“Probably. Anyway, what year were you born?”
“1990.”
She gives a slow smile. “Ah. Same.”
“That’s weird.”
“I thought it might be the case.”
“Why?”
Tammy finally approaches with Jessica Two’s drink, a scotch by the looks of it, poured over a large spherical ice cube. Even her drink makes me feel inferior.
“Jessica?” Tammy says.
I answer yes with Jessica Two out of habit. Or maybe it’s spite. Tammy looks uneasy.
“Just leave the drink,” I say.
She puts it down and backs away again.
“She’s probably going to quit,” Jessica Two says as she tries her drink.
“If she can’t survive two Jessicas . . . ,” I say.
“Born in 1990.”
“Right? But how did you know?”
She shrugs. “I figured we were the same age. I’m good at guessing things like that. Also, Jessica was the most popular girl baby name that year. Well, many years, actually, but that year also.”
“I didn’t know that. When’s your birthday?”
“July tenth.”
A chill passes through me, even though it feels as if getting to this fact was the whole point of this conversation. “No. Fucking. Way.”
She puts her glass down. I watch the gooseflesh rise on my arms.
“What is happening?” I ask.
“We’re having a drink.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“About my birthday? No.” She takes another sip, then puts it down carefully. She takes out her wallet and flips her driver’s license at me. There it is. My name and birthday on an Ohio license with Jessica Two’s picture.
“What’s your middle name?” I ask.
“Don’t have one. You?”
“Anne.”
She turns away from me so she’s facing the bar. The television above it is playing CNN, which I’ve been avoiding for weeks. It’s the media-critic show that runs on the weekends, and there’s a panel on, discussing some tweet of the president’s. But then the headline shifts—Plagiarism in Journalism—Fake News?—and my face flushes.
“I think we should stop here,” I say.
“With the game?”
“I’m feeling . . . kind of seasick, to tell you the truth.”
“Might be the sulfites.”
“Probably not the sulfites.”
She drums her nails on the counter. “Okay, it’s strange.”
“It’s more than that. Have you ever done the math?”
“What’s math got to do with it?”
I pick up my phone and do a quick Google search. “There were 4.16 million live births in America in 1990. If those are 50 percent girls, that makes 2.08 million girls born that year. Divide by 12 for the number of months, and that’s 173,330 girls a month, assuming all months are equal.”
“You did that in your head?”
“What?”
“That long division.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s this thing I can do.”
Numbers and words; they’ve always been my forte despite my lack of formal education growing up. I should’ve applied my skills to learning how to count cards and made a killing in Vegas. Instead, my choices have led me here.
“Impressive,” she says.
“Thanks. You said Jessica was the most popular girls’ name?”
“That’s right.”
I do another search. “Williams is the third most popular last name. Five people in every thousand.”
She takes a sip of her drink. “You see, there’s probably thousands of us.”
“With the exact same birthday? Maybe ten if you include Canada too. I’d have to look at the name distributions to be sure, and July might have more births than other months, but . . .”
“This is weird. Us meeting.”
“I’ll say.”
She drains her glass. “You think our clueless waitress will serve us another?”
“One can hope.”
Two drinks later, the world is tilting and they’re calling my flight.
“I’ve gotta go,” I say.
“Where you off to, anyway?” she asks. Her cheeks are pink. She’s had three scotches, matching me in number. We’ve left the oddness of our name and birthday combo sit there between us, an unseen tie, an unspoken thread.
“Puerto Vallarta.”
“Nice.”
CNN is replaying the panel from earlier—the one discussing me. My faces flashes on the screen briefly, then disappears. Soon, I’ll do the same.
“I’m going to confess something.” I lean toward her. She smells like peat and grain alcohol. “I got fired last month.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I deserved it. But I got this trip out of it, so . . .” My petulant tweet announcing that I’m going to Puerto Vallarta next Sunday, bitches had been met with a particular amount of vitriol from the 4Chan crowd. I kind of enjoyed that one, I must say.
She glances at the screen. “Oh, you’re that Jessica. I didn’t connect it before.”
I don’t believe her, but this isn’t the sort of conversation where you voice that kind of suspicion. “You’ve heard of me?”
“My Google Alert did.”
“You have a Google Alert for your, I mean our, name?”
“You don’t?”
“Well, of course, but . . .”
The corner of her mouth turns down. “But you’re famous,” she says. “I get it.”
“I was never famous.” I raise my hand and make the check symbol at our server.
“You’ve already paid.”
“What? Oh, right.”
I stand, wobble, regain my balance. The drinks were a bad idea.
“We should keep in touch,” she says.
“Sure, give me your number.” I reach for my phone on the bar, fingers at the ready.
“I have a simpler way.” She angles her phone to me.
“What do we do?”
“Just tap it with yours.”
“Like a toast?”
She nods.
“What do we toast to?”
“To the Jessicas?”
“Sounds about right.”
Our phones touch.
“To the Jessicas!” we say together.
An alert flashes on my screen: Jessica Williams has been added to your contacts.
The speaker booms again. Ten minutes till the doors close.
“I’ve got to go,” I say.
“So, go.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Yes, it was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe we’ll meet again someday?”
She smiles for an answer. I’m not sure why I’m lingering. I don’t want to miss my flight; this trip was hard-won.
“You’d better run.”
The way she emphasizes the word run snaps me out of my haze.
I turn without another word and start to jog toward my gate. I just make my flight, the gate agent tsk-ing me as I’m the last one to board.
I settle into my first-class seat and fall asleep promptly right after we take off, all thoughts of Jessica Two banished by alcohol and altitude.