Steven does understand. It was pretty much how most women described his brother.
“D.Wash says he loved you,” he says.
“I guess you could say the feeling was mutual.”
Steven can’t help but think about Robin. Dania and Scotty couldn’t have been together as long as he and Robin had been together. But he’s pretty sure Robin never felt about him the way Dania feels now. He imagines that, even if he died in a fiery plane crash while flying home from Singapore, no one would ever see the look on Robin’s face that he sees from Dania right this moment. He also thinks letting go of Robin would be easier for him than leaving Dania could have been for Scotty. The look on Scotty’s face in that photo was proof of that.
Maybe the money was for an engagement ring, Steven thinks. He can only hope Scotty would have been that smart.
He reaches into his pocket and takes out some money and tosses it on the table. “Don’t you have to get back to work?” he asks.
“I’m off,” she says. “I was about to leave when you walked in. I have to get to my other job.”
“Two jobs, eh?”
“I only do the restaurant thing during the day. I also sing in a band.”
“Really?” He raises his eyebrows. Now she’s obviously Scotty’s dream girl. It all gets clearer every minute he talks to her. “What kind of music?”
“A little of everything,” she says, which Steven recognizes as the standard answer musicians give to that question. “We have a regular gig over at Orchard Towers. In The Cocktail Room.”
“Sounds very nice. Did Scotty watch you perform a lot?”
“All the time. That’s where it happened, you know? Where he . . .”
“—I know.”
There is a long moment, and neither one of them says anything. Dania watches a bungee jumper off to the side, and Steven stares at the orange lightbulbs all around the Hooters. For the first time since his plane landed, he feels a cool breeze blow through his hair. He only just now realizes that he hasn’t felt terribly hot the entire time he’s been sitting on this patio. He also realizes that the waitress never came back to check on him.
“The service here is lousy,” he says, and smiles at Dania. “I bet it’s better at The Shark Fin.”
“Most definitely.”
“You should get a job here. I bet the money is better.”
She rolls her eyes and, for a second, almost looks annoyed. As if it is a sore subject. “They would never hire me here.”
“Of course they would!”
“No, I have a bad reputation.”
“That’s not what I heard. D.Wash says people tend to fall pretty hard for you.”
“He’s crazy. Like I told you, I only attract trouble.”
Steven leans forward and takes the note he wrote to her and folds it into a little square. “Thanks for taking care of my brother. I have no doubt you meant the world to him.”
“I’m sorry he’s gone,” she says quietly. “He was really something special.”
Steven smiles and stands up. “That he was.”
Dania stands up too, and Steven is suddenly reminded of the fact that she’s a few inches taller than he is because of her stylish heels. He looks up at her and suddenly feels weak. As if she could put him over her knee and spank him like a child. She points at the note in his hand.
“Your handwriting is better than his,” she says.
“It always was.”
“Computers did it. Made everyone bad writers. Typing and e-mail and keyboards. No one writes letters anymore.”
Steven has to agree. He can’t remember the last time he wrote anything that wasn’t a Christmas card. The last birthday card he got from Scotty was an online greeting.
“Take care of yourself,” he says, and extends a hand to her. Dania looks at it and then gives Steven a long stare. Her eyes seem very sad again, and he suddenly feels awkward. Then she pulls him close and puts her arms around him. It’s a very forceful hug, but it feels just right. He doesn’t quite know if it’s sweet or sexual, with her firm body pressed so closely against his. But he knows it’s exactly what he needs. She squeezes him tightly, and he returns the gesture. Four seconds later, she lets him go.
“You’re so much like him,” she says. It’s obvious she’s still looking at Steven and seeing Scotty standing there. “You look and sound like he does. Like he did.”
“Always have.”
“But you’re different, aren’t you? Just like he said about you. The glasses and the hair. The nice clothes. All of . . . this. Makes me wonder which one of you was the real thing.”
“I think we both were. But we really did have more in common than people realize. More than just how we look.”
Dania smiles and waves to him as she starts to walk away. Steven can tell that, the second she’s alone, she’s going to have herself a very big, very long cry. He knows that she’s doing a good job of holding it back right this minute, but it’s inevitable. He understands. She just sat and talked to the identical twin of her lover. An identical twin she never met until that lover was dead. It’s bound to be a bit overwhelming.
“You’re probably more like him than even you realize,” she says.
“Think so, do you?”
“Yeah.” She smirks. “You look like trouble, too.”
8
Look at you, you sad son of a bitch. Steven hears the cardboard box of ashes speaking to him the way Scotty might if he were sitting here right this moment. Here Steven is, a Canadian in Singapore, all the way on the other side of the world, and he’s sitting in his hotel room watching TV. There are probably a million exciting things to do in this city, but he’s apparently content to sit here and wait for room service. Scotty would definitely be appalled.
Out the window, the lights on the tall skyscrapers are a clue that there is a nightlife going on out there that even a twin in mourning could enjoy. In fact, a twin in mourning should enjoy it, rather than wallow in his despair in front of a TV speaking almost every language other than English. Even the worst local food would probably be more exciting than the steak and potatoes that will soon arrive on a rolling cart up the service elevator.
