“That time she sneezed and her whole rack shook, I thought your ball was gonna shoot out enough sperm to—”
“Stop it,” I hissed. “Just stop it, all right? I’m sick of this. I’m sick and tired of covering for your mistakes. I’m sick of the way you treat people. I’m sick of the way you treat me.”
“You?” He looked shocked. “What the hell does that mean, Wayne? I treat you better than I treat myself. Hell, half of everything that goes into me gets shared with you.”
“And all of what you’re finished with comes out of me.”
“Oh, we’re gonna have that conversation again? You’re gonna whine to me about getting the asshole?” He threw up his hand in disgust. “Do you know what it feels like when you have to piss and someone doesn’t want to get up because they’re going to miss the last two minutes of Dancing with the Stars?”
“I’m just a lump to you. That’s all I am. A lump. An appendage. A-a-a…”
He stared at me. “Parasite?”
I shook my head and looked down at my desk. The blotter was lined up parallel to the back of the cubicle wall. My pen and paper were equidistant from the edge. I liked to keep things neat, tidy. Unlike Kirk, who’d already stuck a wadded-up piece of chewing gum on a crinkled work order. I shuddered to think what our prison cell would look like.
“I’m not going to prison,” Kirk hissed. “I swear to God, I’ll swallow a bottle of pills first.”
“Great. So I won’t get into heaven because you committed suicide?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you believe in a God who’d give two grown men one asshole.”
“Don’t you dare blaspheme right now. I’m warning you, Kirk. I have very little patience today.”
He took a deep breath and let it go.
I tried to be reasonable. “Look, we’re in this together. As long as we stick by each other—”
“Do I have a choice?” he snapped. “I’ve been stuck by you all of my life, whether I wanted to be or not.”
And there it was, the unspoken truth. Or maybe the passive-aggressively hinted at truth. Kirk wanted to live without me. Kirk could live without me.
I said what I knew he was thinking. “You should’ve killed me if you were going to kill someone. Wouldn’t that solve all your problems?”
His voice turned serious. “We need to get our story straight right now.”
“I have work to do.” I tried to put the jack back into the telephone, but he grabbed my hand. “What is wrong with you?”
He was looking over my shoulder. “The police are here.”
“Don’t joke with me.”
I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t Wayne’s. I looked at the hairy, knobby knuckles and let my eyes trace up a dark blue sleeve to the man standing behind me.
“Mr. Edgerton?”
I felt my throat work. Both Kirk and I said, “Yes?” at the same time.
The man looked confused. He scratched his square jaw. His beard was coming in even though it was early in the morning. His shoulders were broad, though they only contained one head. “I’m Detective Peter Jensen with the Atlanta Police Department. I need to talk to you about a case.”
“The police?” Kirk gasped. “What do the police want with my brother?”
I shot Kirk a look. “Which one of us do you need to speak with?”
He looked from me to Kirk, then back again.
Kirk asked, “Which is it? Are you here to talk to me or my brother?”
The detective was obviously not in the mood to be questioned. “Could you please stand, Mr. Edgerton?”
“Which one?” we asked in unison. I could feel a bead of sweat roll down my back. And then another bead roll down Kirk’s.
Suddenly, Jensen jammed his hand into my armpit and jerked us up from the chair. He spun us around, and we had to reach out to keep from smashing face-first into the cubicle.
“Oh God,” I prayed as I felt my arm being jerked behind my back. There was the metallic clinking of handcuffs.
“Screw you, pig!” Kirk’s hand flew into the air in his John Travolta move. Jensen reached for Kirk’s wrist, but Kirk was taller. “I want a lawyer!”
“You want me to add resisting to the charge, too?” Jensen pressed Kirk’s face into the wall. “Give me a reason, asshole. Just give me a reason.”
“Officer,” I tried. “I’m not resisting—”
Jensen kicked me in the back of the knee, and I crumpled to the ground. Kirk fell on top of me.
“No!” he screamed. “It’s not fair!”
“Neither is what you did to that woman.” Jensen’s knee dug into my back as he clamped the cuff around Kirk’s wrist. “You beat her down like a dog in the street,” he mumbled. “What kind of animal are you?”
“It wasn’t me!” Kirk screamed. “It was my brother!”
CHAPTER THREE
Chang and Ang Bunker are perhaps the most famous conjoined twins in history. Called “Siamese twins” because they hailed from Siam, they worked in a traveling circus most of their lives. Having made their fortune as a freak show, they retired to Tennessee, where they farmed the land by day and tended to their wives and families by night.
Yes, they had wives and families. Chang and his wife had ten children. Ang and his wife had eleven. Because their wives—who, by the way, were sisters—did not get along, the two men had separate households. Three nights would be spent in Chang’s marital bed, and then the next three nights would be spent in Ang’s. They were gentlemen farmers. Respected citizens. Their sons fought for the Confederacy, which, while not exactly laudable, had some tinge of honor.
The twins died on the same day. Chang succumbed to pneumonia during a long January night. The next morning, Ang woke to find his brother dead. His wife and children heard his cries of grief and came to comfort him. A doctor was sent for. The plan was to separate the two, but Ang refused. He would not be parted from his brother.
He died a few hours later.
Today, the surgery to separate the two men could be performed in a few hours. Doctors would refer to them as xiphopagus twins, joined at the sternum by a tiny piece of cartilage and sharing a liver with two independently functioning halves. The liver is a remarkable organ, the closest thing to a salamander that the human body has. Slice it into pieces and it will grow back as one.
The adorable Hensel girls are craniopagus twins, meaning they are joined at the head but, for the most part, have two separately developed bodies.
The more reclusive Gaylon brothers are omphalo-schiopagus twins, with four arms, four legs, and fused abdomens. They live in the embrace of their loving family, which consists of nine brothers and sisters.
Kirk and I are thoraco-omphalopagus twins. We are fused from the upper chest to the lower chest. We share a heart. A liver. Part of the digestive system. We are also, to my knowledge, the only conjoined twins in the American penal system.
Aggravated assault. Rape. Murder. It was hard to quibble with any of these charges once they showed the crime scene photos. Poor Mindy Connor. The police photographer’s flash was even more harsh than the xenon parking lot lights of the Pink Pony. She was not a pretty girl. Nor was she a girl. Forty-three years old. She’d lost custody of her children five years ago because she preferred the needle to the demands of motherhood. Her father said she was trying to get off drugs before she died. She’d taken up knitting to give her hands something to do. Maybe it was Mindy, not the grandmother, who’d made the sleeves too long on the reindeer Christmas sweaters in my dream.