Since We Fell

Melissa waved that off, which was usually what she did when Rachel ventured into a topic Melissa didn’t understand or didn’t want to.

Times like these, Rachel wondered why she continued to hang out with Melissa. She embraced the shallow the way others searched for the profound and she could reduce any attempt at complexity to a target of casual scorn. But the last few years had stripped Rachel of almost all her friends, and it scared her to think she’d one day wake up with none at all. So she half listened to Melissa prattle on about her own work, about the latest round of who’s-fucking-whom at WCJR, both figuratively and literally.

Rachel interjected “Wow” and “No way” and “That’s hilarious” where expected, but part of her remained back at the comments Melissa had made about Brian, and her irritation continued to rise. She’d woken this morning in a great mood. All she’d wanted since was to keep that mood alive. She just wanted to stay happy for a day. And not the bullshit, shiny happy of a beauty pageant contestant or a religious fanatic, just the hard-earned happiness of a self-aware human being who’d worked on her fears over the weekend with her loving, if often preoccupied, husband.

Tomorrow she’d allow all the doubts back in. Tomorrow she’d open herself up to the spiritual termites of minor despair and ennui. But today, on this miserable, soupy day, she wanted to remain not miserable. But it seemed like Melissa was determined to hurl ice water on her glow.

When Melissa went to order another round, Rachel begged off with claims of a hair appointment on Newbury Street. She could tell Melissa didn’t believe her, but she didn’t much care. The rain had softened outside to a light drizzle and she wanted to walk in it through the Public Garden to the Charles and then follow the river until she crossed the footbridge to Clarendon and walked back to her building. She wanted to smell the soaked soil and wet asphalt in equal measure. In Back Bay, in this kind of weather, it was easy to imagine Paris or London or Madrid, to feel part of a larger continuum.

Melissa stayed behind for “one last drink” and they exchanged kisses on the cheek before Rachel left. She turned right and headed down St. James. Walking the length of the hotel, she could see it reflected in the Hancock Tower, could see herself there as well, to the far left of the left pane of glass, part of a mirrored triptych. The left pane was dominated by the sidewalk and Rachel walking along the edge of it, a short line of cabs to her left just peeking into frame. The middle pane reflected a canted version of the grand old hotel, and the third pane showed the tiny street in between the hotel and the Hancock. It was such a small street that most would assume it was an alley if they noticed it all. It was used primarily, if not exclusively, by delivery trucks. A laundry truck was backed up to a pair of double doors at the rear of the hotel, a black Suburban idled at the back of the Hancock, its exhaust mingling with the exhaust of a sewer grate, the rain turning silver as it fell through the smoke.

Brian walked out of the Hancock and opened the back door of the SUV. It looked like Brian anyway, but it couldn’t be. Brian was in the air, over the middle of the Atlantic by now, legging toward London.

But it was Brian—same jawline, just beginning to widen slightly as he approached forty, same lock of black hair falling over his forehead, same soft copper trench coat over black pullover that he’d left the house in this morning.

She went to call his name but something in the set of his face stopped her. He wore a look she’d never seen before; it was somehow heartless and hunted at the same time. This couldn’t, she told herself, be the same face that watches me sleep at night. He climbed into the SUV—this watery, refracted reflection of her husband. Rachel reached the corner just as the reflected SUV transformed into the actual one. It passed her, its windows black, and turned onto St. James. She pivoted in place, her mouth open but no words leaving it, and watched it cross into the middle lane, pass through the traffic light at Dartmouth, and descend the on-ramp for the Mass Pike. She lost it there to the dark tunnel and the traffic merging behind it.

She stood on the sidewalk for a long time. The rain grew heavy again. It pelted her umbrella and rebounded off the sidewalk into her ankles and calves.

“Brian,” she finally said.

She repeated his name, though this time it was no longer a statement but a question.





14


SCOTT PFEIFFER OF GRAFTON, VERMONT


She took the direct route back to the condo. She reminded herself that the world was filled with people who looked near identical to others. She didn’t even know how precise the resemblance was; she’d seen a reflection. A reflection that was refracted off mirrored glass in the rain. If she’d had a moment to get a clear view, if he’d paused at the car door and she’d come around the corner in time to look directly at him, she probably would have seen him for the stranger he was. He wouldn’t have had the barely perceptible bump halfway up the bridge of his nose. Or his lips would have been thinner, his eyes brown, not blue. He wouldn’t have had Brian’s smattering of pockmarks below the cheekbones, pockmarks so faded you could only see them if you were close enough to kiss them. This stranger might have smiled with hesitation at the woman staring so blatantly at him in the rain, wondered if perhaps there was something wrong with her. Maybe recognition would have dawned on his not-quite-Brian’s face and he’d have thought, “It’s that woman from Channel 6 who had the freak-out on-air a while back.” Or maybe he wouldn’t have noticed her at all. He’d simply have gotten into the car and been driven off. Which ultimately is what happened.

The fact was, Brian did have a double. They’d been talking about him for years: Scott Pfeiffer of Grafton, Vermont.

When he was a freshman at Brown, people would tell Brian there was another kid his age, a pizza delivery guy, who looked just like him. It got to the point where Brian had to see for himself. One day he stood on the sidewalk outside the pizza parlor until he saw his twin step out from behind the counter carrying a stack of pizza boxes in a red leather thermal bag. Brian stepped aside as Scott walked out of the shop and got into a white van with DOM’S PIZZA stenciled on the door and drove off into Federal Hill to deliver his pies. Brian couldn’t explain why, but he never introduced himself to Scott. Instead, by his own admission, he “kinda” began stalking him.

“Kinda,” she said when he told her.

“I know. I know. But if you could have seen the resemblance you would have understood how fucking eerie it was. The idea of introducing myself to myself? It was just too weird.”

“But he wasn’t yourself. He was Scott—”

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