by Tina Amiri
“Chill out, bitch. I was just packing!” he yelled as he literally packed himself inside his pants and did up the zipper.
Night charged in behind her, shouldered past Beth, and dragged Sandy into the main room where he chucked him onto the window ledge.
Sandy only became vocal again as he lost touch with the floor. “Let go of me, you psychotic little faggot! You’re the last one around here to be calling the shots!”
“I can do anything I want,” Night stated, pressing on Sandy’s shoulders until his legs tipped up.
“Night, stop!” Beth shrieked as Sandy’s desperate hold on Night’s shirt became the only thing keeping him in one piece. “I want to kill him too—but you’ll go to jail!”
Night yanked him forward and Sandy dropped inside the room.
Beth offered him his crutches, which he ripped out of her hands.
“Where are your car keys?” Night demanded.
“On my bed. Just leave me alone. I’m going!”
Night grabbed the keys and hurled them out the window. He then pushed Beth aside and prodded Sandy through two hallways and down the garage access staircase.
“What about my stuff!”
“Use your blood money and buy yourself some new goddamn stuff,” Beth muttered as she got ahead of Night to hold open the door to the driveway.
“You’re the ones who should be thrown out of this house, not me!” Sandy persisted as he crossed the threshold. “I just showed this family how you were fucking them all—some literally!”
Without warning, Night clutched Beth against his chest and kissed her full on the mouth, before he gave Sandy a syrupy blink and slammed the door.
In the dim light, Beth looked up at Night, but neither of them smiled. She needed this day to confirm that Night was not a substitute for Morgen, and she now wanted her real brother back, more than ever before.
****
As predicted, the world demanded to hear from Morgen Dahlsi about recent events. A little over a week after the tragedy—after littering their home state of California with canceled shows—Gin was eager to hold a press conference as a surrogate form of entertainment. To reflect the sober theme of this particular conference, Brandt had to tone down his creativity before sending the star to the podium.
“They wouldn’t let me near you since that night. Is that what you wanted?”
Night recoiled from the comb that came precariously close to his stitched earlobe. He already had to suffer it tugging on his torn scalp, countless times.
“Do you really think I got anything I wanted in the last few days?”
“You’ve been through a hell of a lot,” Brandt conceded. “I heard some stuff on shortwave, this morning, from Oregon…about that guy who attacked you. They think he might have been a former restaurant owner named Andrew Shannien. Apparently, they found a car on his property that belonged to a missing girl.”
Night glanced up but said nothing.
“The girl was dating the man's son who’s also missing, and who the police briefly thought might be the stabbing victim. See, the police knew the man’s son had some distinguishing marks on his body…”
Peeking at the mirror, Night confirmed he actually looked bored.
“But their lead went cold when they followed up at the hospital and were told that the stabbing guy had no unusual marks. It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“Brandt, use a bandana—do something to hide my ear. I hate how it looks.”
“I should call you Raggedy Andy,” Brandt digressed with a grin, even as his brow furrowed. “So, the police are assuming the missing parties have been dead all along. I heard they’re even questioning whether this nurse, who the man dated, really died in an accident like they first thought. All I can say is, whoever his son was, I hope he experienced some light since the day he burned down his father’s restaurant and fled…because it sounds like he came from a pretty dark place if he lived with that psychopath.”
Gazing straight ahead, Night reached up to guide Brandt’s hand down to his shoulder and then kissed the top of it. “Psychopaths, freaks… Maybe they all have a reason.”
****
Night resisted the snippets of advice that Gin Corbin on his right and Charles Lehman on his left whispered in his ears, just about every time a journalist asked him a question.
“Morgen, what was your impression of the man who attacked you at the concert? Did you sense what he was capable of?”
“A bit too late, but I finally did.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said something about being in control…but he got that wrong, didn’t he?”
An uneasy silence swept the room while, beyond the range of the microphones, the lawyer cautioned the superstar about his attitude.
“Did you mean to kill him?”
“I did the only thing I could.” He caught Lehman nodding at finally hearing the words come out of his mouth exactly as prescribed. “I had to use the tranquilizer pistol or I would have been the one killed.”
The barrage of questions and comments that followed left him speechless.
“Do you believe your lookalike fan was an unsuspecting victim? …There are rumors you seriously acknowledged him from the stage that night. …Morgen, could he have been your brother—I mean, are you in fact a Dahlsi or—?”
Lehman lurched forward in his chair. “His family has already provided a statement in that regard. Of course he is a Dahlsi. The victim was nothing more than an obsessed fan.”
“Mister Dahlsi, can you verify for all of us that you did not know the victim?”
Gin whispered through clenched teeth. “You don’t have to keep answering that.”
Night barely heard his manager over the eerie silence of the lawyer saying nothing. He followed Lehman’s wild stare to a male figure, with platinum-blond hair and tinted glasses, weaving along the back of the room. Night pushed himself from his chair and bolted for the door, behind the podium, that led to an antechamber.
Gin was left trapped at the microphone when Lehman abandoned his seat as well.
