FaceMate

by Steven M. Greenberg

He opened the folder again and pulled out the last of its contents, the print-out photograph of the girl from Moscow, along with the accompanying email she had sent.

  Cindy’s mouth dropped open wide. “It’s the same girl exactly!— But—you knew her: Did Elizabeth Sommers really look like this?”

  “Hey, you just saw her picture, didn’t you?”

  “I did, sure, but sometimes people in person look different from their pictures. So did she?”

  “Did she look the same as the girl from Russia? She did, dead on. So incredibly dead on, it was scary for me to look at the Russian girl’s picture when I opened it up. It’s still pretty goddamn scary, frankly. Frankly, it gives me the creeps.”

  “What? Like looking at a ghost or something?”

  “Worse, Cindy. Like looking at two gorgeous ghosts at the same goddamn time.”

  Cindy paused. She looked at Eddie, then looked at the pictures, all three of them, two from the computer, the other the glossy reproduction skillfully embellished by Art. Then she stared back at Eddie again, narrow-eyed and questioning: “So what are you going to do?”

  “Hey, why did I come here to show this folder to you, huh? What am I gonna do? That’s what I need you to tell me.”

  “You want my opinion?”

  “Sure I do, then if the whole thing goes south in a gigantic explosion, I can blame the whole fuckin’ disaster entirely on you.”

  “Fair enough, Mr. P. That’s why I earn the big bucks and drive an Escalade, ‘cause I can take the heat. I’ll tell you what I think, but first you need to tell me what their relationship was like.”

  “You mean Ben and Lizzie, I assume? And you wanna know what their relationship was like? OK, here it is: I’m fifty-six years old—or I’m gonna be—and I’ve seen a lot of shit, and done a lot of things, and known a hell of a lot of people in my day, good and bad. And the only way I can describe their relationship is to tell you that I’ve never seen two other people bond that way. Jesus, Cindy, you should have seen them together. When they were with each other, there was a kind of glow in the room and perfume in the air that you just can’t imagine if you weren’t there.”

  Eddie paused, shook his head, wiped his forehead, and went on:

  “OK, try this then: Let me ask you something: Have you ever been in love? I mean really in love, crazy in love, the kind of love where you don’t feel whole without the other person near you, where you think about the other person every minute of the day and dream about him every minute of the night, where you love that other person to the exclusion of every other human being in the world—Have you ever felt like that about anyone in your life?”

  Cindy shrugged and didn’t answer, which was as good as saying no.

  “Yeah, well don’t feel left out, I haven’t either. Not too many people have. If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe one guy in a million ever gets that way about a girl, and maybe one girl in a million loves a guy like that. And generally that’s as far as the loving goes—one-sided, sort of, if you see where I’m going with this.

  “But with Ben and Lizzie—hell, what are the goddam odds?—they both loved each other just that way. Hey, I was just an observer; I only saw it from the wings. But what I saw was like a miracle come true. You can’t just see it and not be changed by it. And imagine Ben—poor Bennie—having to live it and lose it all—I mean, the guy went from the highest place in heaven to the lowest place in hell. So, bottom line, tell me—should I show him what I’ve got here in the folder? Should I risk tearing open a wound that never really healed? Tell me, Cindy; tell me what the fuck to do and I’ll do it. You make the call.”

  But Cindy was crying profusely by then. And she was way too choked with emotion to respond.

  21

  The best part of Rachel’s day was the morning, when her brother dropped her off at work. It was fun to ride in the car that she never got to ride in otherwise, seeing as all three of them—her and Mom and Tommy too—couldn’t possibly shoehorn in. And Tommy’s car was such a super-nifty car too. All the girls at the office told her so: Wow, that car your brother drives you in is awesome!—It’s just about the coolest thing we’ve ever seen!

