Obsession: A Twin Menage Romance

by Stephanie Brother

  The bus drops me off about half a mile’s walk from where google maps tells me the restaurant is, a part of Manhattan that’s been redeveloped recently so everything looks like it’s been zapped in from some future city a thousand years from now. I don’t know what it is with glass, steel, exposed brick walls and the kind of light bulbs where you can see the element inside hanging in multitudes from the ceiling like a millipede’s legs, but everywhere right now that considers itself modern seems to be a variation on that exact theme. On this street, which at one point not so long ago used to be the thoroughfare of an industrial zone that encompassed warehouses, markets and buildings like the one in Red Hook where we left Shadowheart’s skull, there are places now that look like the frantic drawings of an architect student, desperate to create something no-one has ever seen before, regardless of whether it suits the environment.

  There are windows that aren’t windows but huge TV screens instead, outside walls made of organic plants and the obligatory bright element light bulbs everywhere I look.

  My concern I won’t be able to find The Exchange is assuaged when I realize that not only is the name projected on the sidewalk in bright red lettering, it’s also spread across the front of the place in an enormous font that makes the Hollywood sign look like something you might have to put glasses on to read properly.

  There is a red carpet, a barrier rope, a queue outside and the kind of door staff that look like they break people’s legs for fun. I expected big based on the place that Mr. Money Bags took us to last time, but I didn’t expect to have to queue for an hour, get padded down and then pass an interview in order to get a meal. This kind of attention is way too much for a girl like me, and I can already feel myself getting nervous.

  I call Mom, hoping I might be able to convince her that we’d all be much more comfortable in a cafe in Brooklyn, where they keep the food in trays under artificial lights and you pay once and eat as much as you like, but when I finally get through, she’s got an entirely different solution.

  “Your name’s on the door”, she says plainly, as though the thing were entirely obvious.

  I still feel bad skipping the queue and heading directly up to the door staff, but I don’t exactly want to queue up either. I get what I can only assume are a mixture of hateful, jealous and unconvincing looks from those people that have spent most of the afternoon waiting patiently behind the barrier, while they watch a nervous girl in jeans and woolly jumper who looks like she doesn’t belong on the street at all, cross the sacred red carpet in a bee-line for the six foot blond haired girl wielding the clipboard.

  I’m not even on the first step when an arm the size of my leg halts my progress. I look slowly up to the man who might have just walked out of the pages of a fairy story.

  “Can I help you?” he says.

  “My name’s on the door?” I say, so nervous I somehow make it into a question.

  “That depends what your name is”, the man says, before raising his hand like a castle raises it’s drawbridge to give me access to the woman behind him.

  “Penny Breen”, I say, but the man has already turned his back, to keep an eye on whoever else might be thinking about attempting a mutiny.

  I close the distance between myself and Brigitte Nielsen, who only gets taller the closer I get.

  “Name?” she says curtly to me.

  “Penny Breen”, I say, my neck sore just looking up to her.

  She gives me a confused look that is so powerful it makes me briefly consider whether I am actually who I say I am, before checking her list to make sure. “I thought you’d look different”, she says. “Follow me.”

  I haven’t got time to wonder what she means by different, or indeed why she’s considering how I look at all, before I’m whisked quickly through the oversized entrance doorway, at a pace I find needlessly difficult to keep up with. Getting chaperoned to the table is all very well, but if it means arriving there out of breath I think it’d much rather do it on my own.

  I have barely a brace of heartbeats to appreciate the opulence that surrounds us before I’m delivered like an unwanted Christmas present (I thought you’d look different) to a couple that already have way too much.

  Brigitte Nielsen strikes my name off her list, clicks her heels and disappears back to the entrance, like a robot with a single setting.

  Mom and Brandon - Brandon, that’s it, I knew it was in there somewhere - look like they’ve been on the happy meds. There is champagne on the table, already half drunk and Mom’s got the same kind of rosiness in her cheeks I got used to seeing a lot after the divorce.

  If they’re not celebrating something, they’re doing a really good job of pretending.

  “Hi, Penny”, Brandon says, standing up to give me a hug. “It’s great to see you again.”

  “Hi”, I say, a little taken aback by the familiarity of the hug. “Mom.”

  “Hello, darling”, Mom says. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You don’t have to thank me for coming, Mom”, I say. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”

  I go to pull out the chair to sit down, and struggle so much with the weight of it I have to use both hands. I also notice there are five chairs and not just three, which means either we’re expecting company, or Brandon is so rich, he just pays extra just to have the space.

  “Champagne?” Mom asks, lifting the bottle towards me.

  I tilt both of the glasses they’ve been kind enough to prepare for me in advance and narrow my eyes at her. “So, are you going to let me know what this is all about?”

  Mom lets the bubbly fizz into the crystal before responding. “Don’t be so cynical Penny”, she says. “It’s nothing major.”

  “You left me five whatsapp messages”, I remind her. “You haven’t sent five whatsapp messages to me since I installed it on your phone.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you were coming”, she says. “We don’t get to do this that often.”

