  Twin placed an elegant, professionally bound document on the table in front of Walter. The cover was made of a sleek, clean mahogany leather. The body of the tome had just the right amount of heft and gravitas to invite the reader into what would surely be a substantial but not overwhelming journey through its pages. Walter refused the invitation, though, choosing instead to merely puzzle over the artifact for the time being. And to puzzle over how his life had somehow settled into the unthinkably strange moment in which he presently found himself. No life decision or decisions could possibly, it seemed to Walter, have deliberately resulted in anything that was presently transpiring.

  “If you turn to page seventeen,” Twin went on, “you’ll see that at a conservative estimate, my increased earning potential upon graduating cum laude from one of the top ten business schools in America would enable me to repay the debt in approximately seven years, barring any major life crises costing in excess of ten thousand dollars. If, however, I continue living with you and Veronica in the interim…”

  “Which I think he should do,” Veronica eagerly interjected.

  “…I should be able to pay off the debt in full before three years pass, inasmuch as all living expenses would be kept to a minimum.”

  Walter still had not opened the book.

  He could not seem to move past wondering how in the world Twin even knew how to get something bound like this when Walter himself, in his thirty-five years of life, would not even know where to begin such an endeavor.

  Twin fought his way off his chair and lurched and staggered over to the chair beside Walter, pulling himself atop it in sharp, violent increments.

  He reached over and opened up the book for Walter.

  “I’ll give you some time with the text of the proposal,” Twin explained, “but I would like to just briefly illuminate the basic structure of the agreement for you.”

  As Twin leafed through the sections of the document with his crooked fingers, he explained…

  “The first six pages provide an analysis of my decision to achieve the Master’s of Business Administration degree, as well as a detailed action plan for acquiring admission into a top-tier program. Based on your undergraduate GPA of a three-point-two, I will need to acquire higher entrance exam scores and strategically play up my obvious physical challenges, demonstrating how they make me a diverse applicant with a wealth of unique experience that would enrich any classroom dialogue or group learning project. I have crafted a narrative of these challenges into a statement of intent, located behind the initial analysis. I will use that specific document in my applications.

  “Behind these pages, you will see a detailed study of economic trends impacting individual earning potential over the next twenty years. You will also notice case studies of individuals working comparable jobs with and without MBAs.

  “As I previously mentioned, pages seventeen through twenty-two explore the financial strategies required to attain the degree and then pay off the debt incurred. I used highly conservative predictive models. I anticipate achieving all markers in thirty percent less time than projected, which results in a concurrent seventeen percent lower expense rate than projected. But I don’t want to overpromise. Additionally, these projections assume the inability to acquire any scholarship monies whatsoever. In that regard, this document in front of you truly is a worst case scenario, which you will see is really quite manageable with little to no changes in your current spending behaviors. Should I be able to secure a scholarship, however, your already nominal risk would diminish even further.

  “From there, I’ve provided detailed portraits of each of the top ten MBA programs. I will be applying to all ten. And you will be able to see high, medium, and low personal earnings case studies of recent graduates of each program, which you can compare to the earlier composite case studies which disregard where the MBA in question was earned. You will see that I used an average of the low personal earnings case studies to predict the rate at which I will pay down the debts in my projected timelines. This obviously makes even more conservative my overall estimates…”

  “Will you stop talking, please?” asked Walter gently, his head more than spinning.

  “Yes,” responded Twin.

  “Walter,” reprimanded Veronica. “Twin has worked incredibly hard on…”

  “It’s okay, V,” Twin responded.

  Walter could not help but grimace…

  “He calls you ‘V?’” Walter scoffed.

  “You should acknowledge all of the amazing work Twin has done…” Veronica started in.

  “It’s really not about that,” Twin corrected. “It’s really about Walter feeling comfortable with…”

  “Everyone stop talking!” Walter yelled.

  And then it was silent.

  And Walter could think.

  Or try to think anyway.

  Which honestly seemed to Walter like all that anyone could really ask of him in a situation as absurdly unprecedented as this, even if Twin and Veronica’s straight faces seemed to belie the moment’s surely epic preternaturalness.

  But he could not even find a point from which to start to ponder all of this, his mind merely capable of firing splintered fragments of consternation that sparked and swelled and receded unresolved before eventually building into a cacophony that crescendoed into nothing more than a blank observation of the sound of Twin’s jagged, sharp, and fragile breath inhaling in a violent jolt and exhaling in an uneven series of sudden, acute start-stops.

  Walter had never wanted anything as badly as Twin clearly wanted this.

  Even the musical ambitions of his youth he had not wanted badly enough to actually pursue, let alone to thoughtfully pursue, let alone to thoughtfully prepare to thoughtfully pursue to the tune of an elaborate multiyear strategy to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into an apparently nearly surefire plan that would pay off at 21 percent return on investment after an initial investment period of seven years.

  Walter touched the gorgeously realized document perched before him rife with opportunity and potential and clear-minded ambition.

  He resented it and he admired it in equal parts, even if he felt the former more acutely.

  “How much did this book cost you?” he eventually asked, mostly because he felt like he needed to say something.

  Veronica smiled.

  Twin smiled, too, in his wincing way.

  Walter instantly regretted asking what he had naively intended as a merely innocuous question.

  “Nothing,” Veronica blurted, unable to restrain herself long enough for Twin’s slow reveal.

  Walter looked up from the book and at Twin.

  “I made a deal with the printer,” Twin explained.

  “Of course you did,” Walter muttered.

  “I showed him how this type of printing and binding could be a new potential revenue stream for his business that added only a small manufacturing/printing cost while increasing the pricing potential
over his existing array of product offerings by approximately one thousand two hundred percent. I then demonstrated a clear market for the product and persuaded him to create my proposal as a work sample to share with his existing and new clientele, your name redacted in all copies, of course.”

  While Walter saw herein a sudden and distinct opportunity to focus on his admiration for Twin’s savant-level brilliance, he opted instead to remain fixated upon his now-seething irritation with the little freak instead.

  Walter closed the proposal.

  “I’ll need some time to really think this through,” he explained, delaying Twin, and maybe more so Veronica, the satisfaction of his inevitable acceptance of the plan.

  “Of course,” Twin added. “I appreciate your earnest consideration and the respect you are affording me and my ideas.”

  “Right,” said Walter, picking up the book and leaving the kitchen. What he had wanted to say was fuck you.

  That night in bed, Veronica turned to face Walter. And Walter knew exactly what that meant. What he did not know, however, was why the sudden interest. He couldn’t help but suspect that this was somehow related to furthering Twin’s ambitions. This was, of course, coming from the same woman who regularly and passive aggressively thwarted any itch Walter expressed to leave Sheprick Consolidated by asking, faux-innocently, what he would do if not sales. Walter had always insisted that this was beside the point, that the critical issue at stake was what he would no longer be doing, not what he would be doing instead. To which Veronica had always replied that she was pretty sure that wasn’t how things worked.

  “I’m still on the mend,” Walter preempted what was about to become Veronica’s advance.

  “Oh,” she shrunk, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling. “I just thought it would be nice,” she added.

  “Twin is in the next room. So…”

  “So we’re never going to have sex again?”

  Rather than answer this question, Walter considered it a moment before replying…

  “He’s going to live with us forever?”