My Twin Loves

She looked at her hand. She looked at it for a long time. "I'm sorry, I thought I put the cap on, I'm..."

She went to the sink and washed her hand. "It's not coming off."

"I'm sorry, it's a permanent marker, it'll probably..."

"It's not coming off," she interrupted, scrubbing the black line with the pot scrubber. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. I was afraid she would scrub until her flawless skin was raw meat. "Mike, it's not fucking coming off!"

It was the first time I'd ever heard her curse. "Darn" was her usual limit. My mouth felt full of sand. I managed to croak, "It's OK, honey, it'll wear off in a few days."

"You did it on purpose." She looked at me and the lights in her eyes winked out.

I managed a weak smile. "Why would I do that?"

"I don't know," she said. But she did know. Otherwise, why would she be so upset? The kitchen was quiet as a tomb. We stood there, staring each other down like gunfighters. Neither of us said a word for a solid sixty seconds. I didn't know what to say, because what I wanted to say was unspeakable. I'd announced my suspicions by tagging her with the marker. Now I was terrified. She was standing right next to my knife block and for all I knew she would pull out the 8-inch carving knife and use it to preserve their secret.

She didn't go for the knife, but I was soon wishing she had. "I'm leaving," she said. She got her jacket from the chair.

"Lynn! It was an accident!"

She wouldn't even look at me. Her jaw was set, her dark eyes fierce. "Don't call me. Don't come near me. I don't want to see you." Before I could say another word, she was gone. I was in shock. I looked out the window and watched her car back out of my driveway. Before her tail-lights vanished around the corner I had the phone in my hand.

"Hello?" Amy's musical voice brought me to tears. I was so afraid I'd never hear another kind word in those dulcet tones that hearing them so soon unmanned me.

"Amy," I sobbed. "I need your help."

"Mike? What happened? Are you OK? Is Lynn there?"

"She just left. We had a fight. She..."

"What happened?" she barked. Instantly on edge. I told her about the last five minutes, the marker, the standoff, the exit. When I was done I waited for Amy to say something. She didn't.

"Amy?"

Silence. "Amy!"

"You drew on her with a permanent marker." A statement, not a question.

"No, I didn't draw on her. It was an accident."

"You just happened to have a black permanent marker in your hand and you just forgot to put the cap on and then you just brushed her hand with it? And you call that an...accident?"

"Yes!"

There was a long pause. When she spoke again, Amy's voice was exactly the same as Lynn's, the same icy modulation. "Didn't you have plans to take Lynn to dinner tomorrow? The Tin Angel?"

"Yes."

"She can't very well go to dinner at a nice restaurant like that with a big black mark on her hand, can she? Maybe that's why she's so fucking angry!"

The bones in my legs turned to jelly, I fell to my knees. Amy was angry because SHE was supposed to have dinner with me tomorrow night. Dinner, and then home to kiss and nibble. And if Lynn had a big black mark on her hand, Amy couldn't morph into Lynn, could she? Unless she too marked her hand with black ink. And then...they wouldn't be able to be seen together, else everyone ask, "Wow, you BOTH had boo-boos with a marker?"

"Amy, it was an accident."

"You aren't clumsy, Mike." There was a pause. "Lynn just pulled in the driveway."

That fast? She must have driven like a maniac. "Amy, please, put her on the phone, please."

"Wait..."

"Amy!"

"What?"

"Please, tell her I love her. Please. I love her."

No answer. There was a clunk as she put the phone down, and then I heard muffled voices in the background. I couldn't make out the words. No one came back to the phone for a good five minutes. I was shouting into the receiver, trying to get either twin's attention. When I heard the scraping of the phone being picked up, I held my breath. "Hello?"

A pause. Then, a voice that trembled with sobs, "Mike, don't call here again. If you call back, it's over. I need to think. Do you understand?"

I said that I did. Before I could say another word, the line clicked dead. I set the phone down. I didn't even know which twin had issued the ultimatum.

Did it matter?

I staggered to the kitchen. I drank a beer, then another, then another. I drank myself into a stupor, because that was the only way I could sleep. I slept and had no dreams, just an unbroken flow of blackness before my eyes. In Lynn, all my dreams had come true. And all my nightmares, too.

*****

Two weeks went by. I heard nothing. Nothing.

I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. Shaving became an ordeal, because every time I swept the blades over my throat I had to fight the keening urge to slash myself and be done with it.