  That’s what they’d said even before they saw her brother, but once they’d seen him close up—that one time when she’d dragged him in to meet everybody and say hello—Well, that’s about all they talked about ever since. How cute he was, how much they’d like to get to know him better. And she’d told all that to Tommy, but telling him was a mistake. After that, he’d never gone in with her to say hello again. But when they drove up every morning, she knew all the girls were looking out to get a peek at him, although they stayed far enough back from the window that Tommy couldn’t see.

  “So how come you never want to meet any of the girls I work with? They all would like to get to meet you.”

  “You know, Rach, I’m only here for a few months in the summer, and there’s not much point in getting involved with someone when I know I won’t be around for very long.”

  “Yeah but, just to, like, go out and stuff. Don’t you get lonely not even going out?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it would be nice to meet someone special, but you and me—we’re both young still. Both of us have loads and loads of time.”

  “I don’t feel like I’ve got loads of time.”

  “You do though; trust me, you do. Just going out with somebody you don’t really care that much about isn’t fun for you, and it definitely isn’t fair to the other person you’re going with. Believe me, I know.”

  “You mean like that Candi you used to go out with last year?”

  “Yeah, her, and some of the other girls I dated in the past.”

  “Lainie—that girl Lainie—she was nice.”

  “She was nice. Very nice.”

  “So why did you stop going out with her? Mom really liked her too.”

  “I don’t know why. Things just worked out that way, I guess. People go out, and then sometimes they get tired of going out. You’ll see one day. You’re going to meet a lot of boys who are nice, but just not special. When you meet the special one, believe me, you’ll know.”

  “And how about you? You never met a special girl yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ll know it when I do.”

  “OK so—if the girls you went out with weren’t special, why did you go out with them in the first place?”

  “Different reasons. Most of the time, they wanted to go out with me, and you can hurt somebody if you keep saying no. But the problem is, eventually you’ve got to say no, and you wind up hurting them anyway. So that’s why I work on cars during my summers back home and leave the girls alone. Hurting people is about the worst thing you can do to others—and to yourself as well.”

  Yep, Tommie could be a real pain in the you-know-what from time to time, but he was awesome as a brother, and he gave her money to buy CD’s and stuff. Mom gave her some too, but Tommy kind of spoiled her in a way. If she really wanted something, he’d see that she got it; but she wasn’t one to take advantage. After all, he worked really, really hard for what he earned.

  “OK, Rach, have you got a ride home?” This was a downer part of her day, going from the nice car to the not-so-pleasant office. Once she got in there and had to answer the phone and type appointments into the computer screen, that was the lamest, dumbest, boringest part of all.

  “Uh-huh, that Ellie that I introduced you to when you came in that day—you know who I mean?”

  “Umm, not exactly.”

  “The redhead.”

  “OK—so is she going to drive you home? Otherwise, I’m done at the dealership a little after five and I can pick you up then if you need me to.”

  “No, Ellie can drop me off. She goes that way.”

  “OK, so—have a nice day, OK. You’re my favorite girl, remember that.”

  “OK, bye,” she said.

  Ellie was just inside the door when she came through. And Laura and the other girl—the new one—they
were just behind her. They must have left their instruments in the autoclave and run up front to see Tommy again, although they couldn’t have gotten a very good look where he was sitting in the car.

  “That’s a Corvette, isn’t it? An old one?”

  “Uh-huh. It was our Dad’s car, and my brother fixed it up. It’s a classic, a ’73. It’s got four on the floor and a big block, so it’s worth a lot of money, but I’m pretty sure that Tommy wouldn’t ever sell.”

  “How come he doesn’t ever stop and say hello?” asked Laura. She was a little older—too old for Tommy anyway. She’d been a hygienist in Dr. Barkey’s practice for probably about five or six years, way longer than Rachel had been a receptionist there these past two summers. Laura was a real old pro.

  “I don’t know. I guess he’s kind of busy with his job and stuff. And he won’t be in town too long anyway. He starts back at college toward the end of the month after next.”

  “Too bad,” they said, almost in unison. “That brother of yours is, like, really, really cute.”

  “Hey, Tommy!” It was Sandy again. She almost always caught him on the way in to say hello, but today she looked a little more eager than she usually did, a little more—how would you put it?—purposeful.

