The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

by Irvine Welsh

  — No, it’s a mess, she says. — I don’t like to show people where I work.

  — Oh-kay . . . I raise my hands in mock surrender. — But maybe later, once you feel more comfortable. I look to the studio, then back at her. — Because this place is important. This is where you need to be, here, I tell her, then I point inside to the kitchen, — not in there.

  Sorenson nods at me, in the failing light. A breeze clatters the swordlike leaves of the big palm against the window, scoring the silence. Because although it’s tearing her apart to admit it, she knows it’s true, every fucking word.

  She offers to drive me home but I insist on getting a cab. — I can pick one up on Collins.

  — It’s really no bother.

  — No thank you. You’ve done enough already.

  — But that’s nothing, that night on the causeway, you don’t know how much you’ve already given me.

  — Honey, I ain’t even started yet, and I throw my bag over my shoulder and walk out into the night.

  Of course, when I get outside I double-back into Sorenson’s yard. I’m crouching under the window, looking at her through the blinds. Sorenson is sat at the computer. She’s gaping at what looks like pictures of fluffy baby animals and it seems she’s crying. Fat loser tears. Well, let her bubble away, but if I see that bitch take that shit out the trash and stuff her face I swear to God I will kick that door in and ram my fingers down her throat till that poison comes up . . .

  Fuck . . . my cell makes a soft purr. I click it onto silent. Sorenson’s heard nothing. Some emails have come in, one is from Sorenson! I skulk out the yard to look at it.

  8

  CONTACT 3

  * * *

  To: kimsangyung@gmail.com; lucypattybrennan@hardass.com

  From: lenadiannesorenson@thebluegallery.com

  Subject: Did You Ever See Anything So Cute?

  Kim, Lucy,

  This is to cheer you guys up!

  Did you ever see anything so cute?

  Lena x

  The rabid but pitiful bitch has linked me to a website called Cute Overload. It’s all puppies, kittens, bear cubs, hamsters, and bunnies. Judging by the posts on it, everyone is a mentally retarded soccer mom, or a mentally retarded soccer mom in waiting.

  9

  CUTE OVERLOAD

  I BLINK AWAKE into a mango light that paints the room. The digital display on the clock—9:12—jolts me alert. What the fuck, I never—

  I have a client at 10:30!

  — shut the front door . . .

  Heat and mass by my side; a storm of awareness that the bed is co-occupied thuds into my chest. My first dread thought: Sorenson! No, surely not. I turn slowly to look at the slumbering chick next to me; that femme who really liked the taste of pussy and getting fucked good. I went out on a cunt hunt last night, and I hate when I break my own rules and bring a chick back. She even has a leg over mine. As I roughly disentangle she blinks into life and groggily gapes at me. Without makeup she looks so young, a college freshman or sophomore type.

  Getting stuck with experimenting bitches isn’t my preferred modus operandi, but hey-ho, you can’t critique a chick who took the plastic you were packing so eagerly. — Good morning, she yawns and stretches.

  — And to you. I force a smile. Then it gets uncomfortable. I’m no good at this.

  She gets out of bed; tall, lean and hot. I dig that blond-white hair, cut short, but this chick could never be a proper butch, not without at least five years and 100,000 calories. She pulls on her clothes. — I gotta go. Classes. Then she smiles at me. — I can’t believe I made it with the Causeway Vigilante Chick!

  — Yeah, I say. How the fuck can you respond to that?

  — See ya.

  She gets out, and I wait till I hear the apartment door open and close, then spring up. In the kitchen area she’s taken some orange juice out the fridge and slugged it from the bottle without putting it back. Fucking gross: young bitches got no manners.

  I’m pissed at myself for sleeping in, I mean, how fucking lame, so I jump in the shower then swiftly dress. I’ve got time to quickly check my emails. Fuck me, I cringe as I see that one Sorenson sent me last night. And she at least has a friend, though heaven knows what this Kim chick is like.

  Fuck her. I’ve more important correspondence to be getting on with.

  * * *

  To: michelleparish@lifeparishioners.com

  From: lucypattybrennan@hardass.com

  Subject: So Good To Hear From You!

