Discovery

I went out to try to find myself.

And I found myself, two storeys up, in a compact, one-bedroom flat, overlooking the sea.

#

But to begin:

I suppose, I begin this the same way as everybody does. Finding myself in a kind of doldrums of a life, approaching thirty, in a stale job, with few prospects. In debt. Out of love. I suppose that’s what kicked it off really, it was Wendy, sitting in the lounge, staring out at the window and not seeing anything, not even her own reflection.

And me, clueless, walking up to her with a mug of coffee. “Is everything all right?”

She shook her head.

Unsuspecting: “What is it?”

“This. Us. I can’t do it anymore.”

“But what? Wait. Why?”

She waved her arm to encompass the flat, the street, me, even her. “Can’t you tell? Can’t you see it as clearly as I can?”

That was the trouble, I guess, I could.

#

So maybe it was wrong to feel devastated. To feel as if I’d been hit with this staggering loss. Did I really lose what I scarcely had any more? And yet… yet, yet, yet… That little house felt so empty without her. And even though we didn’t talk a lot by that point, it still felt cold when I came home and she wasn’t in the kitchen making dinner, or on the couch drinking wine and watching some batshit reality show. The presence of somebody else was what gave the house its warmth. And she was gone.

And work was tiresome. More tiresome than ever.

Perhaps I would have gone out with some friends, got drunk, maybe did the rounds of a few strip clubs. Let off some steam. But I was really kind of out of touch with so many of my old friends.

I sat back. I looked at my life. Was this really what you call a life?

And that’s why I sat up at midnight, with a glass of whiskey by my side, writing up my resignation letter, at the same time, in another window, typing up the email to send notice to my landlord. I opened a third window, downed the last of the whiskey, and booked myself a bus ticket.

The quintessential journey: I was going to go out there and find myself.

#

And boy, did I.

He/I was living in a medium-sized town that I think was called Brashmark, though maybe it was Hashmark, Hashlark… I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was walking down the road, coffee and doughnut in hand, sea breeze in the air, when I looked up and saw him… saw me… saw… I mean at first, it didn’t even fully register, just the jolt of similarity, the unplaced surprise. It took a couple of seconds before it really clicked, before I realised that that face that lightning-bolted my attention was my own. The exact face. He was ever dressed the way I dress.

He noticed me too. And I suppose there should have been that little tip-off right there. The expression on his… my… face that wasn’t exactly surprise.

#

So, what happened?

We stopped and stared. We were caught in these twenty of so seconds of paralysis, where all we could do was look into each other’s eyes, waiting for one or the other of us to break first.

It was him, I think. He straightened is collar. “Josh,” he said simply.

“Josh,” I agreed.

“You look exactly… like. Precisely.”

“You too.”

“How long have you been in town?”

“A few days. You?”

“Years.”

“How many years?”

“Maybe six.”

“Did you… did Wendy… I mean…?”

“She did. She did the right thing. I should have taken it better.”

“How did you take it?”

“Badly. I cut up her clothes. I chucked a can of paint on the wallpaper.”

“I did better than that I think.”

“Hm. We learn.”

To call this surreal would not do it justice. The how and why and can’t-be danced around in my head. I felt like there were so many things that needed to be said, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn them into words. The world: flipped neatly upside-down. Me: on my head, legs in the air, footpaths spinning around me, sky falling.

And then: she showed up. And she was perfect. She came walking up the steps from the beach, barefoot and in a sundress, and she was the most lovely woman I had ever seen. The moment I looked at her I knew I was in love. I was one-hundred percent, life-changing, earth-shattering in love. She was slender, and dark haired, with dark eyes and full lips – any man would see the attraction. But there was far more to it than just her looks: it was like an eclipse, or like all the planets aligning, it was like two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle finding each other and locking together for life.

But of course, she was his. She walked up the steps and slid her arm around his waist. She did a bit of a double-take when she saw me. Her eyes lingered a moment.

Does she…? Does she feel it too…?

Other-Josh put his arm firmly, possessively around her, he introduced her quite pointedly, “This is my lady, Cynthia. Cynthia, this is Josh.”

“Yes,” she said softly. Just: yes.

Other-Josh said, “Look, I really have to be going, but I think we should meet up, don’t you? I have to work, but what I say we meet on the pier tonight at about seven?”

