Linda’s car was parked in a wooden carport. She drove, surprising to say, a cute blue Mustang. I remembered that she’d said she enjoyed taking to the road. I leaned my bike against her porch. I am winded, I said out loud, and wished Cappy was there to laugh at my bad joke. I dragged myself to the door and knocked, rattling the loose screen in its aluminum frame. She appeared behind it.
Joe! You snuck up on me!
She touched the screen, frowning at it. Shook it.
I’ve gotta fix this. Come in, Joe.
Her dog started barking, too late. He ran up the hill from a field below the sloping ledge of yard where the house sat. By the time he reached the house he was wheezing—a stumpy old black dog with a whitened face.
Buster, smile, said Linda. He lolled out his tongue, grinning and panting in a comical way. I thought of how I’d heard people looked like their dogs. It was true. Linda let him in with me.
I suppose we shouldn’t be laughing, considering what happened, she said as she led me into her kitchen. Sit down, Joe. What can I get you? She listed everything she had. Every kind of drink and sandwich possibility. I didn’t stop her. Finally, Linda said she was fond of a fried egg sandwich with horseradish mayonnaise, and that if I picked that one she’d make it for the both of us. I said that sounded good. While she was frying up the eggs, she told me I could look around and so I wandered into the living room and took in the odd order of her place. At my house, although we kept it neat enough, there were always piles of papers and other interesting stuff here and there. Or books that had gotten off the shelves. Not everything was put away immediately. There might be a jacket draped over a chair. Our shoes weren’t lined up by the door. Linda’s house was extremely neat in the usual way, but also in a way that disoriented me until I figured it out. Everything had a double, though not an identical. Her bookshelf had two books by each author, not the same book, though sometimes a hardback with its companion paperback. They were mostly historical romances. She had chosen collections of objects to display, also two by two. Glass figurines of Disney characters on her end tables, paired in different colors, circled the lamps on which she’d glued fake leaves sorted by the same principle. There were swamp-willow baskets hanging on the wall behind the television. Each held nearly the same arrangement of dried grasses and empty seedpods. She also had a gabled Victorian dollhouse that only a grown-up could have owned. I was afraid to look inside but did, and sure enough every room was completely furnished down to toothpick-fine candles and in the bathroom two infinitesimal toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste. I had the creeps and we hadn’t even talked. She called me back into the kitchen and I went in, tongue-tied. We sat down at her table, which was old and made of scarred wood. At least it was the only table. There was not another almost like it. She had covered it with a bright cloth and set out plates and glasses. She poured some iced tea. The bread was toasted crisp. There was an extra plate. I pointed at it.
What’s it for?
Doe told me in that sweat lodge, Joe, that since I had a double spirit around me I should just welcome it. I set up my house for two people, see, even the little people. And when I eat I always set out an extra plate and I put a bit of the food I’m eating on it.
There was a crust of bread on the plate.
Spirits don’t eat much?
Not this one, said Linda comfortably.
And suddenly it all seemed okay by me. I was hungry the way you get after an illness. Suddenly ravenous.
Linda munched away, beaming at me, then at the sandwich. She put the eggy bread down almost lovingly and addressed it.
Is it a sin to enjoy you when my own twin brother is lying dead in a morgue? I don’t know, but you sure taste good.
I gulped. The other sandwich made a lump in my throat.
Wash it down with some tea?
She poured a bit more into my glass from a plastic pitcher bobbing with cut lemons and ice.