  “Hi, Sandy. Anything special going on?” He asked that question in reference to the work orders coming in that day, but she seemed to have something other than work orders on her mind, for she answered:

  “Hey, there is something special, as a matter of fact. Look, can I talk to you for a couple minutes? I got something to show you you’ll be interested in. I guarantee.”

  How about later? he suggested. But no, Sandy was insistent and she said: nope, right now, this minute—well, if you don’t mind, that is. Hey, he got paid mainly by the job, not only by the hour, so what did it matter if he got to some brake job or tune-up a few minutes late?—He couldn’t put her off forever, not in fairness, not the way he usually did. And so he let her take him by the elbow and lead him back into the storage room where the smaller parts were kept. There was a desk in there and a couple of chairs, and she sat him down on one while she took the other and picked an envelope off the desk—something she had left there that morning, obviously—And she opened it, and took something out—a computer print-out photo, it seemed to be. But before she had him look at it, she told him:

  “OK, so you remember when I took those pictures of you the other week?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And remember what I told you they were for?”

  “Uh-huh, the website that matches people up, right?—Actually I looked it up on the Net and checked it out. It looks like an interesting concept. So what happened? Did you get anything back?”

  “Lots back. I got a bunch of matches back within a day or two, but they weren’t very good. They looked a little like you, but not all that much. Then I got some others that were better—they send some almost every week—But then this other one came yesterday, and—Wow! you gotta see it, Tommy. It’s amazing. Did you know you had an exact identical twin?”

  “Not really. So they found someone who looks like me?”

  “No, not someone who looks like you—someone who is you—Exactly! So—you wanna see?”

  “Sure. After that kind of introduction, who wouldn’t want to see. So—that’s it? That’s him?”

  She smiled, turned the picture face-up and placed it in his hands, and….

  “Jeez-oh-Man! You weren’t kidding, were you? This guy does look like me; he really does? Where did you get it from?—No, I didn’t mean that—I know where you got it; you just told me—But where is he from, this guy? Do you know anything about him? Like where he lives and what he does for a living, and….”

  “No, not yet. I don’t know much about him yet. All they gave me was his contact information—which is handled through the site—so I wrote to him through them, and if he answers me back, we’ll find out some more.”

  “Man, this is amazing!—Do you think that maybe I ought to write to him myself and send a picture?”

  Sandy shook her head admonishingly and grimaced: “No, Tommie—Jeez!—he already has a picture—remember? I sent half a dozen of them in, and they probably sent them all to him when they sent his picture to me. That’s the way the program works—You get it?”

  “Yeah, that’s right; that makes sense. So what do we do now?”

  “Nothing much we can do but wait. If he writes back, I‘ll let you know right away. Hey, if you woulda asked me out, I never woulda found out about the guy in the first place, so maybe it’s better that you didn’t. But you know,” She batted her eyes in that sultry way of hers, “there’s always time.”

  “Not that much time, Sandy; I head back to school in a couple of months. But if you still like me, it looks like you’ve got a pretty decent substitute, and if things work out the way you want them to, I wish the both of you a long and happy life.

  22

  So Eddie was stumped, Cindy hadn’t done squat to help the situation, Carole did nothing but cry and shrug when he went to her for a third opinion, and Charlotte, who usually had fantastic judgment when it came to such knotty things and was the most objective gal he knew—she simply recused herself and kept resolutely mute. What to tell Ben, when, how, if—all that uncertainty dropped back into the lap of poor beleaguered Eddie Parker, right where the whole conundrum had begun. But there was just no way he could live with a decision as crucial as this one was likely to be—not on his own—And so he opted at last to bring it to committee, to schedule a four-part conference of the people most concerned with Ben’s well-being, and let them jointly make the final call.

