LITMIR.BIZ

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why not people?” I carefully drove the truck off the front lawn and pulled out into the street.

      “Did the cops ever catch the murderer?”

      “No, and even if they do, I’m not sure they could convict him.”

      “I don’t quite follow you.”

      “Nobody can be positive which twin was murdered.”

      “What?” He sounded incredulous.

      “Well, nobody could ever tell them apart, and the hospital lost the footprints they took as newborns.”

      “Why not just ask the surviving twin?”

      “She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t remember anything.”

      “Amnesia?”

      “Almost total.”

      “What about DNA?”

      “Identical twins have the same DNA. So if they ever catch the guy, they might be able to prove that he killed somebody, but I don’t think they’ll ever be able to prove who. A good lawyer might get him off scot-free—which’d be OK with me.”

      “What? You lost me again.”

      “Hunting season opens up along about then. If Twink’s aunt doesn’t bag the sumbitch, I might take a crack at him myself. I’m sure I could come up with something interesting to do to send him on his way. If I happen to get caught, I’ll hire Trish to defend me.”

      “I still think the courts would send him away, Mark. Murder is murder, and if Jane Doe is the best the cops can come up with, he’ll go down for the murder of Jane Doe.”

      “You live in a world of philosophical perfection, James. The real world’s a lot more ‘catch as catch can.’ That’s why we have lawyers.” Then I remembered something and laughed.

      “What’s so funny?” he asked.

      “Chaucer got arrested once—back in the fourteenth century.”

      “Oh?”

      “He beat up on a lawyer.”

      “Some things never change, do they?” he said, as we pulled out onto the freeway heading south.

      When we got to the boardinghouse, James and I carried all my stuff upstairs and stacked it in my room. All in all it’d taken longer than I’d thought it would, so I decided to motel it for one more night. I’d already put in a full day, and I was feeling too worn down to start setting things up. I took the truck back to U-Haul, paid them, and retrieved my Dodge. Then I went by Mary’s place to check on Twinkie—I still felt guilty about the way I’d ignored her for the past week.

      Mary was nice enough to invite me to dinner, and the three of us sort of lingered over coffee afterward.

      “That sanitarium is pretty fancy, isn’t it?” Mary said.

      “I didn’t quite catch that,” I said.

      “My weekly visit to Dockie-poo,” Twink explained. “You forgot about that, didn’t you, Markie?”

      “I guess I spaced it out,” I admitted. “How did it go?”

      “Nothing new or unusual,” Twink replied. “Fallon asked all those tedious questions and scribbled down my answers in that stupid notebook of his. I told him enough lies to make him happy, and then Mary and I dropped by the house and had supper with Les and Inga.”

      “Doesn’t all that scampering around crowd you?” I asked Mary.

      She shrugged. “Not really,” she said. “Ren and I took off from here about three, so we missed the five o’clock rush.”

      “If it gets to be too much, I could run Twink on up there on Fridays. That’s a light day for me most of the time.”

      “We can pass it back and forth, if we have to. I don’t think it’ll give me any problems, though.”

      “Did Fallon make any suggestions?” I asked Twink.

      “Nothing I haven’t heard from him before,” she replied. “I’m supposed to avoid stress. Isn’t that an astonishing suggestion? I mean, wow!”

      “Be nice,” I told her.

      She made an indelicate sound and changed the subject.

      About nine o’clock, I went back to the motel and fell into bed. Moving really takes a lot out of you.

      By noon on Sunday, I had my bed and desk set up and most of my clothes hung in the closet. Then I started putting books on the shelves. After an hour or so of unloading boxes and randomly shelving, I stopped and stood in the center of the room, glowering at my bookshelves. They were an absolute masterpiece of confusion. Hemingway and Faulkner were jammed in cheek by jowl with Chaucer and Spenser, and Shakespeare was surrounded by Mark Twain, Longfellow, and Walt Whitman. “Bummer,” I muttered. I knew that if I didn’t organize the silly thing right from the start, it’d probably stay confused in perpetuity. Owning a book is very nice, but you have to be able to put your hands on it.

      I sighed and started stacking books on the floor, separating English literature from American and throwing the miscellaneous stuff on the bed. I came across books I’d forgotten I owned.

      By evening, I’d finally put things into some kind of coherent order, and that gave me a sense of accomplishment. Fortress Austin was now complete and ready to hold off the forces of ignorance, absurd clothing, and bad music. With my help, God could defend the right—or the left, depending on His current political position.

      After dinner that evening—my first Erdlund Epicurean Delight—I called Twink to make sure she was still on the upside. She was all bubbly, so things seemed to be pretty much OK.

      “You might want to start thinking about going to class, Twink,” I told her. “The quarter starts two weeks from tomorrow. The class I’ll be teaching starts at one-thirty in the afternoon, so you won’t have to do that cracky-dawn stuff. I can stop by and pick you up, if you’d like.”

      “That’s why they invented buses, Markie. I’m a big girl now, remember?”

      “We’ve still got a while to kick it around, Twink. I’ll be a little busy for the next two weeks, though. I’ve got a lot of things to take care of on campus.”

      “Quit worrying so much, Markie. It’ll give you wrinkles. Sleep good.”

      The next morning, I drove to the campus to check in with Dr. Conrad.

      “And how did you spend your summer vacation, Mr. Austin?” he asked me with a faint smile.

      “Did you want that in five hundred words, Doc?”

      “I think a summary should be enough—I probably won’t be grading you on it.”

      “Actually, I spent quite a bit of time conferring with a headshrinker.”

      “Has our load been shifting?”

      “I don’t think so, but I’d probably be the last to know. Actually, the daughter of a family friend just graduated from a private mental hospital, and she’ll be taking some classes here. First, I had to get her moved in with her aunt up in Wallingford, and then I had to relocate myself as well: I got a place not far from her aunt’s. It’s a boardinghouse with a few grad students from departments scattered all across campus—but don’t worry, I’ll try to hold up our reputation.”

      “I’m sure that if I’m patient, you will start to make some sense here.”

      “I wouldn’t count on it, Doc. It’s been a pretty scrambled summer. I think I’ll go hide in the library for a couple of weeks to get my head on straight again.”

      “That sounds like a plan,” he said sarcastically.

      I spent the rest

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