Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

He put the file down on the marble-topped island in the middle of the kitchen and opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator, careful to leave no fingerprint smudges on the polished silver door. He took out a beer, a piece of tuna, and a cantaloupe.

On a plastic cutting board, he cut the cantaloupe neatly in half with one smooth movement. He placed one half facedown on a plate and returned it to a shelf in the fridge, then cleaned and cubed the other, enjoying the sound of the cutting.

Next he set the tuna on a wooden cutting board, noting the time on the microwave clock—11:00. He hesitated for a moment, then picked up a balanced ceramic knife that had cost too much and sliced perfect slivers of fish. The shape of the pieces, and the sound of the knife scraping the wood, reminded him of slicing plantains in Johannesburg for Dorothy to fry. Pausing in his slicing, he inspected his work, mentally checking for precision. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this concerned about order. Perhaps it was a reaction to the memory of Jan. He put a piece of cantaloupe into his mouth and thought about her.

Their first date, Sunil came to realize later, hadn’t been a date at all, just coffee that Sunil brought with him from home and his lunch of fried fish and hard-dough bread. Even with this new experiment in integration, the black students weren’t allowed to eat in the cafeteria, so they all brought lunch from home. Once, early on, Sunil had tried to eat in the cafeteria, but one of the blacks cleaning the floors had come over to him, and barely able to make eye contact for shame, pointed to the sign on the wall above Sunil: VIR GEBRUIK DEUR BLANKES — FOR USE BY WHITE PERSONS.

He left and never returned, opting to eat under the umbrella tree outside the science building, on the only stretch of lawn where the black students were allowed to be. Every day, they spread out like a flock of blackbirds at lunch, pretending not to see one another.

That day, on a whim, Sunil asked Jan if she would like to have lunch with him.

Yes, she said, her easy assent taking him by surprise.

She followed him to the patch of grass under the tree as though it were the most natural thing in the world. He turned his jacket inside out and spread it for her to sit on. He remembered every detail fondly for days afterward: that they shared coffee out of the cap of his thermos because he hadn’t brought any cups; that she ate the hard bread and oily fish with a relish that he could still summon like a taste to his mouth; that he had no napkins so she sucked on her fingers and he felt himself swell with desire. Finally he remembered his handkerchief and handed it to her. It was pretty threadbare, but clean, and if she noticed its condition, she said nothing. She dabbed delicately around her lips with it and handed it back.

Later, he walked her back to class, and then after, naturally, easily, to her car. They stood in the gloom of the car-park lights, lingering, neither wanting to go home, it seemed.

Yet the next day, in class, it was as if none of it had happened. She was still very polite to him, but nothing more, until a week later, when they happened upon each other in Gogo’s, which was the only neutral space in the city, where all races could interact without fear or concern.

Returning to the present moment, he placed the fruit and raw fish on a stoneware plate garnished with ginger and then cleaned up.

He took the food to the living room, crossed to the sectional, and flopped in front of the fire, over which hung a large print of a William Kentridge painting, Felix in Exile . Reaching for the remote control on the coffee table, he turned down the fire and turned on some music — Chopin’s Nocturnes in E Minor. He ate quickly, barely taking in the view that spread fourteen floors below. When he was finished, he fetched the rather thick file from the sideboard, adjusted his glasses, and began to read.

There were two theories about how conjoined twins are formed — fission and fusion. Fission theory postulated that conjoined twins occur when a fertilized egg begins to split into identical twins, but is somehow interrupted during the process and develops into two partially formed individuals who are stuck together. Fusion theory argued that conjoining happens after an egg has split into two distinct but identical embryos and that the joining is a result of early cellular development in embryos in close proximity.

A human embryo in its early stages consists of three layers of cells that seek out cells of the same type and use these stem cells to build organs and the rest of the body. When identical embryos lie in close proximity, such as in the case of identical twins, these cells can have mixed signals, which cause them to attach to the cells of the same type but that are already part of the twin embryo.

Sunil rubbed his eyes and skimmed the rest, letting only the major classifications jump out at him. Craniopagus twins are joined at the head. Thoracopagus twins are joined at the upper chest, usually from clavicle to sternum. Omphalopagus twins are joined at the abdomen from their groin to their sternum, resulting in a shared liver and even parts of the digestive tract. Xiphopagus twins are joined at the sternum but only by cartilage, like the famous Chang and Eng, and only rarely share organs. Ischiopagus twins are joined at the front of the pelvis and at the lower spine, with their spines twisted at a 180-degree angle from each other. These twins can have three or four legs between them; the third leg in these tripus cases is a fusion of two legs that didn’t separate. Ischio-omphalopagus twins have spines joined in a Y shape, three legs, and a single set of genitalia; and on and on, in a seemingly unending list.

Sunil thought that it all read like a bizarre biblical genealogy, or the taxonomy of dinosaurs. He understood only too well this need to classify; that had been the backbone of apartheid.

At the back of the file he found a reference to Edward Mordake, a nineteenth-century Englishman with no recorded birth or death dates. He was unusually handsome and gifted as a scholar and musician. He had a second face growing out of the back of his head. This other face, rumored to have been female, wasn’t fully functional and couldn’t speak or eat. But it could laugh and cry and its eyes would follow people around a room. Edward claimed that this devil twin, as he called it, whispered awful things to him at night while he tried to sleep. He begged to have it removed, but no doctor would agree to the risky operation. Finally he secluded himself until he succumbed to suicide at twenty-three. This was clearly a case of parasitic twinning and Sunil wondered if Fire and Water were parasitic twins. But which was the parasite?

In spite of himself, Sunil yawned. It was late, or early, and he nodded off, sprawled on the sectional with papers and photos strewn around him.

The moon was high and fat. Pregnant moon, Water said under his breath, the way Selah used to, the boys in her lap, rocking in the porch swing on those late nights when they couldn’t sleep. A full moon always rises at sunset, he said to himself. Selah used to say that. Water was fifteen when he realized her death would always be inside him. Selah is tree, he whispered.

The swath of light falling through the window, however, was not from the moon but from the violet streetlamp on the hospital grounds. He swung his legs to the floor and got up slowly. Fire was snoring slightly, the sound muffled by the caul. Drawn tight, it would grow warm and then hot against Water’s side, as though he were carrying a hot water bottle.

It was light enough to make it across the room and as Water crossed to the window, Fire stirred, yawned, and then went back to sleep. Water searched the sky as if for some truth. Auguring; that had been Selah’s skill. Reading the future from the sky, by watching birds or clouds. Tracking to see if they were flying together or alone, the truth revealed in their formations. Water couldn’t sleep and lay awake for a long time gazing up at the moon, humming a lullaby, one that Selah had sung to them.