AFTERWARD, MY DOPPELGÄNGER invites me out for a drink to further discuss our differences, in the hopes, he says, that we can come to some consensus. I decline his offer because I have plans that night. Namely, to follow him home in an attempt to gain as much of an advantage over this loping interloper as I can. So we say our good nights. He hugs me and calls me “landsman.” I know enough to know he is embracing me as a fellow Jew.
“I am not Jewish,” I say.
“Oy,” he says. “I was once as you are. You’ll come to the Actors’ Temple with me Friday. Afterward, we’ll have a little nosh at the Knishioner Gordon and kibbitz.”
“I have to go,” I say, extricating myself with difficulty from his bearlike embrace. A bit of my clown makeup is smeared on his black turtleneck.
“OK, my friend,” he says. “I’ll be in touch.”
How? How will you be in touch? Where will you find me? You liar! I nod and wave. After he walks off, I count to seventeen, then follow. I check the wristwatch around my waist: 9:30. It turns out he lives in the very luxury apartment building where I once lived, the building in which Marjorie Morningstar occupies my former apartment. I wait outside in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts until I am chased away by the manager. I reposition myself in front of the H&R Block, which is, I am thankful, closed for the day. The doppelgänger reemerges at 11:00 P.M., this time in a bathrobe and slippers and walking a tiny dog on a leash. Maybe a miniature Chihuahua, which is sometimes called a teacup Chihuahua. But there is something odd about the proportions. I pride myself on my knowledge of dog breeds, having read extensively in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as well as the AKC’s breed standard guides for judges. This dog’s head is proportionately smaller than is required in a dog of show quality. In addition, it seems to have an unusually long muzzle. I venture closer. They turn the corner onto 45th, my double seemingly lost in some cellphone text conversation. It is much quieter here. And darker. The truth is I have no plan, but the lack of foot traffic and the darkness inspires some sort of darkening in my heart. It is at this moment that he turns, perhaps having sensed this shift in the emotional weather, a sudden cold front, a storm, gale force winds.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says, attempting a benign smile, which moves into and out of existence like a stretched and released rubber band.
“Yes,” I say.
“Coincidence?” he asks.
“Are there any coincidences?”
“Well, now you’re speaking like a religious man. I’m glad to hear it. What can I do for you?”
“We are both being played,” I say.
“Played?”
“By someone somewhere.”
“I feel blessed in my life.”
“Yes. But of course that can change. There is always an open manhole waiting in the wings.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Calamity. Humiliation. It is just around the corner.”
“On 44th Street?”
“Don’t be cute. You know what I mean.”
“HaShem tests our faith. If he did not, we would not need to have faith. You do understand this, yes?”
“I am not Jewish.”
“I was once a secular Jew, as you are. Then I found true meaning.”
“No. I am not a Jew by birth. My ancestors are primarily Irish Catholic.”
“Curious,” he says. “I say curious because your nose.”
“I was given this nose by southern anti-Semites.”
“Now that is a story I’d like to hear over a nosh sometime.”
“What you have is rightfully mine.”
“HaShem’s blessing?”
“Ingo’s film.”
“Ah. You know, I was told by my editor that any time a book is successful, people show up to claim authorship, to claim that the author had previously read his or her book, that the book was stolen, et chetera.”
“I lived the life you claim to have lived. I saw Ingo’s film. I watched helplessly as it was destroyed by a fire caused by my ignorance.”
“Flood.”
“Flood?”
“It was of course destroyed during Hurricane Irma. Everyone knows this. It was an act of G-d. There is no blame, as our ancient Chinese friend Lao Tzu might have said. It’s all in the book.”
“What about Mudd and Molloy?” I say.
“Who and who, my friend?”
“Mudd and Molloy.”
“That doesn’t ring a bell.”
“The characters. In Ingo’s movie.”
“Which scene?”
“Every scene!”
“No.”
“The failed comedy team.”
“Oh. Maybe. There was a moment. A brief moment. A moment in passing. Molly is watching a movie on futuristic space TV late one night and there is some comic patter. We don’t see the TV screen, just hear it. The scene is focused on Molly’s loneliness, her alienation, her only companion this claptrap on the TV. It’s funny, I forgot about that. I neglected to put it in the book. Me, with my perfectly eidetic memory. It is a minor moment, to be sure, but it does add a certain poignancy to the scene. One feels it articulates the time we waste, filling our brains with claptrap. Did I already call it claptrap earlier? I feel that I had just used the word claptrap to describe the movie she is watching, but I can’t be sure. One cannot go back and read over the transcript of one’s conversation. Although I can, as I have an eidetic memory.”