I drank much too much. My boss called my parents because she thought I might be suicidal. My mother asked what happened. I couldn't tell her. She asked if I wanted her to talk to Lynn. I begged her not to. I still had hope. I still thought she might come back to me. I waited through fourteen days of hell, staring at the phone, howling like an addict because I couldn't call.

I waited for the misery to pass, waited for my heart to finally begin to heal. I waited in vain. Every day was worse than the day before. Every day the blackness at the center of my soul spread like hot tar inside me. I drowned in tears.

It was a Saturday, a gorgeous October morning, the sky an electric blue, not a cloud for five counties. A sweet breeze rattled the branches that surrendered their leaves a week earlier. The newspaper was lying in the driveway. I walked out in my bathrobe and bare feet, ignoring the cold, three days stubble on my cheeks, my hair matted with last night's sweat.

A soft voice came from the street, by my mailbox. "Hey."

My head jerked up, I dropped the paper. Lynn slowly walked over and picked up the plastic-wrapped newspaper at my feet. Her car was parked in front of my house, where my pine tree hid it from view. She looked at me, and her dark eyes caught the weak sunlight and twinkled. She smiled and touched my stubbly jawline with her fingers. "Are you a mess."

She held up her hand. "See, you were right. That mark did come off, eventually." She was trying to make a joke, and I tried to smile politely. "Hey, hey," she said, brushing at the tears that stained my cheeks. She put her arms around me and hugged me tight. My own arms hung at my side, I didn't have the strength to do anything but cry. I was so destroyed from the past two weeks that my only reaction to any emotion-despair, rage, joy-were tears.

Lynn led me inside. "Come on, let's get you in the shower." It was exactly what I needed. I shampooed and scrubbed, and when I emerged Lynn was standing there with my razor and shaving gel. It didn't even register that I was standing nude in front of her. I sat on the toilet seat while she lathered my face and carefully shaved me. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.

What to say to her. "How's Amy?" I asked.

She smiled. "She's fine. Worried about you. Like I've been."

"Why would you be worried?"

"Because I called your mother, and she said you weren't doing well."

I let out a mirthless laugh. "No, I haven't done well the past two weeks."

She patted my face with the towel. "I haven't done well either." She helped me to my feet, and we walked out into the bedroom. While I was in the shower she'd made the bed and filled two laundry baskets with dirty clothes. "I missed you, Michael."

"You didn't call. All you had to do was pick up the phone."

She shook her head. "It wasn't that easy." She sat on the bed, I did the same. I had the feeling something important was about to happen, and I didn't know if it was going to be my salvation or my end.

Her voice took on a faraway tone, like she was remembering something from years and years ago. "I was so angry at you. Just so...angry." Then she looked at me and returned to the present. "But I love you. I love you and I want to be with you." She took my hands in hers. "Can you forgive me, and forget that night ever happened?"

It was her way of admitting the truth. And of acknowledging that I knew what that truth meant. She couldn't ask me to pretend I was dating one sister when I was dating both, because then I wouldn't be pretending, would I?

Would I agree to live a lie, based on mutual love and trust?

Could I forget that she and her sister had carefully deceived me the past four months?

No, I couldn't forget.

But. "I can forgive you anything. Anything. But I couldn't go through the past two weeks again. Not knowing if I would ever see you again." I looked at my bare feet. "What happened that night can never happen again. Ever."

It was my ultimatum. One or the other. They had to decide. Lynn sat looking at her hands for a long time, the she turned to me and smiled. "It will never happen again. I promise."

There was something sad in her eyes, something that made my heart feel heavy in my chest. I should have been happy that this nightmare was ending, but I wasn't. They both loved me. I loved them both. But it had to end. That's what I told myself. It had to end.

We kissed, softly at first, then with more heat. I was suddenly aware that I was naked. Lynn's fingers closed around my penis and slowly stroked me. She pushed me back and lowered her head into my lap. Her lips drew me into her mouth. In a minute I was quivering like a plucked bowstring, my body seconds away from release.

She stopped. She stood up, pulled off her sweater, then she unbuttoned her pants. I lay there transfixed as she stepped out of her panties. I'd never seen her in the nude. She was so beautiful it took my breath away, a beautiful, melancholy goddess.