“Okay.”

“Okay then.”

That was that.

#

I was in turmoil. Who wouldn’t be? But most of all I kept thinking about Cynthia. I kind of realised that that didn’t make sense. I’d only met her so briefly. You don’t really fall in love like that, that isn’t love, and yet… yet, yet, yet… somehow it was. She was all I could think about, even more than having encountered another version of myself. And I was hot with jealousy. Just about out of my mind with it. Why should she be his? I was just as me as he was. Why shouldn’t she be mine instead?

I couldn’t settle. I walked all over the place. I tried to eat at a little café, but my stomach wouldn’t have it.

If she could fall in love with that Josh, why couldn’t she fall in love with this one? I was the same person, I’d lived so much of that same life. I was more emotionally stable wasn’t I – since I’d handled the Wendy break-up without damaging anything? Without that violent tantrum? I was the better version of the two of us – I kept reiterating this in my mind – the one who should be living the life he was living. The life he’d stolen, right? Stolen from me, while I was living beigely in a half-dream all that time.

No. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

She was destiny. She and me. This me. Destiny.

I repeated these things to myself until I believed in them firmly.

#

The sun was just beginning to set when I arrived at the pier, wondering if he was going to be there. He was. Sitting at a plastic table, overlooking the quiet crash of waves against the thick wooden pillars. He was wearing a shirt I didn’t own – yet – and was leaning back in his plastic chair seeming quite relaxed. There was just him and me, nobody to take a double look at us, shrug their shoulders, think: oh, twins.

I sat down, I said, “So what are we going to do about this?”

“Do about it?”

“You and me. There’s two of us.”

“Yes. Well.”

“You seem to be taking all this in your stride.”

“Yes. Well. You see, this isn’t exactly my first time.” He pushed back a little to reveal the long knife in his hand.

“I thought maybe not,” and I brushed aside my jacket to let him see the gun in my waistband.

#

And that’s where we were. Alone over the water. And I wondered to myself how many times this had happened before, how many more of me had sat here, across the table from me and my knife. How many had found themselves in the water.

Eventually he said, “You can’t have her.”

“I’m better for her.”

“And you can’t stay here. You can’t have my life.”

“But I’m the only one who came to this meeting with a gun. Aren’t I?”

“I guess we do learn. But then I don’t think you’ve ever fired that thing before. I mean, I haven’t, after all.”

“But you’ve used that knife.”

“Three times.”

“And never been caught.”

“For murdering myself?”

“When did we graduate to killing people?”

“Three years ago. And what are you doing here if not the same thing?”

“I feel like it’s you or me.”

“It is. But it has to be me.”

He was right. He may have brought a knife to a gun fight, but he was better experienced in its use than I was with my gun. Even if I had the stomach to actually pull the trigger – on myself, mind you – there was every chance I would miss, and every chance that that would be enough time for him to make good with the knife. And all at once, I knew I didn’t want to be doing this. I felt as if I didn’t even know how I’d gotten to this point. I knew I was taking a chance, but I held one hand up, and with the other drew the gun and laid in slowly on the table. He watched me, unflinching, calm, curious. As I took my hand away, I said, “Isn’t there some other way to resolve this? Can’t we find a way?”

He considered me, he said, “All right. Let’s have some dinner tomorrow night then. My place?”

I hesitated.

“Somewhere public?”

“That would be better.”

“I know a good place. Finnagalls. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”

“You’d know.”

“I suppose I would.”

#

It may sound silly, but I went out and bought some new clothes, got a haircut, before I went out that night. Is there anything more narcissistic than getting a makeover to impress yourself?

He looked good too, I noted. And he’d brought Cynthia along. She, of course, looked incredible. She made my heart hammer with longing and frustration and fear. What if anything happened to her? What if anything went wrong tonight and he did something, or she got caught in the crossfire? I couldn’t bear the thought that she might get so much as a papercut. She was wearing a simple, powder-blue dress, with a double-stringed pearl necklace, and on her it was exactly and absolutely perfect.

She told me, as I sat down, “We’re so glad you could come.”

And I wondered: how much of all of this did she know?

Other-Josh answered that for me. “Cynthia understands what’s going on here.”

Even the murders?

“She knows it all.”