  Cindy handled the arrangements, as she had handled everything else in Ben’s life these past seven years. One of the Atherton limos would pick everybody up, on—well, it turned out that Tuesday would be the perfect day: Ben had business in the City all day Tuesday, proffering pontifications to the hosts of several shows, so that was the safest time for them to meet without his knowledge. Eddie watched Ben’s interview on Bloomberg on his I-Pad as the limo motored off.

  They went to Albert’s on Highway 36, their go-to local venue to eat. Twice a week, three times, maybe more, singly or in pairs or in multiples, they would all dine there, whether for lunch or dinner or a midnight snack. Albert’s was as private an eatery as they needed it to be. The driver would take them around the back, the horn would honk, the door would open as if by some limo-tropic magic eye … and there to greet them with a welcoming hand and a big wide smile on his face would be….

  Greg.

  Now Gregory Barton was a genuine character, all right, unique to their little Jersey world. He didn’t own the place, but he pretty much ran it as though he did. Greg had a history that everyone knew by heart from repetition, and a current narrative that no one really wanted to hear, although he exulted in telling it anyway. His story, your story, every person-who-dined-at-Albert’s story got lodged in Greg’s multi-studded ears, then retold lavishly embellished, re-retold a second time more baroquely embellished than the first time he had tossed it out, and finally broadcast wholesale to the whole wide world like a banner headline in the Post.

  It’s probably best to get to Greg’s story first, which goes as follows: He’d been a hairdresser once, but got allergic to the dyes the dressers had to use—You should have seen me, Mr. Eddie, I blew up like this, like, huge bal-l-o-o-n!—Then, phase two, having deflated down to normal size, Greg enrolled in school to master home decoration; but regrettably the Great Recession had the gall to muscle in—I had contracts galore, Mr. Ben, but all of them cancelled the same day—Oh, it was a nightmare! What a nightmare, nightmare day!—Then the temporary job at the restaurant came along—just so he could eat and pay the rent, of course—And—click!—What fun! Old Greg had found his true vocation at last—and he’d been the mainstay of Albert’s ever since.

  So Greg, with his college-freshman smile and liquid walk, met them at the door, bowed in his genuine but sycop
hantic way, and led them to their customary table in the back, out in the corner of a semi-private room that kept them insulated from the politicos and the autograph hounds and the purveyors of luxury vehicles out front. Greg knew the drill as well as anyone could possibly know it, and was always richly rewarded for his pains.

  He was the quintessential restauranteur, and looked the part too—always with that immaculately pressed white coat, the neat bow tie, the jeweled studs running up both ears from lobe to apex; then the glittering rings on three of his fingers, two thumbs and one index; and, to top the lavish presentation off, a luscious scent that could put the emanations of a florist’s shop to shame.

  So the inimitable Greg ushered them in, such as he was; they sat; he helped the ladies with their chairs; he fluffed the spotless napkin draped across one arm, curled a bottle of preselected wine in the fellow hand, bowed dexterously, and, once the folks were nestled in their places and tucked against the table snug, he elegantly asked:

  “And where might Mr. Ben be today, Mr. Eddie? Are we not expecting him for lunch?”

  “Not today, Greg. If you switch the TV in the other room to Bloomberg, you’ll see for yourself where he is right now.”

  “Oh—well!— He’s a real celeb, isn’t he? You know, my new friend Allan was ultra-impressed to learn that I actually knew the famous Mr. Ben.”

  “Allan? I thought you said his name was Ethan.”

  “Oh that, Mr. Eddie—No Ethan went the way of all the rest, regrettably. Allan is new. Allan is—wait till you see him, Mr. Eddie. Allan is a dreamboat of a friend. He’s a little on the youngish side for yours truly, but, between the two of us, who’d kick someone out on his you-know-what just ‘cause that special someone is a little young?” Greg winked at Eddie and Eddie nodded back conspiratorially; it was their customary way. “Here try this, my adorable guys and gals; it’s a trifle on the dry side, and I know you’re not that big a fan of dry, Mr. Eddie, but I had Emil put some veal rollatini on the grill for you four delicious people to sample when I saw the car pull up, and this Chateau Rondine goes impeccably with veal.”