  “We thought it would be a chance to get the family together for the first time”, Brandon adds.

  “The family?” I ask, the word sounding way too united for my liking.

  “I have two sons that should already be here and aren’t. When they get here and we’ve all done the introductions, we’ll let you know why we’ve got everyone together.”

  “It’s nothing bad”, Mom says, giggling a little.

  “Mom!”

  “Sorry, it’s the champagne”, Mom says, her face and chest going red.

  Champagne, talk of family, five whatsapp messages in a row, one of Manhattan’s new exclusive restaurants, Brandon’s entitled children to meet us for the very first time, this better not be going the way I have a horrible feelings it’s going, and I’m not talking about drug muling either.

  “You’re not selling the house are you?” I say.

  Mom gives me a quizzical look and then falls about giggling again. “Why would I sell the house?” she asks when she’s finally composed herself.

  “No reason”, I say.

  She better not be thinking about selling the house I grew up, fantasized and developed my imagination in. If this is about Mom moving in with Brandon, in his mansion that looks out over central park, I might have to refuse point blank on the basis that stealing a child’s history is the worse crime of all.

  “Do you like the place?” Brandon asks, perhaps as a way of distracting my attention away from the gigantic elephant in the room that might just be him stealing my mom away and turning her into a champagne guzzling maniac with money to burn.

  I give the place a look, just to give the impression that these kind of things impress me. Actually, I am impressed, it would be impossible not to be, but I’d be equally happy and a lot less stressed if we were sat in a booth in Chipotle.

  “It’s amazing”, I say. “I love the lightbulbs over the bar.”

  The entire place is open planned, with exposed brick walls, high ceilings that seem to disappear up into the void of space abov
e us, where ventilator fans and light fixtures hang like modern art sculptures. I can see the chefs cooking, the waiting staff buzzing around like swarms of bees and Jack and Logan looking at me with a pallid express of horror.

  Jack and Logan?

  “What the fuck?”

  I’ve not only said it out loud, I also happening to be standing right now, the chair that must weigh fifty kilos flat on it’s back like a knocked out boxer and both of my champagne glasses on their side and guzzling liquid out all over the tablecloth and floor. Not only is it Jack and Logan, not only are they here, where they shouldn’t be in a million years, they are making their way to the table.

  Mom and Brandon look at me in abject horror, and then over to where my line of sight leads, to find out just what category of cold-sweat inducing nightmare has made me react in the way that I have.

  As Logan and Jack slowly approach, and Mom and Brandon’s expressions turn from horror into delight, while not one but two waitresses attend to my fallen chair and upended champagne glasses, while stunned diners look on and whisper between themselves at the crazy girl who seems to be having a nervous breakdown, and the chefs stop cutting, and the lights flicker and the world grinds to a halt on its tilted access, the penny, like the boulder at the beginning of Indiana Jones and The Raiders of The Lost Ark, drops through the roof. The two extra chairs, the sons we’re waiting for, the job at one of Brandon’s companies, it all makes horrible sense to me.

  “Fox”, I say pathetically, finally remembering where I’d heard it before, my dreams popping instantaneously like a balloon thrown into a fire. Jack, Logan and Brandon Fox.

  Please tell me this isn’t happening.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I don’t know who looks more shocked: Logan, Jack or me, which is saying something, because I’m pretty traumatized right now. I have somehow fallen in love with the identical twin sons of the man my mother has been dating, as though the whole thing were some kind of poorly written eighties telenovela, albeit with straighter hair and a lot fewer shoulder pads.

  Brandon even looks like the kind of cutout actor that might be perfect for the role, his good looks and comforting nature ideal for the little screen and the legions of fans that would inevitably adore him.

  Telenovelas aside, I feel like fate has totally fucked me, this ironic sting in its tail part of the grand plan all along to destroy my dreams entirely and make me feel like an utter idiot for thinking what I thought we had might have actually been possible. I want to cry.

  “I didn’t know you all knew each other already”, Mom says brightly, somehow unable to shift her jovial mood.

  To add insult to injury, the empty chairs are alongside the one I’ve chosen, so Jack and Logan sit either side of me, an identical barrier between my mom and their dad.

  “Nor me”, Brandon says. “Obviously I knew you’d have met Jack through the job, but Logan’s so hard to track down I thought we might have difficulty getting him to show up tonight.”

  “I didn’t know Jack was your son”, I say pathetically.

  “I didn’t know Dad was the one that passed your resume to Prometheus”, Jack is quick to point out.

  Brandon holds his hands up as though being caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “I thought it would be better if I did it anonymously”, he says. “I just wanted you to feel like you were being judged on your own merits alone.”

  “So you’ve been working together for a week”, Mom starts, “and you had no idea. That’s so funny.”

  Funny is not the word I would choose to use.

  “I hope you two are getting on okay”, Mom adds, “And Jack isn’t too hard of a boss.”

  She doesn’t know the half of it. “She’s a wonderful employee”, Jack says. “An incredible artist and-”, he pauses briefly to consider what to say. “We’re very lucky to have her.”

