The weeping woman glared at me, and I fucked off because she was right and Yumi was right too. It was typical to co-hallucinate: This was the menace we lived with, but also how we lived with it. We co-hallucinated each other’s bugs because we wanted to be loved. Whether the toys were gone or had always been gone, the end result was the same: For three years I had filled a box with something that existed only in my imagination.
I ordered whatever cocktail the dudebros had ordered for the woman, and I sat at the bar across from the perv and sipped, trying to taste what it was. A cocktail wasn’t something you could identify without the proper training. I appreciated this.
“Are tracksuits some kind of new trend I don’t know about?” the perv asked.
I let him think what he wanted.
He rubbed his mustache and asked how I got Yumi to date me. This was a frequent line of questioning. My skin thinned to the consistency of smoke.
“Is this a Tom Collins?” I asked. “I’ve always wondered who a Tom Collins is.”
“It’s not a who. It’s a what.”
“I’m trying to be precise.”
“That’s what I mean. Who the fuck would say something like that? What is it she sees in you? You’re good-looking only to Asians? You look like an ordinary asshole to me.”
“I’m completely ordinary,” I said.
“You can say that again.”
“I’m complete and ordinary,” I tried.
He shook his head, but there was no one else to talk to. “You shouldn’t just say whatever comes into your head. In fact maybe you should do the opposite. Say the opposite of what you think.”
“I’m going to stay alive for a long time,” I tried. “I’m totally justified in keeping away from my daughter. It’s definitely what we both want.”
He shook his head again and moved to the empty end of the bar. When his eyes flicked back at me he poured himself a glass of Bulleit. Then he poured one for me too and slid it across the wood.
By the time Yumi arrived I could hardly see straight. I could hardly recall why her appearance relieved me. The door banged open and the humidity came in with her, like she carried a locker room in her arms. I remembered vaguely that I was supposed to ask her whether I had disappeared. The bar was crowded now, dudebros clinked glasses and slapped backs. Yumi walked straight through them.
“You’re free hours late,” the perv said. “And what’s this about your name?”
Maybe he said three, I couldn’t hear well. It was like I had water in my ears, the pressure outside matched by a pressure inside. Yumi bit the left side of her upper lip and then the right side of her upper lip, and then the left side of her lower lip and then the right side of her lower lip. Her left leg shook a stool. I had never seen her so shaken.
“Where were you, Sandra?” the perv asked.
She flattened him with a frown.
It wasn’t strange that Yumi ran over him though—he was afraid of her—it was strange how nervous she was. She didn’t frown at him, but past him. It was a frown that said she was serious about something out there and The Cave was barely a nuisance. She didn’t seem to follow her advice about being present.
The perv took a step backward. I took a step toward her.
She said, “Find someone else tonight. I’m here for a drink. Pour.”
I flexed one muscle at a time, starting with my toes and moving upward, trying to sober faster. Something was happening.
“I called you,” I said. “I texted you. The disappearing—”
“Matt,” Yumi interrupted. “Why are you here?”
I was still visible.
Yumi finished my drink, then reached over the bar and poured another double shot into my glass and downed that too. She strode back out of The Cave before I could manage a reply.
I stumbled outside. A blue convertible idled on the curb, a make and model I had never seen before. The chassis curved over the wheel well like a feline hip, the paint as thick as fur. Yumi ducked into the passenger seat, and the tires whined. Dust shot up into my eyes. Yumi drove past so fast her red cheeks streaked the air. I tried to note which way she headed. But twenty feet away the car stopped as suddenly as it had started. Everything happened so quickly it was difficult to sort out what exactly confused me. I had seen Yumi get into the passenger seat, and then Yumi drove past me.
My system had been thrown out of order. I could barely breathe—my heart breathed and my lungs beat. Alcohol soured and burned in my throat. Yumi drove like that, hard starts and hard stops, but she couldn’t be in two seats at once. The car seemed to wait for me. I walked slowly. It stayed where it was. Yumi sat in the passenger seat, exactly where she had gotten in. On the other side of her, in the driver seat, was also Yumi. There were two of them, I mean.
I cupped my hands over my eyes, trying to see better through the window. Drinking had never made me see double before. I had thought seeing double was the movies, not life.
Two Yumis.
The Yumi in the passenger seat muttered under her breath, refusing to look at me. The Yumi in the driver seat gawked. Her eyes widened and squinted, widened and squinted, focused and refocused on me, like she kept seeing me more somehow than she had seen me a moment before. Being seen like that I felt extremely alert, exhilarated, solid . . . I was really losing it.
It was the look Charlotte had given me as a baby: certain of who I was. That certainty was the thing I could give her that I didn’t have. The door locks clicked open. In a daze I grasped the handle. I cleared my throat, which had filled with mucus. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth. For the first time I seemed to see Yumi as she was—I had thought she was somehow more whole than I was, but together the two Yumis made it clear the rest of us must be no more than halves. The Yumi in the passenger seat shook her head and clacked a nail on the window. The Yumi in the driver seat continued to stare. As I opened the door something on the street almost stopped me. The car was leaking. A bright yellow line trailed from the door to where I had stood on the sidewalk. But the line didn’t spread, it wasn’t liquid. It was as solid as yarn. I got into the back seat, ignoring it, and the car sped off with the two Yumis and me inside.
THE OTHER ME
We sat on floral-upholstered armchairs in a fancy hotel room, the two Yumis and me, and I thought, so this was how a fancy hotel room felt, like another life. At my feet a bear’s former skin clawed toward me. A fireplace flickered without heat. A faint cinnamon scent lingered, as if someone paced outside with an expensive candle. Yet I only felt less present. Life doubled, I stayed the same, it was simple math. Yumi’s presence was more difficult to calculate. She didn’t have a twin. One Yumi wore The Cave’s uniform and rested her hand on my thigh—while the second wore a navy skirt suit and eyed me as in the car, like ants bit me all over.
I checked my reflection in my phone. No ants.
“Sandra,” the second Yumi said, extending her hand to me. “That’s my name, I mean.” She squinted again and leaned closer to me, then closer still.
I resisted the urge to recheck for ants. “You’re sure?” I asked. “Maybe that was a slip of the tongue?”
The first Yumi pinched my leg.
But their faces were exactly the same . . . It was as if Yumi’s name change had been a kind of preparation, as if she had known another her might appear. Which seemed unlikely. Or—Yumi’s name change had made another her appear. Which also seemed unlikely, but which caused a strange buzzing between my shoulder blades.