“If you’ve seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town . . .” Steven says aloud. He chuckles that he managed to remember the line. It’s lyrics from the song “One Night In Bangkok,” from the Broadway musical Chess.
But this ain’t Bangkok, and you’re not a chess player in an eighties musical, Scotty’s ashes scoff at him from across the room. You’re just a fop drinking wine in your underwear.
Steven looks over at himself in the mirror. He does look quite silly. Still wearing his patterned accent socks and pressed Oxford shirt, he discarded everything else but his boxer briefs. The two bottles of Cabernet he bought in the hotel bar are keeping his pants company on the ironing board across the room. He opened one bottle a half hour ago and was planning on saving the other for tomorrow. The more he sits here and stares at either the TV or the window, the more he begins to think that both bottles will be empty by midnight.
He sings the line about a night in Bangkok and the world being your oyster to himself. He doesn’t like oysters. He’s never been to Bangkok. He’s in Singapore and doesn’t really care. Might as well be Vietnam for all he knows or cares. He couldn’t find any of them on a map if he tried.
“So, this was where you chose to stay?” he asks the cardboard box. “After all that time in France and Italy and Australia? After months in Alaska, even, you chose to stay here in God’s sauna.”
Hell, yes, I stayed here, Scotty says back to him. Did you see the woman I was screwing?
Indeed Steven did. In fact, Steven has little trouble remembering Dania since he left Hooters only a few hours ago. For once, he is pretty impressed with his brother’s taste in women. Maybe it was the exoticism she put out there or that allure that a lot of Asian women have on Western men. But Dania was definitely more interesting (and more interesting to look at) than oth
er women who came in and out of Scotty’s life. There were plenty of attractive ones, to be sure. Some were probably even stunning. But Dania had something about her that was enticing. Steven’s not knowing what that something was probably made her seem even sexier. He imagines that’s what Scotty thought, too.
Steven looks at the clock on the nightstand. Just after 9 p.m., which means it’s just around 8 a.m. back in Toronto. The glass of wine has given him just enough liquid courage and lack of good judgment to pick up the phone and try dialing Robin one last time. There has been enough time since he last tried. A call right about now wouldn’t seem so desperate, right? She is his girlfriend after all. She should want to know that he’s okay, right? His brother did just die and everything, right?
Don’t try to pull me into this mess, Scotty tells him. I never even met the woman. She didn’t even like me.
The phone rings three times, and Steven is about to hang up when the voice mail doesn’t pick up. Instead, there is silence on the line. Then, a second later, he hears the sound of someone inhaling and exhaling very slowly. Then, after another second:
“Hello?” Robin’s voice already sounds annoyed. It’s as if she knew that Steven was calling, didn’t want to pick up the phone, but knew she probably had to at this point anyway. She’s still mad at him, has already decided to leave him, and isn’t ready to even deal with speaking to him about it yet.
He can tell all of this simply by the way she says “hello.”
“It’s me,” he says, and prays she doesn’t ask whom.
“Hey,” she says. For a brief second, she sounds like she did when they first met. Just that one word is enough to do it. “Hey” sounds like the greeting of someone who wants to talk to the person on the other end of the phone. “Hey” is friendlier than “Hello.”
“Hey,” he says back, trying to see if it sounds as carefree when he says it. It doesn’t.
“You still in Singapore?” she asks.
“Yeah, everything okay back home?”
“I’m fine. Just heading to work. What time is it there?”
“Just after nine,” he says. He wonders how long he can steer the conversation this way and keep the small talk going. He’s surprised to find how comforting he finds the sound of her voice.
“Did you take care of everything? With your brother?” She says “brother” with a coldness he picks up on. It’s as if she’s caught him cheating with another woman and there never was a twin all these thirty-four years.
“Yes,” he says, and looks over at Scotty’s ashes. “I had him cremated. I was going to bring him back to Toronto with me.”
“Oh.” She sounds surprised. “Did they give you an urn or something?”
“No, just a box.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds creepy.”
“It is, a little, I guess.”
“I don’t think you can just bring a box of ashes on the plane with you.” She is definitely twirling her hair around her right index finger while she talks. She always does that when she’s on the phone. “There’s got to be some health issues or something like that, right?”
“You’re probably right.” He thinks of how odd it is to even have a box of remains, let alone to be packing it in his suitcase and checking it onto a plane. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just leave them there,” she suggests, as if she’s told him to leave behind a pair of old gym shoes.
“Because he’s my brother, and I flew to Singapore to get him.”
“No,” she says, and almost sounds sweet. “That’s not your brother anymore, Steven. It’s just his ashes. It’s his remains. You don’t have to bring them home.” She pauses for a minute, and he can hear her still getting ready. Putting on makeup or lipstick or something like that. They’re talking about his dead brother, and she’s just going about her daily routine. “He probably wouldn’t have wanted you to do that, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” he says, even though he’s pretty sure she’s probably right. He looks at the cardboard box and, for a minute, thinks it might be funny just to check out of the hotel and leave it here. Scotty probably would have liked that—his last hurrah on this mortal coil being a practical joke on some unsuspecting hotel maid.
