Kelly Link: Get in Trouble: Stories

There had been a piece of grass lying right on David’s eye. Amelia’s mother’s shirt hadn’t been buttoned right, so you could see a satiny brown triangle of stomach, and she had sounded so angry that David Filgish sat up and started to cry.

Lindsey Driver had thrown up in the grass, but no one else noticed, not even her twin, Alan, who was only just becoming real enough to play with other children.

They were all too busy asking David if he was all right. Did he know what day it was. How many fingers. What was it like being dead.

not much of a bedside manner

Alan went with Jason in the ambulance. The EMTs were both quite good-looking. The wind was stronger, pushing the trees around like a bully. Lindsey would have to put the storm shutters up.

For some reason Alberto was still there. He said, “I’d really like a beer. What’ve you got?”

Lindsey could have gone for something a little stronger. She could smell nothing but blood. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m a recovering alcoholic.”

“Not all that recovered,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. “You’re a really nice guy. But I wish you would go away. I’d like to be alone.”

He held out his bloody arms. “Could I take a shower first?”

“Could you just go?” Lindsey said.

“I understand,” he said. “It’s been a rough night. A terrible thing has happened. Let me help. I could stay and help you clean up.”

Lindsey said nothing.

“I see,” he said. There was blood on his mouth, too. Like he’d been drinking blood. He had good shoulders. Nice eyes. She kept looking at his mouth. The duct tape was back in a pocket of his cargo pants again. He seemed to have a lot of stuff in his pockets. “You don’t like me, after all?”

“I don’t like nice guys,” Lindsey said.

There were support groups for people whose shadow grew into a twin. There were support groups for women whose husbands left them. There were support groups for alcoholics. Probably there were support groups for people who hated support groups, but Lindsey didn’t believe in support groups.

The warehouse had been built to take a pretty heavy hit. Nevertheless, there were certain precautions: the checklist ran to thirty-five pages. Without Jason they were short-handed, and she had a bad hangover that had lasted all through the weekend, all the way into Monday. The worst in a while. By the time Alan got back from the hospital on Saturday night, she’d finished the gin and started in on the tequila. She was almost wishing that Alberto had stayed. She thought about asking how Jason was, but it seemed pointless. Either he was okay or he wasn’t. She wasn’t okay. Alan got her down the hall and onto her bed and then climbed into bed, too. Pulled the blanket over both of them.

“Go away,” she said.

“I’m freezing,” he said. “That fucking hospital. That air-conditioning. No wonder people are sick in hospitals. Just let me lie here.”

“Go away,” she said again. “Fisfis wah.”

When she woke up, she was still saying it. “Go away, go away, go away.” He wasn’t in her bed. Instead there was a dead iguana, the little one from the freezer. Alan had arranged it — if a dead frozen iguana can be said to be arranged — on the pillow beside her face.

Alan was gone. The bathtub stank of old blood, and the rain slammed down on the roof like nails on glass. Little pellets of ice on the grass outside. Now the radio said the hurricane was on course to make landfall somewhere between Fort Lauderdale and St. Augustine sometime Wednesday afternoon. There were no plans to evacuate the Keys. Plenty of wind and rain and nastiness due for the Miami area, but no real damage. She couldn’t think why she’d asked Alberto to leave. The storm shutters still needed to go up. He had seemed like a guy who would do that.

She threw away the thawed iguana. Threw away the potato peeler all rusted with blood. Ran hot water in the bath until the bottom of the tub was a faint, blistered pink. Then she crawled back into bed.

If Alan had been there, he could have opened a can and made her soup. Brought her ginger ale in a glass. Finally she turned on the television in the living room, loud enough that she could hear it from her bedroom. That way she wouldn’t be listening for Alan. She could pretend that he was home, sitting out in the living room, watching some old monster movie and painting his fingernails black, the way he had done in high school. Kids with conjoined shadows were supposed to be into all that goth makeup, all that music. When Alan had found out twins were supposed to have secret twin languages, he’d done that, too, invented a language, Lin-Lan, and made her memorize it. Made her talk it at the dinner table, too. Ifzon meh nadora plezbig meant: Guess what I did? Bandy Tim Wong legkwa fisfis, meh meant: Went all the way with Tim Wong. (Tim Wong fucked me, in the vernacular.)

People with two shadows were supposed to get in trouble. Supposed to be trouble. They were supposed to lead friends and lovers astray, bring confusion to their enemies, bring down disaster wherever they went. (She never went anywhere.) Alan had always been a conformist at heart. Whereas she had a house and a job and once she’d even been married. If anyone was keeping track, Lindsey thought it ought to be clear who was ahead.

Mr. Charles still hadn’t managed to get rid of the six supernumerary sleepers from Pittsburgh. Jack Harris could shuffle paper like nobody’s business.

“I’ll call him,” Lindsey offered. “You know I love a good fight.”

“Good luck,” Mr. Charles said. “He says he won’t take them back until after the hurricane goes through. But rules say they have to be out of here twenty-four hours before the hurricane hits. We’re caught between a rock—”

“—and an asshole,” she said. “Let me take care of it.”

She was in the warehouse, on hold with someone who worked for Harris, when Jason showed up.

“What’s up with that?” Valentina was saying. “Your arms.”

“Fell through a sliding door,” Jason said. “Plate glass.”

“That’s not good,” Valentina said.

“Lost almost three pints of blood. Just think about that. Three pints. Hey, Lindsey. Doctors just let me out of the hospital. Said I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy.”

“Valentina,” Lindsey said. “Take the phone for a moment. Don’t worry. It’s on hold. Just yell if anyone picks up. Jason, can I talk to you over there for a moment?”

“Sure thing,” Jason said.

He winced when she grabbed him above the elbow. She didn’t loosen her grip until she had him a couple of aisles away. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fire you. Besides the sexual harassment thing. Because I would enjoy that. Hearing you try to make that case in court.”

Jason said, “Alan’s moving in with me. Said you threw him out.”

Was any of this a surprise? Yes, and no. She said, “So if I fire you, he’ll have to get a job.”

“That depends,” Jason said. “Are you firing me or not?”

“ Fisfis buh. Go ask Alan what that means.”

“Hey, Lindsey. Lindsey, hey. Someone named Jack Harris is on the phone.” Valentina. Getting too close for this conversation to go any further.

“I don’t know why you want this job,” Lindsey said.

“The benefits,” Jason said. “You should see the bill from the emergency room.”

“Or why you want my brother.”

“Ms. Driver? He says it’s urgent.”

“Tell him just a second,” Lindsey said. To Jason: “All right. You can keep the job on one condition.”

“Which is?” He didn’t sound nearly as suspicious as he ought to have sounded. Still early days with Alan.