Strange Case of the Quigley Twins

At least she had felt no pain, Ryan thought. The pain was all his.

He left her then. Rental car to the airport; airplane into the night sky. The room, the car and the plane were all registered under different assumed names. Untraceable. Ryan remembered everything in the room he had touched, so he could wipe the fingerprints away before he left. He had even worn a condom. This was only to avoid leaving behind evidence. It had offered Corrina no protection.

Ryan leaned back in the airplane seat and drank whiskey. He forced Corrina's face into his mind, as contrition. It had been many years and he was very wealthy.

*

"So you don't feel anything anymore?" the middle-aged psychiatrist asked.

"No," Mark replied wearily.

"Tell me about this lack of feeling," the psychiatrist said. "How long has it been since you've enjoyed sex?"

Mark sighed. He didn't like this man. The psychiatrist's dense salt-and-pepper beard and liquid blue eyes behind the thin-rimmed glasses formed a not very convincing mask of compassion. But Ryan felt it was important that Mark have someone to talk to. So, twice a week, Mark sat in this chair and answered the same questions over and over again.

"It's been years," Mark said.

The psychiatrist nodded. "But you're helping people," he said. "You're saving lives. Don't you get any satisfaction from that?"

"Not anymore," Mark said.

"Hmm," the psychiatrist made a note on the pad he kept before him on the desk. "Now, last week we were talking about your father, how he left when you and your brother were . . . how old again?"

"Seven," Mark answered.

"And yet, you say you have no memories at all of your father. I find that curious. Seven is old enough that I think you should remember something."

"I don't." Mark realized as he spoke that the psychiatrist would certainly interpret his tone as defensive.

"Would you allow me to hypnotize you?" the psychiatrist asked. "Sometimes memories can be recovered that way. Especially if they're of a . . . traumatic nature."

"I don't care," Mark said, looking down at his feet.

"Maybe we can get to the root of your aversion to sex."

Mark nodded, absently, not even hearing what the man was saying anymore.

"There's not much time left in this session," the psychiatrist said. "Perhaps next week."

Mark stood and turned to leave.

"Wait a minute," the psychiatrist said. "I wanted to, ah, ask you something."

Mark knew by the tone of the man's what he was going to ask. He had heard it a thousand times before.

"I don't know if I've told you this, but I'm diabetic. You see? And I was wondering if you could, ah, perhaps, do anything for me?"

Mark nodded grimly and unzipped his pants.

"I know this is a bit irregular, but I hope it won't compromise our doctor-client relationship." The psychiatrist laughed nervously as he approached Mark. "Do I just, ah, take it in my mouth?"

"Whatever you prefer."

The psychiatrist got on his knees before Mark and licked his lips. Mark closed his eyes and tried to summon the ragged memory of Tanya. By now it was faded, as ghostly as a sepia photograph.

He heard the door flung open, and then a gunshot. Mark opened his eyes in time to see the psychiatrist's head explode like a Jack-O-Lantern his brother had once detonated with leftover Fourth-of-July fireworks when they were boys. The blood was everywhere at once, all over Mark, instantly painting every surface of the comfortable office.

Standing in the doorway was the psychiatrist's receptionist, the young dark-haired woman who had always been so kind to Mark. Now she held a smoking gun in her hand. Her eyes were drawn tight and hard. They fixed on Mark with real hatred.

"The spirits of devils can work miracles," she said. "But they are false miracles."

The gun turned to point at Mark. Then the receptionist's chest exploded. The front of her white, nurse-like dress burst open in a flash of red. She was hurled forward, snarling as she flew into the office. Behind where the woman had stood was Mr. Douglas, Mark's bodyguard. His gun also smoked.

"You all right, Mark?" Douglas asked, surveying with an unblinking eye the human carnage in the office.

Mr. Douglas was a tall, intense man with close-cropped reddish hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He still wore the dark suits and glasses which had been the uniform of the Secret Service, his previous employer. He had always frightened Mark.

"I'm fine," Mark answered.

He looked around the room. The doctor was obviously dead, his head a shattered egg. The receptionist, however, was still attempting to draw breath through her ventilated lungs. There was still time. Mark went to the dying woman and tore her undergarments away. He ripped away the blood-stained stockings and hitched up her skirt. Mark buried himself in her. The receptionist tried feebly to fight Mark off, but he was a determined rapist.

"Ah, what the hell are you doing?" Mr. Douglas cried, disgusted.

The miracle did not fail. The receptionist pushed Mark off her as her wounds snapped shut with two claps. A tiny round of applause formed by her entry and exit wounds. Some instinctive modesty compelled her to pull her skirt down. Then she scrambled for her gun, which was laying on the floor where she had dropped it.

"Please pick it up," Douglas said. He was well prepared to shoot her again. Part of him was curious to see if Mark could perform the same trick again so quickly.

The woman didn't give him the opportunity. She collapsed in the red puddle of her own blood, sobbing and praying under her breath.

She wasn't the first. Many people believed Mark was an Anti-Christ, the devil made flesh. They could not believe that their God would use fornication and sodomy as instruments of His will. Some believed this so strongly they were willing to become assassins for the Lord. To protect Mark from these avenging angels, Ryan had hired Mr. Douglas. The job paid him more than he had made protecting the President.