She said, "Make love to me." She crawled on the bed and lay next to me, her rich blonde hair splayed out on the pillow. I touched her stomach, the skin the same creamy white as her face. I moved on top of her, trembling with excitement. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. Please."

I felt like a fool. "I don't have any protection."

"Michael, please."

She slowly, slowly opened her legs. It was the most beautiful sight imaginable, this angel, lying on my bed waiting for me to love her.

I mounted her, sliding my left arm under her neck and using my right to guide my penis inside her. "Go slow, go slow..."

I entered her slowly. Her eyes never left mine as I pushed myself inside. Until I was buried in her to the root, and then she squeezed her eyes shut and arched her back. She hissed, "I can feel you inside me."

I kissed her and she looked into my eyes. "You're the first one."

I thought I was going to cry again. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes...no! Don't pull out!" She grabbed my hips and pulled me down. She pleaded, "Don't stop!"

Oh God. It wasn't the physical pleasure that thrilled me so-although it was the most exquisite sensation I'd ever known. It was being inside her, joined with her, that made me moan with ecstasy. As I slowly thrust myself in and out I knew that these rapturous minutes would be the greatest in my life, that when I lay on my deathbed and my past flashed before my eyes this would be the signature moment of my existence, the memory that would allow me to slip from this world with a heart filled with joy and thanksgiving.

I raised up on my hands to give my hips more freedom to move and Lynn's eyes sprang open as I started thrusting a bit harder, a bit faster, taking care not to hurt her. She slowly closed them again and moaned, a sound I matched as the friction drove me insane. She looked up at me and a huge smile slowly spread across her lips. "Fuck me, Michael." She giggled after she said that forbidden word. She stopped giggling when I started thrusting with more and more urgency, when I shot my arms under her knees and lifted her legs to my shoulders and started pumping like an animal.

She had an orgasm, her whole body stiffened, then shook as I pushed myself deeper and deeper. She forced her face into the pillow as she came, her hair was twisted under her cheek, she looked hot and sexy I couldn't bear it. The dam finally burst and I flooded her. "Oh my God, it's so warm, it feels so good." I came until I was absolutely exhausted, and when it was over, I collapsed on her. We were sweaty, gasping, arms and legs twisted together. I rolled off of her and lay there staring at the ceiling.

"I think we'll do that again," I joked, and instantly regretted it. The girl lying next to me might never be in my bed again. The other twin might be the one who became "Lynn". I wrapped my arms around her. "I love you."

"I love you too."

I kissed her cheek. I whispered, over and over into her ear, "I love you. I love you. I love you." That's how I sang her to sleep, with that lullaby.

She slept, I lay awake for a long time. I wondered how they would decide. They were choosing roles for the rest of their lives. I doubted they would have any trouble switching jobs, they'd just trade classrooms and coworkers. No one would ever know. For all I knew, they switched back and forth all the time.

Maybe they would flip a coin again. Cut a deck of cards. Maybe the girl I met at the grocery store would win out because we met first. I didn't know, and for some reason I wanted to. I couldn't sleep, I was too uneasy in my mind.

The next day was Sunday. I gave up on sleep at 7AM and I made Lynn bacon and eggs for breakfast. She left just after nine, saying she needed to take care of some things at home. I knew what things she was talking about. When she left she stopped in the doorway, turned around and softly kissed me on the lips. "Goodbye, Michael," she said, and there was a sense of finality about it. It was a difficult moment. This nonsense had to stop. But someone was going to get hurt, someone I cared about very much.

I kept myself busy the rest of the morning, catching up on two weeks worth of housework. Laundry. Vacuuming. Scrubbing the toilets. I waited for Lynn to call, all day. When the phone finally rang, around two, the tension was so great I had to swallow hard to keep my lunch from making a return appearance.

"Hey you," she said.

"Hi."

"I love you."

I said I loved her too. She asked if I could come over later, around five, and I said you betcha. She was getting her hair done and wouldn't be home till them. She didn't mention what we'd discussed and I didn't bring it up.

I pulled in her driveway a little after five. Lynn met me at the door with a kiss and a hungry look in her eye. "I hope you're well rested."

"Is Amy home?"

She nodded. "We went to the salon together, but she has some errands to run. She'll be gone for a few hours."

"That should be enough time," I said. I put my hands on her waist and pulled her pelvis against mine. Oh boy...