  Michelle,

  Can’t even begin to tell you how juiced I am about you getting back to me. My life has gotten a shitload weirder since the incident. I have a manager! And I’ve a woman from VH1 TV who’s signing me up to do this makeover show for fat suburbanites who’ve let themselves go. It sounds pretty much like what I do now, but only to camera and on a fucking cruise boat! I know, right? The thing is, they’ve lined up some preening hair, cosmetics, and clothes guy to partner me. My warning bells kind of went off. I don’t want them launching the career of the unemployable faggot son of some TV company exec on the back of my heroic actions, right? LOL!

  Not all good, though. A fascist prick running for office down here, Quist his name is, has me on his radar. Turns out the gunman was a kid who had been abused by pedophiles and went under the causeway where those perverts live and started shooting them up. Good luck to him, but like, hello, I was meant to know that? It’s all getting sick, but not in a good way.

  Please advise!

  Oh, and representation, have you heard of Valerie Mercando? What’s she like?

  Oh, FINALLY, and you wouldn’t believe that one of my clients now is this self-styled “artist” girl, the one who witnessed the bridge incident. She sought me out. Creepy or what?

  Best,

  Lucy x

  As I hit the send button, I realize that my nails, clicking on the keyboard, are getting too long. I’m scrolling through my inbox and back to Sorenson’s weird animal pictures website. Then I think I really should go, but to my delight, a reply comes right back!

  * * *

  To: lucypattybrennan@hardass.com

  From: michelleparish@lifeparishioners.com

  Subject: So Good To Hear From You!

  Lucy,

  Great to hear from you again, and delighted that things are working out so well. VH1 is an awesome channel, and they will give you a great profile. Of course, the right collaborators are important, but this is a golden opportunity! Bite their hand off! BUT leave the negotiations to your rep.

  Which bring us on to representation. Yes, Valerie Mercando is very good. She’ll be able to handle all the VH1 negotiations.

  Clients are clients, I don’t think it’s important where they come from, as long as there is mutual respect and the proper boundaries are observed.

  Yes, I heard that politicians were trying to use your case to gain leverage. Don’t worry, that will blow over, but I’m sure your PR person will tell you that.

  Well done! I’m excited for you!

  Best,

  Michelle

  PS Did you try out Morning Pages?

  I’m so buzzed, and get right on to Valerie.

  * * *

  To: valeriemercando@mercandoprinc.com cc: themlajtempleton@vh1.com

  From: lucypattybrennan@hardass.com

  Subject: Let’s Do It!

  Dear Valerie,

  After sound advice from my trusted friend and confidante, Michelle Parish, I’m writing to formally confirm that you are indeed the best person to represent me. I’m copying Thelma Templeton of VH1 into this email.

  Let’s get the ball rolling and kick some serious ass!

  Best,

  Lucy x

  In my postage-stamp kitchen area I mix and down a protein shake. Emerging into the sunshine, I’m ready to bust the chops of any asshole who comes into my space, but the paparazzi seem to have vanished again. Striding across Flamingo Park, I head toward the gym. A couple of guys in thei
r twenties are running and one stops, pulling himself up on the bar by the basketball courts. He does seven pull-ups, struggles on number eight, fails on nine. I get straight on it. — Here’s how it’s done, I say, knocking out a dozen, finishing the twelfth as strong as when I started the first, then doing the same number of chin-ups, beaten by nothing other than the clock.

  — Wow . . . the guy says.

  — It’s all in the breathing, I tell him. — If you’re doing pull-ups, your grip should be slightly wider than your shoulder. For chin-ups, the underhand grip, keep them around shoulder width.

  T2 style! Sarah Fucking Connor! Joan Fucking Jett!

  When I get to the gym, Marge’s already there, and she’s stretching out. She’s getting the stink-eye from Toby, the fag receptionist, who describes himself as a DJ, because they let him occasionally spin his flouncy, ambient, antimusic, antilife CDs when the joint is empty. When it fills with suburban housewives, he has to cede his place to Coldplay and Maroon 5 mixes, and I’ve even grown to accept those wrist-slash inducers as a blessed relief to his tepid shit. I swear my ass turns to peat bog at the very sight of that pretentious, bitter queer. His earshot makes me instinctively drop my vowels into Southie caricature. Heavy-muscled and cut in typical South Beach pseudo-homo style, he’s blissfully unaware as he pops his steroids and presses his one-fifty that a throwaway jab would bust his faggot nose and have him in counseling for years, spilling bucketloads of pansy tears. — You’ve been in the news again, he announces, then his head swivels to a mounted screen. — Oh, look. He points at the TV.