Mark zipped himself up and left the room silently. Mr. Douglas pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Ryan's number one-handed. His gun hand never left the woman on the floor.

*

Ryan sat behind his big desk and regarded the woman sitting across from him with disbelief and more than a little admiration.

"I'm sorry, Miss . . ." he looked down at his appointment calendar, "Simone, but the minimum cost for a session with my brother is twenty thousand dollars. We can't really negotiate that, it's . . ."

Deanna Simone didn't blink her impossibly blue eyes. She had bluffed her way into the meeting by saying she was, of all things, a feminine hygiene heiress. Ryan respected her for that. He respected her more with everything she said.

"I don't have twenty thousand dollars," she interrupted calmly. "I don't have any money. My insurance ran out months ago and I haven't been able to work."

Deanna's hair was raven-black, it was one of the things which had appealed to Ryan most. Now she gave her hair a good tug and it slid right off her head. She sat before him, bald and unashamed. This disconcerted Ryan as much as if she'd torn off her shirt.

"The fucking chemo isn't working anymore, Mr. Quigley. I'm going to die," she said, without a shred of self-pity in her voice. It was just a simple statement of inarguable truth. "If you don't let me sleep with your brother, I swear my death will haunt you to your grave."

It just might, Ryan thought. He looked down at his calendar again. Mark was scheduled that evening for a session with a very rich, very elderly sheik with a heart condition who was flying in from Saudi Arabia. Ryan crossed out the unpronounceable Arabic name and penciled in "Deanna Simone." He would have to rearrange appointments booked months ahead in order to accommodate her. It was the first time he had ever authorized a free session.

"You're on for eight tonight, Deanna," Ryan said. "Can I call you Deanna?"

Deanna nodded warily. She replaced the wig on her head at a skewed angle which Ryan found oddly fetching. "The fee?"

"Let me take you to dinner tomorrow night and we'll call it even," he said. "I know you'll be feeling better by then."

Deanna laughed. To Ryan it sounded like bells.

"You're kidding, right?" she said.

"No," Ryan said very seriously. "No I'm not."

*

Mark sat alone in his dark bedroom. He spent every minute that he wasn't working in here, by himself, in the dark. Almost every kind of stimulation disgusted him now. He could only eat the blandest foods, could only tolerate silence and darkness. Everything else reminded him of sex, which reminded him of sickness. He had come to hate the pathetic souls he serviced, their naked hunger, their demands that he remove their pain.

There was a knock at the door. Mark knew it had to be Ryan. No one else had access to this room.

"Come in," Mark called.

Ryan entered the room, admitting a bright wedge of light. He left the door open so he would be able to see. Mark smiled weakly at him.

"Is it time for the appointment already?"

There were no clocks in the room, and Mark's sense of time was vague at best. It didn't seem that long since the last one, but then it never did.

"No," Ryan said. "I just want to talk to you."

There was a tone to Ryan's voice Mark couldn't remember ever hearing before. Ryan sat down on the bed beside him.

"Mark, I . . ." Ryan began, then swallowed hard.

"What's wrong?" Mark asked, truly concerned now.

"Mark, I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"Look at you. Look what I've turned you into."

There was a long silence.

"I never blamed you," Mark finally said.

"I wish to hell you would blame me," Ryan turned his head so he would not have to look Mark in the eye.

"What's going on, Ryan?"

Ryan sighed. "You remember a girl you were with last week? Deanna, she had cancer?"

Mark strained but was unable to recall. All his clients blurred together in his mind.

"You have to remember her. She was beautiful and . . ." Ryan was unable to summon words to describe the qualities which drew him to Deanna. "Anyway, I've been seeing her."

"Seeing her?" Ryan said. "You mean, dating her?"

"Yes," said Ryan. "I've never met anyone like her."

Mark smiled. "That's wonderful. I'm happy for you. Does she know . . ."

"Yes," Ryan said. "I told her we can never make love. She's accepted that. That's not the problem."

Mark looked at his brother curiously in the near-darkness.

"I'm not worthy of her," Ryan said. The words were difficult despite the fact that he'd rehearsed them. "I'm afraid that if I tell her what I've done to you, she won't love me."

"What do you mean?" Mark said. "What you've done to me?"

"I'm your pimp, Mark. I'm your fucking pimp."

The tears came then, Ryan couldn't hold them back. Mark put his arm around his brother, and Ryan let himself be held.

"You don't have to do this anymore," he sobbed.

"They'd never let me alone now," Mark said.

Ryan knew this was true. "I'm sorry," he kept saying. "I'm so sorry."

"It's OK," Mark embraced his weeping brother. "You didn't know any better."

Ryan's tears soaked his brother's chest and Mark held him even closer. For the first time in years he found himself taking pleasure in the warmth of human contact. His hands moved over his brother's body, the embrace turning into a caress. Mark kissed Ryan, and the kiss contained real passion.

"What are you doing?" Mark said. He felt the warmth, too, and it frightened him.

"Shh . . ." Mark soothed, pulling at his brother's clothes. Ryan understood then what was happening. He undressed quickly.

Ryan and Mark Quigley laid on the bed in opposite directions. In this position, the love flowed in an unbroken circle from one into the other, back into the first. A spinning ring of tenderness which to the brothers was eternal, but which in real time spanned mere minutes.

When it was done, only one stood. The healer dead, the killer healed. Both were at last complete.