I heard soft footsteps behind me. A familiar voice said, "OK, I'll be home in a few hours."

This was going to be difficult. I fixed a smile on my face and slowly turned to face her. When she came into my field of vision I got one of the biggest shocks of my life. They still had the same exact shoulder-length hairstyle, but instead of Lynn's glowing, coppery tresses, Amy was now a sunny strawberry blonde.

It staggered me. "Amy, I, whoa..."

She smiled. Perhaps she thought she was hiding it, but I could see the sadness in her eyes. "Is it that bad?" she asked.

"It's that good. You look fantastic." It was true. She looked incredible. And, most importantly, she looked DIFFERENT. Anyone could tell them apart now. It was her sign of surrender, to prove that she and her sister had given up the game.

She thanked me for the compliment. And then, without another word, she left. I said, "That takes some guts, for her to chance the color of her hair. It's a big change."

Lynn shrugged. "Girls do it all the time." She reached down and popped the button on my jeans. As she pulled my zipper down she said, "There's something else people do all the time."

This time we weren't slow and loving. This time we fucked, hot and hard and both of us screaming and clawing at each other. And I knew that this was the same girl I made love to that morning. There was none of the hesitation of the day before. When I came she was on her hands and knees and I slamming myself against her tiny little ass, and Lynn moaned as I crashed into her so hard I thought my thighs would be black and blue. When I exploded inside her, and I reared up behind her and saw Lynn bury her face in the pillow screaming my name, I felt utterly exhilarated. I had this to look forward to for the rest of my life. At last, everything was perfect.

*****

I wonder if Lynn and Amy would have, eventually, gone back on their unspoken agreement to stop sharing me. If Lynn, stuck with me every day, would have gotten tired and dumped me. I can't answer that question, because I screwed things up long before those issues came up.

I was happy, so happy it didn't seem fair. My face was sore from smiling all day. Lynn was happy too, but her joy was tinged with sadness. It was Amy. She was obviously depressed. We all knew why Amy was sad, but no one could say the reason why. It was taboo.

Amy didn't spend her days weeping and her nights drinking, as I had. But she was unhappy, and it hurt my heart in a strange way to see her that way. It was more than concern for a friend. This was a girl, after all, whom I had held in my arms, and kissed, and whispered in her ear how much I loved her. Those lips, cast in a permanent frown, had once brought me unimaginable pleasure. She had given me such joy, and it was my fault that she was unhappy now. Maybe it wasn't all my fault, there was plenty of blame to go around, but it didn't ease my mind.

What was even more troubling was the growing attraction I felt toward her. She was a different girl now, beautiful in her own way, but still so identical to the girl I was in love with. The changes in her appearance just murkied the waters even more.

But I loved Lynn more than ever. The idea that I might abandon Lynn for Amy was ludicrous. I was already looking for engagement rings, starting to think about a good wedding date. We hadn't talked about marriage yet, but it seemed so wonderfully inevitable.

In November a teacher Lynn worked with got married, and we were invited to the wedding. But I couldn't go, I had a project due at work and I had to work that Saturday. I tried my damndest to get out of it, so Lynn and I could get away for a weekend and maybe talk a little bit about our own wedding hopes and dreams, but no luck.

On the Thursday before she left we made love at my house until 2AM, and then, exhausted, I lay back on the pillow until the spots faded from before my eyes.

"Can you do my a favor," she whispered.

"My God, anything."

"Would you stop in to see Amy on Saturday? Maybe take her to dinner, just to keep her company? She's been a little down."

To me, this sounded like a very bad idea, and I said so. "Why?" she asked. And that stumped me. If the twins stopped their division of labor, why should I object? The taboo again reared up. Any problem with the situation from now on would be on me.

Did I have a problem?

I said, "Well, I should be done around six. I could stop over after work, maybe we could split a pizza or something, rent a movie."

And that's what we did. I knocked on the door a little before seven, jumpy as a cat. For all I knew, this was the girl I'd met at the grocery store. When she opened the door, her glorious red hair framing that lovely face, I wanted to run away and hide.

We ate the pizza, watched the movie, and it was all very pleasant and proper and bizarre. The tension in the room was so palpable I could taste it, a sour, electric taste of hot metal in my mouth. She would look at me, like she wanted to say something...and not say it. She'd just smile. And whatever it was that was making my heart go thump thump thump stepped on the gas.