Scott Turow - Identical

“What the fuck?”

“I came in from the rain and the washrooms downstairs were occupied.”

“That was four hours ago.”

“Once I was here, I realized that I should take the chance to speak to you, Dita.”

Dita is the only person in the house who can lock her door. Her mother found one of those tarnished old brass skeleton keys and gave it to Dita when she was thirteen, telling her to turn the key every night. That was a very, very fucked-up period around here, which nobody ever speaks about, and which Dita does her best not to recall. Every now and then, especially when nightmares wake her, memories float back at her, shapes in the darkness and the sensation of weight upon her and the suffocating aroma of her father’s cologne, and the severe look from her dimwit mother when she handed Dita the key, as if it were all Dita’s fault. But her room as a result has always been Dita’s sanctuary. Once she turns the key, neither of her parents will do any more than timidly knock, which is why she loves to ball Cass-and several before him-right here. And also why Lidia’s presence is so wrong.

“Well, I was fucking standing outside for about six hours.”

“We need to talk privately. Like two adults. And I was afraid, Dita, if I asked you to do that, you would never agree.”

She is right about that, for sure. Dita has more need of a third tit than a heart-to-heart with Mrs. Gianis.

“So you broke into my bedroom instead? I think you better go.”

“I need to talk to you about Cassian.” In her silly floor-length muumuu, Mrs. Gianis has crept close to Dita’s bed. Her long fingers are webbed in front of her heart, in an aspect of prayer.

“Sorry, Lidia. That’s none of your business.” The Gianises are old-world and Dita knows calling Mrs. Gianis by her first name will seem impudent.

“I need to ask you, Dita, to stop seeing him.”

“Ditto. MYOB.”

“Dita-”

“Look, Lidia, right now I’m just fucking your son, so don’t worry about it.”

Mrs. Gianis slaps her. Hard. Dita’s cheek erupts in pain, almost as if it’s been skinned. The old woman has advanced on Dita so quickly she barely has had time to react, and in the process of drawing back, or maybe in recoil from the blow, she’s whacked the back of her skull against the mahogany headboard. In the meantime, Lidia has retreated at least twenty feet, obviously shocked at herself, and is suddenly crying, an act that seems as unlikely as if a stone statue were standing here shedding tears.

“Oh my God,” she keeps saying. Lidia had been doing her in-charge thing, her favorite routine, but now the old lady has lost it and grown frantic. She presses a hand to her forehead, like it will hold in her brain.

“I am pleading with you to act like an adult, Dita. To listen to me.”

Dita tenderly touches her cheek and tells Mrs. Gianis to fuck herself.

“You cannot marry Cass. Or, God forbid, have his child.”

“‘God forbid’? Is that this old crap? The Gianises against the Kronons? You and your feuds. My father always says your family are like hillbillies.”

“He never said that.”

“I’ll call him down here.”

“He would not speak about me or my family that way.”

“‘Just a bunch of sheep-fucking hillbillies.’ That’s a quote.”

“Dita, Cassian is your father’ s child.”

“Bullshit.”

Lidia reacts as intensely and unpredictably as before, throwing her hands wide in rage and striking a pane of the French door. The resonant thump of bone against the glass sets off a cascade of remarkable sounds, a shriek from Lidia, and a pop like a muffled gunshot as the window breaks, followed by the wind-chime tinkling of the shards showering onto the concrete balcony outside. Lidia is looking down in amazement as blood bubbles from the back of her wrist. That sight, which Dita hates, as well as what Lidia has said-that her father, Captain Wanderdick, fucked her, too-is dizzying to Dita. It seems to unravel the loose knot that holds the different parts of her together. She needs to scream and she does.

“Get out!” Her head is starting to hurt as much as her cheek. “Get the fuck out of here! Or I’m calling the police.”

Crazed and overwrought, Lidia moves one way, then the other, dashes to the bathroom and reappears with her arm wrapped in a towel. She starts to speak, but Dita grabs the phone beside her to dial the cops.

Crying fiercely, Mrs. Gianis struggles with the door. A little star of blood has already reached the outer layer of the towel swaddling Lidia’s forearm. Finally Dita tells her to turn the key.

Once Dita hears the front door slam, she dials the phone in her hand. It keeps ringing until she gets Cass’s answering machine, on which she leaves a message.

“You better get your ass over here. Your fucking mother just beat the crap out of me, and I’m totally going to call the police.” Dita is astonished to find herself crying, perhaps only over the indignity. One thing is for sure-she is done with Cass and his lunatic family. She touches the back of her head. The fucking bump is starting to swell.

The Kindle County Tribune WEDNESDAY MAY 14, 2008 Local Roundup

Just When He Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse: Gianises Split

The office of state senate majority leader Paul Gianis (D-Grayson), 50, who last month failed to qualify for yesterday’s runoff election to become Kindle County’s chief executive, announced late Tuesday that the senator and his wife of nearly 25 years, Dr. Sofia Michalis, had agreed to divorce. Dr. Michalis, 49, who heads the Reconstructive Surgery Department at University Hospital, plans to marry the senator’s identical twin brother, Cass. Cass Gianis was released from the penitentiary on January 30, after completing a 25-year sentence for the 1982 murder of his girlfriend, Dita Kronon.

It has already been a turbulent period for Senator Gianis. He was the initial favorite in the mayoral race and led by as much as 20 points in some early polls. His slide followed an intense negative advertising campaign funded by the real estate mogul Hal Kronon, CEO of ZP Properties, headquartered in Center City. Kronon alleged that Senator Gianis also had a hand in the murder of Dita Kronon, Hal Kronon’s sister, charges Gianis furiously denied. Days before the April election Kronon pulled his advertising off the air without explanation, but the change came too late for Gianis, who missed the runoff by about 3,000 votes. Following his loss, Gianis endorsed yesterday’s winner, North End councilman Willie Dixon.

Disclosure of the Gianises’ impending divorce seems to have been timed in the hopes it would be lost amid election coverage, but the news became the subject of comment, much of it humorous, across the country, where the effect of Hal Kronon’s ads on Gianis’s campaign has already attracted substantial attention. The Tribune ’s Seth Weisman, who frequently writes about Kindle County’s political oddities in his nationally syndicated column, commented immediately on his blog.

“At least Paul has a chance to retire his campaign debt now,” Weisman wrote. “Who wouldn’t buy a ticket to that Thanksgiving dinner?”

On the sofa in his sun-room, Tim read the Tribune item over at least three times. His first thoughts were for Sofia, who, Tim felt, would be devastated to find herself the subject of scandal. He watched as much as he could stomach of the smirking coverage of the divorce on the morning news program, then finally called Evon about 9.

“I was just going to pick up the phone,” she said. “Hal’s already airborne, asking if this could have anything to do with Dita’s murder.”