A side door opened into the hotel corridor and Night ran the length of the conference hall to the rear entrance. He could hear Gin appeasing the crowd and Lehman closing in on his heels. “Morgen, we have to deal with this!”
Night spun around and shoved Lehman in the chest. “Deal with what? Just go do your job!”
“I’ve been doing my job—cleaning up after every fucking mess you’ve thrown at your family! Now, let me handle this.”
They both peered into the room to scan the back rows, but there was no sign of the mysterious Morgen-figure. Night turned away from Lehman and found himself face-to-face with a security guard.
“Mister Dahlsi, I can escort you wherever you need to go.”
Night pointed at Lehman. “Just keep him here so I can have some privacy…maybe I just need to have a piss!” He narrowly escaped being followed by another guard, but it took both of them to hold Lehman back and, Night guessed, that wouldn’t be for very long.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Morgen? For God’s sake, you better deal with it! Morgen…!”
Night reached the elevators and slammed the up-button with his fist. In an attempt to keep everyone, especially the lawyer, off his trail, he got off on a high floor and then took the stairs down to P3 where he’d parked Morgen’s car.
Perched on the driver’s seat, Night tried to catch his breath. Lehman’s reaction, not his own eyes, had just verified that the mysterious figure they’d both seen in the back of the conference room was Morgen. Now, he hoped Morgen would think to look for him here. For either of them to squirrel away to some random spot in the hotel would make no sense, and Morgen would know they’d both be mobbed if they were spotted in the open. Despite this reasoning, he still jumped when somebody tapped on the windshield.
“You just ruined everything! Why’d you run?” Morgen, very stiffly, pried the passenger door open, got inside, then scowled at t
he concrete wall in front of them. “I practically killed myself to get here and you make me chase you through the building like you want to finish me off!”
Night ignored every word. “How could you be here?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Morgen confessed. He lifted his shirt to reveal, or perhaps check on, his abdominal wound. Blood soaked the white bandages that seemed clumsily wrapped around his waist. “Try scaling a wall with this…”
The glaring red blood barely stood out for Night. What did register loudly was everything else about Morgen. He’d gained weight and a bit of color—and he could walk and talk. Night couldn’t understand the rush of mixed feelings that swept through him, but he surrendered to the happy ones by throwing his arms around his brother’s neck.
“Not this again…” Morgen pushed him back. “Listen…Steve was right about his aunt. She really is some kind of a miracle worker. I couldn’t believe it when I got there. She has herbs and beads hanging all over her house, and she uses crystals, and candles, and peyote… I’ll tell you, the stuff she gave me was way better than anything Sean ever came up with. But she says that’s not what worked. She used something like hypnosis. She called it a spiritual journey—I don’t know—but I started getting better after the first weird trip. I don’t think Steve even expected the outcome.”
Night spoke without turning his head. “Steve called me on the tour and I thought—”
“Steve almost blew my cover. It wasn’t time for you to know, and I’m sorry… I had to disconnect that call.”
“You did that?” Night’s emotions flipped. “Why wouldn’t you want to tell me if you were getting better? Don’t even answer—you’re just going to say something stupid. So, what happened to you after the Oregon concert?”
“Yeah…don’t remember much about that night, but I found out, later, that Daddy’s campaign manager—or rather, Lehman’s operative—was all over the situation before I even got to the hospital. Lehman flew to Oregon and did his slimy lawyer thing to have me transferred to a private clinic down here—that same night.”
“He told the press you were dead. It was in the newspapers the very next morning.”
Morgen rattled his head. “If the trip didn’t kill me, he was going to. Lehman’s been onto us for weeks—ever since Sandy released some article about us. Did you know about that?”
Night shuddered. “I took away his proof…all his pictures of us. But I didn’t know he told anyone what he knew until I got back.”
“Well, I know that Lehman talked to Sandy, and he obviously didn’t want an adoption scandal to burn down the Dahlsi family tree—not to mention your criminal past if it became known that my dad—his meal ticket—was connected to Night Shannien. So, yeah…he needed one of us to be dead.”
Morgen clutched his midriff and aborted a chuckle. “Lehman picked a shady enough clinic to deal with, then he pinned me with serious drug and psych issues and told them he was representing some big-shot who wanted to keep my identity private—at all costs. And I never said a word, even in Oregon, which only helped his case.”
“Why?”
“Night, I didn’t know what you admitted to after the concert, so I couldn’t risk blowing our cover.”
“I didn’t admit to anything.”
“Then it was all worth it. We beat all the odds. I just can’t get over Lehman being one of them. The creep dropped by, early in the week, walked right up to my bed, and told me he wished my quiet act was enough. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I think he was going to end it right there, but a nurse came in.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Night declared. “I will,” he added when Morgen sighed.
“Luckily, we shouldn’t have a problem, after today, but I had a few reasons to worry when I was still in that place. I knew there was going to be a next time, and if he couldn’t make it look natural, I’m sure it would only have been a matter of time before he staged my suicide.