My doppelgänger pauses, thinks.
“Yes, claptrap. And claptrap is as good a word as any to describe the show she is watching, which we, as the audience, do not even see, as I mentioned to you. Yes, perhaps those are the Mudd and Mullaly of which you—”
“Mudd and Molloy.”
“Pardon?”
“Mudd and Molloy.”
“Oh. Yes. That. I do think that must be them. It is the only incident of a comedy team I can think of. Very minor. But contributes to the poignancy of the scene, don’t you agree? Almost as a mournful piano score might. Claptrap is an interesting word. Are you aware of its etymology? It is surprisingly and profoundly straightforward. It is, in essence, pandering. A piece of work designed to elicit applause. Literally a clap, as in applause, trap as in trap or trick. How much of our lives do we waste attending to the claptrap of others, offering our attention, our approval, our applause to an effort designed by them only for self-aggrandizement? Think of all the books in the world, all the movies, TV shows, music, periodicals, bloviating politicians, ‘artists’ of all stripes. Imagine all this claptrap—have I told you the etymology of that word? In any event, picture all of these things and people piled up in one space. Would they reach to the moon? I think perhaps many times there and back. And this is what we have jammed into our brains. How does it all fit? This is one of the reasons I love Ingo’s work. He had no interest in jamming it into anyone’s head. His motives were pure. He was creating for himself. And because of this, I feel justified in jamming his work into people’s heads. It is qualitatively different and as such is a remedy of sorts, an antidote, if you will, to the garbage we ingest on a daily basis. I have never been interested in my own self-aggrandizement. As a religious man, I am already fully filled with the spirit of HaShem. I do not need or crave the praise of men, the adoration of women. I do not need to see my face on the cover of the Rolling Stone as our good friend from Hicksville Billy Joel says. It’s funny, now that I think of it, the names Madd and Molly sound a bit like Mudd and Molloy. Perhaps that is your confusion.”
“Dr. Hook.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. It’s their song. Not Billy Joel.”
“I’m fairly certain it’s Mr. Joel. ‘Put me in the back of the discount rack like another can of beans.’ I remember—”
“That’s Billy Joel’s ‘The Entertainer.’ A completely different song.”
“I don’t think so. That lyric always bothered me. Why would a can of beans be in the discount rack of a record store?”
“Different song.”
“We could argue this point all day, but—”
“No. We could look it up fairly easily.”
“But that’s not the point, is it? The point is our friend Billy Joel has put his little rhymes into our heads and we forever must live with them. They alter the circuitry of our brains. The Arc proteins make certain of that. They make us who we are. They make us wonder why a can of beans would be in a record store discount rack. And all because Billy Joel needs us to love him, to pay tribute to him, to celebrate him. HaShem doesn’t ask any of that of us.”
“He doesn’t?”
“No, my friend. He does not. We do not have to petition him for attention. We do not have to become famous for him to see us. He always sees us. He judges us on our hearts not our celebrity. Our friend Billy Joel claims we didn’t start the fire. But of course we did. Every item on that long and imperfectly rhyming list of his was created by humans. We did start the fire, Mr. Joel. Now, you may tell me that this song is by Dr. Hook or Dr. Demento or Dr. Dre or even Dr. Kevorkian, but I say you are wrong, and besides, it doesn’t matter because the point I make is still valid. In the pursuit of money or glory or power, humans create atrocities. This is why I believe Ingo’s film and his life are exemplary.”
So focused am I on my double and his incessant fabrications, I have yet to look down at his dog. But it now makes a snuffling noise, which catches my attention, and I glance at it. It is not a dog at all, it turns out; it is the donkey puppet from Ingo’s film, from my funerary urn, now seemingly self-animated in human time.
“Hello,” it says to me.
“You,” I say. “You know me. You can tell him. You can tell everyone!”
“Perhaps we’ve met in passing,” he says. “I meet a lot of people in my line of work.”
“Your line of work?”
“I’m a service animal.”
