But if we reveal our twin status, we are fascinating to some people. They always ask, who was born first? Can we hear each other’s thoughts? Feel each other’s pain? I pinch myself hard on the leg. I hope he’s yelping in a fancy downtown bar, spilling his drink.
If he’s handsome, I should be good-looking in theory too, but I’ve been called Jamie in a wig in school too many times to believe it. If you lined us up side by side, with my face washed clean, I’d be mistaken for his little brother. I know this because it’s happened.
“Where will you go to first?” Holly is definitely the kind of girl who would wear a beret on a cobblestone street. A baguette in her bicycle’s basket.
“I’m going to bury all of my name tags in a Japanese death forest called Aokigahara. Only then will my soul be free of Devil’s End Bar.”
“So, not Paris,” she says, toeing a mark on the floor with her white sneaker, and I nearly laugh at how right I was. I lean a mop against her leg but she just holds it in both hands, resting the pole against her cheek, like someone in a musical about to break into song. “Why do you travel so much?”
“I’ve been told I have impulse control problems.” I pull a face.
She’s still thinking about what she’s snooped. “You were a wedding photographer. How?” She looks me up and down.
“It’s pretty easy. You find the lady wearing a white dress and go like this.” I hold up an invisible camera and press my finger down.
“No, I mean, weren’t you always traveling?”
“I worked the wedding season and lived here with my grandma. I traveled the rest of the year.” Shoestring budget would be an understatement, but I maintained this arrangement for six years. “I work in bars when I need cash. I do some travel photography, but it doesn’t sell too well.”
“Well, no offense—”
“This is usually the part where someone says something offensive,” I cut in, and am saved by one of the old biker guys, blue tattoos bruising his forearms and a brown stain in his beard. He’s the physical embodiment of repugnant, but he says nothing as I pour his drink, so I smile at him as a reward. He looks disturbed.
When he’s gone I go to the bathroom and politely smile at myself in the mirror. I look like I haven’t tried that in a while. My reflection looks like Shark Week.
Holly is good at pressing pause on her thoughts. I mess around with my hair, put on more eyeliner, wash my hands for ages, and still when I return she continues seamlessly, “But you don’t seem to fit into the wedding scene.”
“Why ever not, Bertha?” I’ve gotten this comment from countless drunk dudes at wedding receptions, jostling around by my elbow while I’m trying to get the first-dance shots.
Holly says, “Weddings are romantic. And you aren’t romantic.”
“I don’t have to be romantic, I just have to know what the client thinks is romantic.” I shouldn’t be offended, but I kick a cardboard box straight under the counter and glare out at the unwashed masses.
There’s a couple making out right now on the back wall by the bathrooms. The humping swivel of his hips makes me want to barf. But every now and then, when they come up for air and their lips break apart? His hand is in her hair and they look at each other. That’s when I’d click. I could make even those assholes look beautiful.
Then I’d turn on the fire hose and spray them out of here.
“So, no romance with that guy Vince?” Holly asks like she already knows the answer. When she first saw him slinking in here, she said, He’s not a nice boy, Darcy. I replied, He has a tongue stud, so part of him is pretty nice. She was open-mouth speechless.
I review the stock levels in the fridge closest to me. “I’ve got a sonnet in my back pocket. When I see him next, I’ll read it to him.”
“But you’re not in love.”
I laugh in response to that. I’ve given up on feeling anything with a man.
“He’s a way to kill time. I’ve been here a lot longer than I was planning to.” Please don’t ask the follow-up question, Have you ever been in love? “Hmm, okay, I guess I’m unromantic.”
“Why’d you quit weddings?”
That word quit is a sore point, and Holly sees it in my eyes. She looks down and fiddles with her Bertha tag. “Sorry. Your website said you’re closed for bookings indefinitely. And you do product photography now. What’s that?”
“Why don’t you google it, Bertha?” I try to make it a joke but I’m angry. Why does she constantly try to be friends like this? Doesn’t she get I’m leaving?
I am deleting that entire website.
“You never tell me anything properly,” she protests in a weak voice. “You’re never serious.” Her beautiful face is all pink and smushed up with concern. I go to the far end of the bar and turn my back on her. I take down the beer glass containing my name tags. I’m sick of being Joan. I decide to be Lorraine for the rest of the shift.
I’m sick of being Darcy.