“Even if I chose to talk, with the whole place already convinced I was crazy, I couldn’t chance it that anyone would listen to me. So, I thought I’d better just make a break for it. I figured out where I was by reading a worker’s ID badge. Then I called Steve, and he came and got me—literally from the bushes at the side of the road since I didn’t even have real clothes. Good old Steve…”
Night’s anger coursed beneath his exterior like lava gunning for the surface. He glanced around fretfully, then focused and slapped Morgen as hard as he could.
Behind his own hand, Morgen looked more confused than angry.
“We thought you were dead! You should have called me from the clinic—not Steve! You have no idea what you’ve done! You should have seen what you did to Beth, and to Brigitte, and Doris—and even Frederick was crying!”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not!”
Morgen’s whole head circled as he rolled his eyes. “Look…My original plan would have been good for all of us, but I didn’t expect Gramps to show up at a concert in Oregon and almost kill me. I tried to join you on the stage where I would have introduced myself as Luis Prieto, which is Steve’s middle name and his aunt’s last name. Steve thought it would be hard to disprove if I said I grew up with his aunt, south of the border. Not true, though, since my Spanish is shit… And not that this matters, but ‘Prieto’ is actually a nickname for a guy with dark skin and hair…”
Morgen’s flagrant amusement stirred Night’s anger.
“So, here I am. I came to see my plan through today…get on a stage and tell the world I recently found out I was your brother—and promise that I’m every bit as rock star as you. After that, the whole country would demand to see us perform together. Why did you have to leave the podium? You fucked it all up, the same way Andrew fucked it up in Oregon.”
The numbness in Night’s body tried to stifle his speech. “You don’t understand what you’ve done.”
“My plan helps you the most, Night. Did you want to go back to being Night Shannien when I came back? Instead, I found a way to launch you as someone who isn’t on a nationwide wanted list…and I found a way to launch Us.”
As Night’s senses returned, he could hardly stop shaking his head. “You don’t get it? Nobody is ever going to forgive you now. Don’t you get how we were all forced to make a choice…your family, and even the band? Your parents swore to the world, twice now, that Morgen Dahlsi is their real and only son. And the lie was worth it—when we thought you were dead! Now, everyone’s going to know that we all lied!”
“You’re as bad as Lehman…”
“At least, he just wanted to fix this—but you didn’t think any of it through!”
“Night, it can all work out.”
“Really? All of Sandy’s stories are going to be confirmed now! It’s going to kill your family—and Morning’s Desire is finished! They will hate us…do you hear me? They will hate us—and we are not walking out there together so everybody can think that I had some part in your stupid plan!”
“Come on, Night. We’ll help them understand you just freaked out when you saw me—that you weren’t part of any scheme—but you made it more complicated by running off like you did. Now, as anticlimactic as it may be, we have to go up there and face them. We can’t sit here forever…and don’t you want to walk onto that platform and watch Lehman’s face?”
“I don’t know how you can joke about this, Morgen. You weren’t there this week. There’s no way to undo this, and I finally like who I am and what I’ve got.”
“Everything you’ve got is mine, so sorry for living. Look…you’ll be fine once the dust settles. Maybe I’ll even let you join the band.”
Night felt his face flush hot. “The deal was that I would make Morgen Dahlsi a star, and in return, you would give me everything…your name, your life, everything! That’s what you told me. That’s what you said!”
“Yes, Night,” Morgen replied, a bit too sweetly. “And you accomplished the impossible. I mean, really…I can’t even b
elieve it. But that was the arrangement when I wasn’t coming back. Come on, Night. They’re all up there waiting for a show, so let’s give it to them.”
Night felt frantic now—cornered. Worse than Sean, Morgen threatened to rip out his core, everything he’d earned in the past year, and leave him to linger as only the shell of his vulturine twin. He squirmed, sickened by the impulse overtaking him. His hands tensed and his vision became a narrow tunnel with Morgen at the end of it.
“Night, I’m starting to think you really wish I was dead, and it’s a little disconcerting. Do you remember the last thing I told you before I left for Mexico, because I don’t think you listened? Please don’t go that way. I know you have every reason to be fucked up, but Steve’s aunt can help you like she helped me. I could take you to her. Either way, Night, you have to get over it. There can only be one Morgen Dahlsi, and I didn’t die…”
****
As he ran through the garage, he had flashbacks of their only visit to the empty grave in the mountains. He never expected to see this plan to the end: to place his brother’s body in the trunk of a car and illicitly offer another soul to the Angeles National Forest…not that it would ever stay there.
In the stairwell, on his way back to the press conference, he crashed to his knees and threw up on the landing. With eyes closed, he glimpsed a series of memories, from their many nightmare rendezvous, to their first physical meeting, to the months of caregiving they both endured. These flashes ended abruptly with a stab of understanding of how Andrew could have claimed to love the same person whom he would later attempt to choke the life out of. He knew this with resounding certainty because he’d just done exactly that to someone he truly loved.
A security man opened the exit door. “Is that you, Mister Dahlsi? I’ll call for help. I will also inform Mister Corbin that you won’t be able to proceed with the press conference?”
“No…don’t. I’ll finish the conference.” He got to his feet and wiped his mouth with his wrist. “…But first, I need to speak with Charles Lehman.”
