June 13, 2017

PC 474: Asymmetry

* Author : Kendra Fortmeyer

* Narrator : Dagny Paul

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Pria Wood

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First published in Forge Journal

Rated PG-13.

Asymmetry

by Kendra Fortmeyer

She arrived at his apartment ten minutes late and discovered that she was already there.

The woman was a champion worrier, but this was something she had not thought to worry about. She had considered: is this a date, is this not a date, am I ready, is he a psycho/rapist/murderer who is going to drug/rape/murder me, what if I am a bad kisser, and even what if dinner makes me gassy and he leans in to kiss me and I let one rip and the whole evening comes down around our ears.

She rang the doorbell and the man appeared with a rosy smile that drained slowly from his face like paint.

“Hi,” the woman said. She had a bottle of cheap wine in her hand. She had picked it because it was on sale and had a tag beneath it that advertised it as REGINALD’S PICK, and she felt a person named Reginald was somebody who probably knew something about wine.

The man stared.

“Can I come in?” the woman asked.

She heard a woman’s laugh behind him: a familiar laugh, a things-aren’t-funny-but-we’re-making-them-funny-laugh. A laugh the woman used herself when social situations got uncomfortable or slow.

“You forgot I was coming over,” the woman blurted. She knew this had been a mistake. She wanted to drop the wine bottle, or to club him over the head with it and run.

“Who is it?” asked a female voice from the kitchen. There was the scraping of a chair, footsteps. Over the man’s paralyzed shoulder, a face appeared.

It was her face.

“Oh my God,” the two of her murmured in unison.

The women sat on the man’s couch, studied him and each other and the identical bottles of wine.

“This is a joke,” the man said. The woman didn’t know him very well. He was a friend of a friend, new to town. She had helped him find an apartment, and he invited her over for dinner as a thank-you. “You have an identical twin,” he said, to the first one, the Other, “and you’re playing a joke.”

“No,” the women said in unison. “I’m an only child.”

“This is sick,” muttered the man. He was slumped in a terrible plaid armchair. It never would have worked out between them, with an armchair like that. The woman could see that now.

The women looked at each other.

“Who are you?” the woman said.

The Other said her name. It was the woman’s name.

The woman said, “Me, too.”

They regarded each other, considering.

“When did He leave?” the Other asked softly. She didn’t need to say: your husband. She said He with a capital H, like something venerated, then dead.

The woman answered, “Six weeks ago, Sunday.”

Tears pricked the Other’s eyes. The woman had been unable to find this sympathy in anyone else.

“So you’re not twins,” the man said, startling them. They had forgotten he was there. “You’ve never met each other before. And you’re both at my house for dinner.”

“Yes,” they said, perhaps a little too emphatically.

“Can we at least open the second bottle of wine then?” he asked piteously.

“Go ahead,” the women said.

He scurried off toward the kitchen. The women regarded each other. They were worriers, not panickers. They stared and tried to understand.

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