  Joel Quist is on the screen. He’s running for office on every hate-and-fear policy you can think of, and shit-talking every alternative:

  Terrorism: killing innocent Americans

  Gun control: killing innocent Americans who can’t protect themselves

  Higher taxes for the super-rich instead of bailouts: killing innocent Americans

  Not killing Arabs: killing innocent Americans

  Abortion: killing innocent Americans (before they’re born)

  Gay marriage: sodomizing, then killing, innocent Americans

  I’m on his radar and it sucks. Oh shit: now my big oval mouth is gaping and stupefied into the camera, like Marge’s when confronted by a treadmill. I signal for her to pick up the bell weights, but I can’t keep my eyes off the screen. All I needed to say was, “Of course male victims of sexual violence have the right to self-defense. This is appropriate when they are being attacked. Mr. McCandless wasn’t being attacked, he was pursuing two unarmed men, and shooting at them. If he was the victim of a previous crime then we have a criminal justice system that exists to deal with such cases.” But that ship, the vessel of reason, has long fucking sailed.

  Thorpe appears, and he’s making that very point, but in his rambling, pontificating, lecturing, half-assed way. You can tell that everybody hates him. He’s slippery and effete. He’s a fucking lawyer.

  Man the fuck up!

  — Right Marge, get that fifteen-pound kettlebell and gimme four sets of swing and squat, twelve reps per set!

  Quist cuts right in over the protesting Thorpe, who is waved down by the anchor, a guy this time, though he still looks like he wants to take the dribbling snail of this semi-continent old fuck into his tight, priggish mouth. — Well, I am all for the rule of law, as is well known by my voting record on such issues, especially when you compare it to Mr. Thorpe’s one of mollycoddling the criminal element in our society . . .

  Marge is going through her stuff. — Raise the weights higher and get your butt lower! Swing and squat! And swing and squat!

  They cut to Thorpe long enough for a petty pout of a reaction shot and a muffled off-camera plea, then to the anchor who waves him down with the back of his hand, — Please, allow Mr. Quist to finish.

  — But sometimes our politicians and bureaucrats in Washington let the people down, Quist rooster-puffs himself up. — Lemme ask this question: How long was young Sean McCandless let down for? Lucy Brennan, albeit unwittingly, came to help those sick perverts, as everybody seems to do. But who was there for poor little Sean McCandless? Who came to help that kid?

  I let my eyes swivel to Marge who is gasping as she lifts that kettlebell. — Goo-ood . . .

  Back onscreen: a lot of outraged, angst-ridden hand-wringing from Thorpe, who appeals, crybaby style, to the stern anchor, claiming he wasn’t given a fair hearing. The host then takes him to task, making him look even more of an asshole. Then they cut, thankfully, to the story of the conjoined twins. — Could be worse, Toby, dripping schadenfreude, nods at the screen.

  A head shot of Annabel, some mousy aspirational chatter of her love for Stephen, then a close-up on intertwined fingers, as she’s revealed to be holding his hand. We pull out in long shot to see Amy looking in the opposite direction from Stephen, away from her sister. Rather than going tight on the lovebirds, the freak-show bastards keep her in shot. With her hook nose poking through her long hair, she resembles a scavenger bird perched on Annabel’s shoulder. My cell vibrates and it’s Valerie. — Hey, you, I shout with enthusiasm, to show that Toby creep that I’m not fazed. I turn to Marge. — Treadmill, twenty minutes, starting at jogging pace, 4 mph, and I’m moving toward the front door and some privacy.

  — Hi, Lucy. I just saw the news . . .

  — Yes, but surely it’ll blow over . . . I say, gesturing at a stalling, gasping Marge to climb the fuck on and get with it, as I step outside into the sun and look up at the azure sky.

  — It’s got VH1 nervous. You need to not talk to the press or TV.

  — Okay . . .

  — Sorry if I sound a little strung. A singer client’s been caught with blow in some Ocean Drive spot. The promoter who has her on at the Gleeson is some kind of born-again asshole who has a weird antidrugs stipulation in the contract and is threatening to pull tomorrow night’s gig. Must go . . . oh, one other thing, the Total Gym people sent me a free home gym for you. They’ve enclosed a note, one of those “no obligation, but if you do like the product and feel inclined to endorse it, we would be grateful,” so that’s up to you. I’ll send it on.