“He’s not blind.”
“I’m an emotional support dog…donkey…well, donkey puppet, well, donkey puppet come to life. Isn’t that obvious? Are you dense, man?”
For some reason his arrogant tone infuriates me. I guess it is because I draw the line at being insulted by a donkey. Without a moment of forethought, I stomp on him. Shockingly, he is not made of silicone over a stainless-steel armature. The puppet splits open like a crushed peach, revealing blood and bones in a tiny horrifying mess on the sidewalk. He is still alive, struggling to speak.
“Please, don’t…”
I don’t know if it’s out of compassion or malevolence, but I stomp him two more times. Now he is silent. I look up at my doppelgänger, ashamed but also oddly triumphant.
“What have you done?” he says, almost in a whisper. “He was a creature of G-d, miraculous in that he alone of all his kind had been blessed with the gift of speech.”
“What of it?” I spit, not knowing how else to respond.
“Of it this,” he says, for the first time his voice rising in anger. “I will be required to report this to the proper authorities. He was my friend and confidant. He was wise. He was a creature of G-d.”
“You said that already,” I tell him, then punch him in the jaw. He is oddly delicate and light, and my fist sends him stumbling backward against a lamppost. I hit him again. And again. He doesn’t fight back. Is it because he is a pacifist or simply unable because he has been incapacitated? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Soon he is on the ground. I drag him into an alley and pummel him until he is dead.
Then I slump to the cement next to him, heaving, suddenly aware of what I have done. I spot the donkey on the sidewalk, scramble quickly to scrape up his remains with cardboard I’ve pulled from a bin, and bring them back to the alley. What do I do? I tell myself this was in the heat of the moment, but I know that killing this imposter had been in the recesses of my mind since I first learned of his existence. I tell myself that this was self-defense, but that makes even less sense in light of the other thing I just previously thought. I must be honest at least with myself if I am to combat the world of lies I have entered. I pace. I try to think. I need to extricate myself from this nightmare. Then the obvious occurs to me. I will change places with him. I remove Dominick’s grease paint and black pencil from my giant pocket and get to work on my doppelganger’s face. Soon it is indistinguishable from my own painted face. I unplait his beard. I find a stiff rag (stiff from what? No time to ponder!) and a piece of broken mirror in the trash can and use them to wipe the makeup off my own face. I try my best to braid my beard. Thankfully, there is a discarded beard-braiding manual in the trash. I switch our clothing. I grab the donkey and leave the alley, only to hurriedly return when I realize I forgot the most important disguise of all: the yarmulke. I bobby pin it to my hair.
At his apartment building door, I steel myself and enter. It’s different from what I remember, completely redesigned. There’s a doorman now.
“Oh my God, Mr. Rosenberg, what happened?” he says.
“I was attacked by a madman. He killed…my donkey.”
“Gregory Corso?”
“Sure. Gregory Corso, I guess. That’s it.”
“Oh my God.”
“G-d?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. G-d. I’ll call the police.”
“There’s more. Tell the police that in self-defense I fought back and I believe I killed the madman.”
“Oh your G-d.”
“And I left his body in the alley on 45th.”
“OK. Got it. It’s going to be fine, Mr. Rosenberg.”
“And that he is a clown or at least he is dressed as a clown.”
“A clown?”
“Yes. Tell them that.”
“Clown. Got it,” he says, taking notes.
“I need to go to my apartment to settle my nerves. I’m so jangled I can’t remember anything, even my apartment number.”
“Letter.”
“What?”
“Letter.”
“Oh. Right. See?”
“No. H.”
“H. Right.” It’s odd that they have letters. How does one even know what floor to find one’s apartment on?
“It’s only one a floor.”
“Beginning with A?”
“Yes.”
I count on my fingers.
“So eighth floor.”
“Well, the apartments start on the second floor, as I’m sure will come back to you shortly.”
“So ninth.”
“And the fifth floor is where the building’s theater and meeting rooms are, which undoubtedly will come back to—”
“So H would be on ten.”
“See? Your memory is returning already. Shall I send the police up when they arrive?”
“I imagine they will insist on it.”
“I imagine so, Mr. Rosenberg. Would that it were otherwise.”
“Would,” I say as I turn right to head to the elevator.
“No, sir, to the left.”
I turn to the left instead.