“Look,” she says, and Steven wonders if this is when she drops the axe. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to run out and meet a client.”
“Sure, I understand.”
“I’ll talk to you when you get home, okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says. Before he can hang up, he stops himself. He knows that it’s now or never and that he doesn’t want to wait until Friday. “Hey, I’m sorry about the other day. You know, before I left.”
“I know.” She sounds annoyed. “I don’t wanna talk about it, okay?”
“Sure, but I just wanted you to know I didn’t like the way we ended it. I know what you were trying to tell me. With the bottle and everything. I should have talked with you about it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it does matter. I want to be better about these things. It’s a good idea. I don’t like it when things go that way. I don’t want you thinking I don’t listen or I don’t care.”
“It is what it is.”
He pauses. He’s always hated that expression. Mostly because it doesn’t actually mean anything. But also because he knows it’s usually what people say when they have accepted a decision they have made. He wonders what decision has been made this time. “What does that mean?” he asks.
“Nothing. We’ll talk when you get home.”
“No, you never say that unless you’ve just done something. So, what does that mean?”
She lets out a long, loud sigh. He takes his ear away from the phone for a minute and lets her finish cursing under her breath.
“Look, I just think it’s time to move on, okay? Both of us. It’s just—it’s just time, okay?”
“Move on?” he says as if he’s never heard the words, let alone seen them coming for days. “You mean, what? Move out? Are you moving out?”
She sighs again. “I think that’s best, yes.”
Well, I’m not moving out, he thinks. It’s my goddamned condo. You don’t even pay rent.
“We can figure something out when I get home,” he says. “This is probably harder with me being all the way over here. Maybe we can take some time apart and figure things out once the holidays are behind us.”
He can hear her scoff through the phone and knows she overdid it on purpose. “The holidays,” she says.
“What?”
“You and your goddamned Christmas. What do we need to wait for, Steven? It’s over. You know it, and I know it. It’s been obvious to everyone for months, for Christ’s sake.”
“It hasn’t been that bad.”
She laughs. “Of course it has. I think even your brother could tell better than you could.”
That one hits between the eyes and stings for a second. He says nothing and just sits there and looks at the cardboard box. She’s probably right, but he still thinks it was an awful thing to say.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a few seconds of silence. “I didn’t mean to say that. But this is what I’m talking about. I get mean with you, and I hate that. I don’t want any of that with us anymore.”
“Neither do I.”
“It just doesn’t work anymore, Steven. You like what you like, and none of that is something I like. You love your structure and your schedules and all of that. I can’t live like that.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus Christ,” she says. “I don’t want you to be sorry. You don’t have to be sorry. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re just you. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not who I am. And I can’t live with your trying to be something else just because you think it’s what I want. For God’s sake, have some balls for once in your life. Stick up for y
ourself.”
“That’s not fair. I stick up for myself all the time.”
“Being passive aggressive isn’t sticking up for yourself,” she says. “I’d prefer it if you straight out told me to go fuck myself once in a while, instead of just ignoring me and pretending everything was just hunky dory when you know it isn’t.”
“I don’t talk like that.”
“Exactly! That’s my point. I need to be with someone who does. Don’t you get that? There’s nothing wrong with you, Steven. But I can’t be with you, no matter how goddamned perfect you are. Get it?”
Steven pours himself another glass of wine. He’s glad he thought to buy two bottles instead of just the one. “I get it. I’m sorr . . . I understand.”
“It’s better this way. It’s just time for me to move on.”
“Sounds like you already have.”
“It’s been brewing for a while.”
“Doesn’t matter. Where are you going to stay?”
She pauses for a second, and he can hear her putting on her shoes while trying to balance the phone on her shoulder. He imagines that she’s dressed in one of her sexy black suits. It always makes her red hair really stand out. She tends to dress this way with new clients. “I’ve already done that. I got my own place.”
“What?” Steven sits up in his chair so fast he almost spills the entire glass of wine all over his nice white shirt. “You’ve already moved out?”
“Yes. I moved everything yesterday.”
“Jesus, I’ve only been gone a couple of days. You found a place already and moved there?”
“I told you that it’s been brewing.”
“No shit. I’m glad my brother’s death turned out to be so convenient for you.”
“Screw you. That’s not why this happened, and you know it.”
“I guess it is what it is,” he says. The silence on the other end of the phone tells him that the line hit home and she’s about three seconds away from cursing at him, hanging up on him, or both.
“I have to go,” she says, and sounds surprisingly calm. “I’m sorry.”
Steven looks at himself in the mirror and doesn’t think he looks so silly anymore. He thinks he looks a bit sad and pathetic. Not since he was fourteen has a woman broken up with him over the phone. It feels just as awful now as it did twenty years ago. The biggest difference now is that he doesn’t have his parents or brother to run and cry to when he puts down the phone, which only makes him want to cry a little bit more.
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