Ken Follett - the Third Twin (1996)

“I looked around the Jones Falls campus. Pretty classy. I met a girl, too.” Remembering, he brightened. “I saw her playing tennis. She was terrific—tall, muscular, fit as hell. A service like it was fired out of a fucking bazooka, I swear to God.”

“I never heard of anyone falling for a girl because of her tennis game.” Ricky grinned. “Is she a looker?”

“She’s got this really strong face.” Steve could see it now. “Dark brown eyes, black eyebrows, masses of dark hair … and this delicate little silver ring through her left nostril.”

“No kidding. Unusual, huh?”

“You said it.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.” Steve smiled ruefully. “She gave me the brush-off without breaking stride. I’ll probably never see her again in my life.”

Ricky poured coffee. “Maybe it’s for the best—you have a steady date, don’t you?”

“Sort of.” Steve had felt a little guilty, being so attracted to the tennis player. “Her name is Celine,” he said. “We study together.” Steve went to school in Washington, D.C.

“You sleeping with her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t feel that level of commitment.”

Ricky looked surprised. “This is a language I don’t speak. You have to feel committed to a girl before you fuck her?”

Steve was embarrassed. “It’s just the way I feel, you know?”

“Have you always felt that way?”

“No. When I was in high school I did whatever girls would let me do, it was like a contest or something. I would bone any pretty girl who would take her panties off … but that was then, and this is now, and I’m not a kid anymore. I think.”

“How old are you, twenty-two?”

“Right.”

“I’m twenty-five, but I guess I’m not as grown-up as you.”

Steve detected a note of resentment. “Hey, it’s not a criticism, okay?”

“Okay.” Ricky did not seem seriously offended. “So what did you do, after she gave you the brush-off?”

“Went to a bar in Charles Village and had a couple beers and a hamburger.”

“That reminds me—I’m hungry. Want something to eat?”

“What have you got?”

Ricky opened a cupboard. “Boo Berry, Rice Krispies, or Count Chocula.”

“Oh, boy, Count Chocula sounds great.” Ricky put bowls and milk on the table, and they both dug in.

When they had finished, they rinsed their cereal bowls and got ready for bed. Steve lay on the couch in his undershorts: it was too hot for a blanket. Ricky took the bed. Before they went to sleep, Ricky said: “So what are you going to do at Jones Falls?”

“They asked me to be part of a study. I have to have psychological tests and stuff.”

“Why you?”

“I don’t know. They said I was a special case, and they would explain everything when I get there.”

“What made you say yes? Sounds like kind of a waste of time.”

Steve had a special reason, but he was not going to tell Ricky. His answer was part of the truth. “Curiosity, I guess. I mean, don’t you wonder about yourself? Like, what kind of person am I really, and what do I want in life?”

“I want to be a hotshot surgeon and make a million bucks a year doing breast implants. I guess I’m a simple soul.”

“Don’t you ask yourself what’s it all for?”

Ricky laughed. “No, Steve, I don’t. But you do. You were always a thinker. Even when we were kids, you used to wonder about God and stuff.”

It was true. Steve had gone through a religious phase at about age thirteen. He had visited several different churches, a synagogue, and a mosque, and earnestly questioned a series of bemused clergymen about their beliefs. It had mystified his parents, who were both unconcerned agnostics.

“But you were always a little bit different,” Ricky went on. “I never knew anyone who could score so high in tests without breaking a sweat.”

That was true, too. Steve had always been a quick study, effortlessly making top of the class, except when the other kids teased him and he made deliberate mistakes just to be less conspicuous.

But there was another reason why he was curious about his own psychology. Ricky did not know about it. Nobody at law school knew. Only his parents knew.

Steve had almost killed someone.

He was fifteen at the time, already tall but thin. He was captain of the basketball team. That year, Hillsfield High made it to the city championship semifinal. They played against a team of ruthless street fighters from a Washington slum school. One particular opponent, a boy called Tip Hendricks, fouled Steve all through the match. Tip was good, but he used all his skill to cheat. And every time he did it he would grin, as if to say “Got you again, sucker!” It drove Steve wild, but he had to keep his fury inside. All the same he played badly and the team lost, missing their chance at the trophy.

By the worst of bad luck, Steve ran into Tip in the parking lot, where the buses were waiting to take the teams back to their schools. Fatally, one of the drivers was changing a wheel and had a tool kit open on the ground.

Steve ignored Tip, but Tip flicked his cigarette butt at Steve, and it landed on his jacket.

That jacket meant a lot to Steve. He had saved up his earnings from working Saturdays at McDonald’s, and he had bought the damn thing the day before. It was a beautiful tan blouson made of soft leather the color of butter, and now it had a burn mark right on the chest, where you could not help but see it. It was ruined. So Steve hit him.

Tip fought back fiercely, kicking and butting, but Steve’s rage numbed him and he hardly felt the blows. Tip’s face was covered in blood by the time his eye fell on the busdriver’s tool kit and he picked up a tire iron. He hit Steve across the face with it twice. The blows really hurt, and Steve’s rage became blind. He got the iron away from Tip—and he could remember nothing, after that, until he was standing over Tip’s body, with the bloodstained iron bar in his hand, and someone else was saying, “Jesus Christ Almighty, I think he’s dead.”

Tip was not dead, though he did die two years later, killed by a Jamaican marijuana importer to whom he owed eighty-five dollars. But Steve had wanted to kill him, had tried to kill him. He had no real excuse: he had struck the first blow, and although Tip had been the one to pick up the tire iron, Steve had used it savagely.

Steve was sentenced to six months in prison, but the sentence was suspended. After the trial he went to a different school and passed all his exams as usual. Because he had been a juvenile at the time of the fight, his criminal record could not be disclosed to anyone, so it did not prevent his getting into law school. Mom and Dad now thought of it as a nightmare that was over. But Steve had doubts. He knew it was only good luck and the resilience of the human body that had saved him from a murder trial. Tip Hendricks was a human being, and Steve had almost killed him for a jacket. As he listened to Ricky’s untroubled breathing across the room, he lay awake on the couch and thought: What am I?

MONDAY

5

“DID YOU EVER MEET A MAN YOU WANTED TO MARRY?” Lisa said.

They were sitting at the table in Lisa’s apartment, drinking instant coffee. Everything about the place was pretty, like Lisa: flowered prints, china ornaments, and a teddy bear with a spotted bow tie.

Lisa was going to take the day off, but Jeannie was dressed for work in a navy skirt and white cotton blouse. It was an important day, and she was jumpy with tension. The first of her subjects was coming to the lab for tests. Would he fit in with her theory or flout it? By the end of the afternoon she would either feel vindicated or be painfully reappraising her ideas.