  Jack puts his hand on my knee and I’m so jumpy it jerks up uncontrollably and bangs loudly on the underneath of the table.

  “Are you alright, Penny?” Brandon asks, when the glasses have finally stopped trembling.

  “Sorry, I’m-, it’s nothing”, I say. “I guess I’m just surprised to see Jack and Logan here, that’s all. They were the last two people on earth I expected to see tonight.”

  “So how do you two know each other then?” Mom says, her index finger moving between Logan and I.

  Logan looks at me and then over to Mom. We fell in love over a buried skull, we share the same appreciation for three way relationships, we met each other in a skanky bar when Logan dazzled me with his Godlike appearance.

  “I went to see Jack at the beginning of the week”, Logan says instead, “I think it was Penny’s first day.”

  He stops short of saying we’ve been inseparable ever since.

  “What are the chances, hey?” Mom says, doing the rounds again with the champagne bottle. “First I meet your dad, and then Penny meets both of you, completely independently of our relationship together.”

  The word relationship makes me feel uncomfortable, and Logan’s leg pressed against mine doesn’t help either. Out of all of the millions of other dads in this world, why the hell do Logan and Jack have to have the one that happens to be dating my mom? Where is the justice in that? The first time in my life I feel like something is going my way, and things just have to complicate themselves unnecessarily. Having a relationship with two people at once is hard enough, having your mom date their father as well is needlessly headache inducing.

  It’s not impossible, at least that’s true, but it isn’t exactly conventional either.

  “So”, Jack begins. “Are you going to tell us why you’ve brought us all here?”

  Mom and Brandon share a conspiratorial look. They’ve adopted a cat, bought a yacht, decided to go on holiday together.

  “You tell them”, Mom says.

  “Do it together”, Brandon insists, like a schoolboy about to confess a prank to his friends.

  It’s a cat, please for christ's sake be a cat.

  Brandon takes Mom’s hand in his. “I know Katie and I have only known each other for a relatively short amount of time”, he begins. “But in that time, we both feel like we’ve met the person we should have met a long time ago.”

  “It’s nothing really”, Mom says, “But we just wanted to let you all know, all together as a family, that Brandon and I-”, she pauses dramatically.

  “Are adopting a cat?” I can’t help but ask.

  “No, silly”, Mom says, pausing again and making a point of waving her left hand at me.

  Oh, fuck it can’t be. Oh, fucking, fuckity, fuck it can’t be anything else.

  It’s been there all along and I haven’t seen it, a rock the size of Gibraltar. I can feel the color draining from my face like champagne spilling out of an upturned glass, my yelp of distress nothing but a dry croak in my throat, my heart suddenly a lump of muscle that refuses to continue beating.

  “We’re getting married”, Mom says excitedly, and for the second time tonight, my chair hits the floor, this time with me still in it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  If I stay in here, I can pretend the world outside doesn’t exist. Mom and Brandon won’t get married, and Jack and Logan won’t become my - I can’t even say it.

  “Come on, Penny”, Mom says, through the bolt locked cubicle door. “Nothing’s going to change.”

  Everything is going to change. Logan, Jack, my fantasy and me, how the hell is that going to continue? We were already pushing the borders of morality before tonight, right now we’re skimming the edge of illegality.

  “Just give me a minute, Mom”, I say, as if passing out at the table, and then immediately rushing to the restroom upon coming to wasn’t enough already to deserve a moment alone.

  “Everyone’s waiting”, Mom says insistently. “We can’t begin the celebrations without you. And then after the briefest of pauses, “Is this because of Dad?”

  “Please, Mom, I’ll be out in a mi
nute, I just need to catch my breath, that’s all. It’s a shock”, I say. “I’m in shock.”

  “If you’re not out of there in two minutes I’m coming back in”, Mom declares.

  “Mom, I’m twenty five years old, please, just give me a few minutes to gather myself together. You’ve just told me you’re getting married.”

  “Two minutes”, Mom says again, ignoring completely what I’ve just said. “I’ll wait until you’re back to open the expensive champagne.”

  Spending the rest of my life in a restroom cubicle as well maintained as it is, doesn’t seem like a very feasible long term plan. It would make what remains of my relationship with Jack and Logan kinky but tiresome after a while. I should face this like an independent woman, but all I want to die is cry foul and curse fate like the malevolent God I always knew it to be. The one shining morsel of hope in this grade nine shitstorm is that Jack and Logan had no idea about this either. I was the one that fainted, but by Logan’s ashen face and Jack’s trembling hands it was clear that neither one of us saw this coming. The problem all three of us face now, is how the fuck we are going to solve it.

  “There she is”, Mom says, rising from the table to meet me.

  I feel weak, like I’ve just come out of a chemotherapy session, a mere shadow of my former self.

  “Are you feeling alright?” Jack asks.

  “You hit the floor pretty hard”, Logan adds.

  “I’m okay”, I lie. “I guess just a little shocked.”