We ordered some breads and dips to begin the meal. They came in a mix of curry, sweet chilli and garlic-herb flavours. Delicious. Just my thing. Just the way he’d known they’d be.

And this other me cut to the chase. “You can’t stay here, you know that. We can’t both have this life.”

I glanced at Cynthia.

“And you can’t have her either. Tell him.”

She smiled softly, “It’s true. I belong to this one. We’re meant to be.”

“But-”

“It’s all right,” said Other-Josh, “you’ll find her elsewhere. You’ll have your own Cynthia somewhere in the world.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Who knows? But you’ll know her. Don’t worry about that part.”

And they brought us our mains. The cheesy potato cake I’d ordered looked and tasted amazing. Just the way he’d known it would.

I said, “So this has happened before?”

“Yes. And it’ll happen again.”

“To which of us?”

“Probably both.”

“I have no idea what to do.”

“Look, it flummoxed me at first too. But you learn not to think about it too much. You got on with life. And you learn how to live. That’s the gift we give each other.”

What about the other ones? I wanted to ask if I was the only survivor, but not here, and not in front of Cynthia. Even if she did know the truth.

Dessert came out. Perfect sundaes.

“I love this place,” Cynthia said.

“Me too,” we said in unison.

She laughed.

“Would that happen?” I said, “If I stayed, would we end being carbon copies of each other who said exactly the same thing, and did the same thing like we were one person in two bodies?”

“I’d hope not, but do you really want to risk it?”

“No.”

“Me neither. So, here’s how I think we resolve this: this town really isn’t big enough for the both of us, and since I got here first, I think you need to move on. No offense. And if you want my advice, I’d keep moving. Like I said, this keeps happening, and you’re probably going to want to get ahead of it. There’s no saying how the next one of us is going to want to resolve the issue, is there? We’re never exactly the same.”

“I guess not. Did you love Wendy?”

“For a while. But not like I love Cynthia.”

“Or how I love Cynthia.”

“I know, believe me, but you will feel it again.”

“You know this how?”

“Because she’s the absolute one for me. But just me. Which means yours is out there too.”

I doubted the logic. But I could also see the way Cynthia looked at him, and it was him she had those eyes for, not me. She didn’t see me as an identical model, or an upgrade – she could never replace that me with this one. That was the hopelessness of that. And I guess that was why he brought her along, so that I’d understand it. “God help me, if you ever do a thing to hurt her…”

“But you know I won’t.”

Because I never could. Never ever ever.

He wished me good luck out there, warned me it was better never to come back here. We shook our identical hands and split the bill.

I walked away into the darkness, heading straight for the bus depot.

#

And it’s been that way ever since.

I’m a travelling man. I move from one place to another, some sort of cowboy drifter but without the hat or the guitar. I stay a few months – six or less – before I’m looking for somewhere else, staying in campsites and bedsits and backpackers’, doing odd jobs. Seeing the world. It’s the last life I envisaged for myself, and yet I’m sort of happy in it. It’s the opposite of the dead-end I was in a few years ago, it’s lonely but vibrant, and so far, at least, I have yet to walk around a corner and find myself staring into my own eyes.

I called Wendy the other day, just to check in on her, make sure she’s okay.

And she laughed at me, “I’m the same as I was an hour ago when you left the house.”

“Oh,” I said, managing a laugh, “All good then.” And I hung up as quickly as I could.

Good luck to that me. I hope he makes it with Wendy, I hope she’s his Cynthia. I hope I don’t ever have to sit across a table from him with my gun, looking at his knife.

Just the other day something happened, which I think is going to change everything. I was at the beach, watching the surfers, in a nice little café, when I saw her walk past the window. She was small and blond. She didn’t look at all the same, but I knew her anyway, that was Cynthia. My Cynthia. And she was perfect, as even the other one could never quite have been. She was dressed in some old, faded jeans, with a short, lacy top, and there was a velvet ribbon coiled up in that shining golden hair. She was by herself, walking boldly, jauntily, singing along to something that was playing in her head. She was everything I needed her to be. That’s what I ran out there to give her my phone number, stammers and apologies all over me, but what mattered was that I put that note in her hand, and I have the hope that she’ll call me. That’s how I know my life is finally ready to begin in earnest. That’s now I know I’ve found home.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work