  — Wow! That’s rad!

  — Yes, it’s all good. But don’t talk to the media, it’s all fuel to them, so just let it burn out.

  — Cool, I say in cagey affirmation, thinking, just what I need in my life: a Chuck Norris-endorsed piece of crap fitness equipment, which will fall apart as soon as it’s taken half my life to assemble and eat up practically all the space in my shoebox apartment.

  The line goes dead and I step back into the gym. I raise a lumbering Marge to 5 mph with a slight gradient, and the point of exhaustion. — Almost there! That’s what I need! The warrior Marge! And five . . . and four . . . and three . . . and two . . . and one . . . and the machine goes into cool-down mode. — Good work, I exclaim, as she looks at me like the kid who has fallen on her ass and doesn’t know whether she’s going to laugh or cry. Fry that hoe’s cellulite. Smooth that bitch’s dimpled fat. — Breathe, Marge: in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  Jezzo, they still need to be told to do this! What the fuck is that saying? But Marge finishes her session and staggers gratefully to the locker room for a shower. On the screens Thorpe and Quist have gone, replaced by the mother of the conjoined twins, talking about the girls, followed by a nauseating, breathless voice-over, — . . . like any mother, Joyce fears for the future of her girls. But in the case of Amy and Annabel, their future, like their past and present, is inextricably bound up with each other.

  I’m contemplating the grotesqueness of this setup when Sorenson appears, in new gaudy pink workout gear. It’s the sort of outfit either a retard or a ten-year-old would wear. — All righty! she sings. — I’m fired up and rarin to go!

  — Good, I smile, teeth clenching, moving toward the machines, her following me.

  How do I shave the beef off this irritating chubster? I get her on the treadmill, putting her through her paces. I’m upping th
e stakes, giving her more, nudging it to 5 mph, forcing her to pound that rubber track. Dance, fat little hamster, dance! — C’mon, Lena Sorenson, c’mon! I shout, as heads turn, my voice booming over Toby’s ambient drivel. I push the treadmill up to 6 mph, watching the blaze intensify on Sorenson’s face. — We are fired up and rarin to go!

  Every time the chunky hoe catches her breath to do what she does best, even more than eat, namely talk, I push her further, or change the activity. She has to get the message: this is not a social club.

  But Sorenson surprises me with her cojones. She’s taking everything I’m throwing at her. Even after the session, she’s still sticking around, breathlessly trying to engage with me when my mind is clearly elsewhere. — That . . . is . . . just . . . soooo . . . good . . . I haven’t felt this good . . . in ages . . .

  It gets so oppressive that I’m even delighted to meet Mom for lunch. Anything, if it means escaping my own personal Siamese twin. Annabel, I know your pain. Sorenson practically invites herself along, and then has the audacity to look at me like an abused stepchild when I tell her I have things to discuss with my mother. My God, I’m even concerned the needy bitch is going to stalk me all the way to the Ocean Drive joint where we’ve stupidly agreed to meet! I step outside the gym and make my way toward the Atlantic.

  If numbers count in my game, then my mom, Jackie Pride (58, 5’8", 130 lbs), through being in real estate, is probably even more subject to their capriciousness. The market has tanked; she sold twelve condos in Miami two years ago, three last year, and so far none this year. Two years ago she ran around in a big Lincoln; its predecessor was the one she bought to replace the Caddy I inherited. It was the era when real-estate guys imitated lawyers and nobody laughed. Now that she’s driving a Toyota and staring hard into the demise of another long-term relationship, zero is a troubling statistic.

  She’s already seated, laptop fired up Sorenson-style (ha!), and rattling into her cell phone. As I approach she looks up, — Hey, pickle, and she gives me an apologetic nod, her shaved-and-penciled brows arching as she snaps her Apple Mac shut. She’s wearing a white top, with a checked skirt and pair of shoes, both black and white. She wears glasses on the bridge of her strong Saxon nose (not like my little button Paddy thing, inherited from Dad), and a pair of shades pushed back on her head to keep her still-brown collar-length hair in place. Mom ends her call and scrunches into her plastic chair, which slides a few inches along the sidewalk. — Oh my God . . . she groans. She looks good; the only really noticeable ravage of age is where the jowly flesh around her chin and neck has sagged to a crumpled bag. Mom keeps talking about getting “work done” but being “too busy even for Lasik.”