“You missed your meeting this morning,” B said, stepping closer to me. “You told Andre you’d be there and you weren’t. So we’ve been sent to keep an eye on you, to make sure you’re getting things in order, like you’ve told people you would.”
“And to make sure you don’t split,” A said.
I sat on the floor. My bathrobe gaped open. The whole picture was coming into focus, a blur in my periphery gradually taking shape, like when your sight starts recovering after getting eyedrops at the doctor’s office. I pressed my legs together. I felt like I was sinking into the floor.
“This is a complicated situation,” I said.
“Everyone tells us that,” A said.
“Sylvia isn’t here right now. I mean, I’m not actually Sylvia.”
“Everyone tells us that, too,” B said.
I asked about making a call. The men shrugged. I dialed my sister’s hotel room and got the machine again. I told her that two men were in her apartment and she needed to take the next flight home. After hanging up, I turned to A and B, who were unimpressed.
“Listen,” A said. “Nothing is going to happen to you. Not yet. It’s too soon for that sort of thing, we’ve been told.”
“Just do what you’ve promised to do,” B said.
“I didn’t promise anything,” I told them. “I’m not Sylvia.”
“Whatever,” they said.
* * *
I made coffee and got dressed, taking the first thing I saw in the drawer: jean shorts and a red tube top. In the bathroom, I styled my bangs and did the makeup basics — lipstick, mascara, blush — and put on the lip ring. When I came back into the kitchen, A and B had emptied the coffeepot. They took up too much space in the apartment. I needed to get out.
I drove to Coco’s with A and B in the backseat. Before leaving, I’d taken one of Sylvia’s pills, and when they realized what I was up to in the bathroom, they’d demanded a dose of their own. These kinds of jobs have their perks, A had said, knocking his back without any water. In the car, they squabbled over radio stations.
“Are all people in your profession like this?” I asked.
“Like what?” they said.
We passed high-rises and surf shops, snow-cone vendors and hot-dog stands. There was little sign of the storm by then, just the occasional ripped billboard or bare palm tree. In the rearview, I saw the Lincoln behind us. I rolled down the window and waved.
“Who are you waving to?” A wanted to know.
“No one,” I said.
“Is this a convertible?” B asked.
I nodded.
“Put down the top,” he said.
“I don’t feel like it.”
A leaned over the console. His cologne reminded me of what my father used to wear. He had a silver stud in his ear. I felt his breath on my neck.
“Who gives a fuck what you feel like?” he said.
I put the top down. Wind raked through my hair. The breeze felt good. At a red light, I took my hands off the wheel and thrust my arms into the open air.
* * *
At Coco’s, A and B took a table in the corner and waited. The window was still boarded up. The boy behind the counter had a black eye. Ants crawled beneath the plastic dome covering a lemon meringue pie. While I was in line, the woman came in and took the same booth. She wore her sunglasses. A little orange scarf was tied around her neck. I got my coffee and joined her. This time, I kept my sunglasses off.
I touched the boards covering the window. “I wonder how much longer these will be here.”
“Who knows,” she said. “We’re used to seeing the mark of storms.”
“Don’t you want something to eat?” I asked. “Something to drink?”
She shook her head. I asked what she knew about the Isle of Youth.
“Many years ago, I went there with my husband,” she said. “It was full of marshes and huge insects. The houses and hotels were falling in. It was anything but a paradise.”
“I don’t know your husband, but he isn’t on a business trip, like he said.”
She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were a dull blue. “What are you talking about?”
I looked past the woman, at A and B, who were huddled together at their table, watching. “I’m not sure how to explain this,” I began, and then I told her everything. That it was my sister, Sylvia, and not me, her twin, having the affair, that I was just filling in while they had one last hurrah. And now, thanks to my sister’s involvement in God-knows-what, I was being followed by two men who wouldn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t her.
The woman cupped a hand over her eyes. “My husband hasn’t left town, on business or otherwise, since April.”
“What?”
“He lost his job,” she said. “I thought you knew about that.”
“When did you see him last?”
“This morning. I watched him do a crossword puzzle. He kept asking if I knew a synonym for ‘flummoxed.’”
“You mean he’s home? Right now?”
“Yes,” she said. “Right now.”
On the radio, I caught the end of one of the songs Sylvia had played for me and claimed as her own. My cheeks tingled. I leaned back in the booth and tried to picture my next step.
“Why do you even believe me?” I asked. “I mean, how do you know I’m not Sylvia?”
“You walk like you’re not sure where you want to go. You’re nervous, unsure. Your sister acts like she has nothing but ice inside her.”
I felt relieved that there might be a way to tell us apart after all.
“Why would you do this for someone?” the woman asked. “Why would you agree to take over her life?”
I considered telling her that I had wanted to help my sister, that I had wanted us to reconnect, even though that wasn’t it at all. I had always thought of Sylvia as being free — of responsibility, of decency, of career and home, of building the things you’re supposed to build, the things that everyone says are so important.
“I wanted to feel free,” I said.
“I don’t know why I’ve done what I’ve done.” The woman shook her head. “Why I didn’t just leave.”
“I could say the same thing.”
“Where are these men?” She leaned toward me. “The ones who are following you.”
“Sitting behind you.”
She nodded, but didn’t look over her shoulder. I admired her restraint.
“What are you going to do about them? Should you call the police?”
“I don’t think it works that way.” I stood up. I had the number for Sylvia’s hotel in my purse. I looked down at the woman, then over at A and B. The only time my husband ever followed me was on our second wedding anniversary. He waited outside the library and trailed me to the park where I usually ate lunch. I was unwrapping a tuna sandwich when he appeared from behind a tree, holding a white box with a cake inside. Flash forward five years, and he’d stopped chasing after me when I stormed out during our fights. As I looked at the three faces of my followers, I was hit with something almost like desire.
I headed for the door. The men followed. The woman did not.
* * *
I went to a pay phone down the street, A and B in pursuit. I fished some quarters from my purse and dialed Sylvia’s number. She answered after one ring.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s me.” The sky was bright. I put on the sunglasses.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were going to be someone else.”
“So here’s what I know: your lover is home, in Miami, and you’re in deep shit. Two men have been sent to keep an eye on you because you missed some kind of meeting.” A was leaning against a telephone pole. B was rolling a little gray rock around on the sidewalk with the toe of his boot.
“I needed you.” She was quiet for a moment. “You wouldn’t have agreed to fill in for me if you knew what I was really doing.”