All but bouncing from eagerness, I accept the video call.
“Hiya,” Holly says, a warm smile illuminating the face we share.
Hmm. Is that a look of post-coital bliss? That would explain why it took her so long to call me back.
As is often the case, she’s poshly clutching a steaming cup of tea, her pinky out. The large room behind her is unfamiliar. She’s probably at her boyfriend’s house—further supporting my coitus theory.
“Hey,” I say, peering at the top of her head. “Did you color your hair?”
Usually, all that stands out when I look at my twin are our similarities. This time, though, I focus on the subtle differences, especially in our faces, and it leads me to think that the mysterious stranger might’ve been right after all. Compared to the guilelessness etched into Holly’s innocent features, I just might look a bit naughty.
Then again, so might a nun.
My twin picks up a strand of her hair and frowns at it. “It’s the same color it’s always been. Why do you ask?”
I steal the wallet from Manny’s back pocket with a smooth motion that a normal human hopefully wouldn’t notice. “It looks redder to me for some reason.”
She shakes her head.
I grin. “Maybe you finally washed it?”
She blows exasperatedly on her tea, and I can see that she’s itching to roll her eyes. “Perchance you’ve forgotten what our natural hair color is at this point?”
“I have my pubes to remind me.” I sneak the wallet back into Manny’s pocket, a technique called put-pocketing. “And there’s no hint of red there.”
She loses her fight against the eyeroll. “I—that is, we—only have that red tint on the head, and only in certain light, which might be why you haven’t noticed it.”
I shrug. “It makes you look like Cate Blanchett at the beginning of Elizabeth.”
She looks unsure if she’s been insulted or not, which is strange given how much she likes anything British. Her slightly squinty eyes seem to indicate she’s taken offense in the end. “Well, you look like Cate Blanchett as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. That woman looks more amazing the older she gets, and that particular character was totally badass.”
She shakes her head. “Wasn’t she evil?”
My grin turns devious. “Was she? She was the firstborn, so that made her the rightful heir to the throne. Are you saying she didn’t deserve to rule Asgard because she was a woman?”
“A bloodthirsty woman.”
I steal the wallet again. “Her father raised her to be a conqueror, but then flip-flopped on foreign policy before banishing the poor woman. Why? She’s no worse than Loki, yet he was allowed to stay.”
Holly’s blowing on the tea is almost violent now. “Did you call me because you wanted to start a random debate?”
Since I’ve done that in the past, I don’t feel too insulted. “No.” I glance at my door to make sure it’s closed, since I don’t want one of my roommates to overhear the next bit. “I ran into someone you know and wanted to ask you about him.”
She puts her cup down and drags the phone closer to her face. “A him?”
Huh. The sneaky expression that twists her features makes it seem like I’m staring into a phone-shaped mirror.
I put-pocket the wallet. “Yup. A male of the Homo sapiens species.”
I describe him and the details of our meeting, and when I get to the part where I saw his enormous magic wand, she spits out her tea.
“So,” I say when she gets herself under control. “He knew about your boyfriend, so it’s someone you’ve—”
“I know exactly who he is.”
A downright mischievous expression is on her face now. Is that what I look like most of the time? If so, I’d better keep it in check during my magic performances.
She picks up her cup again, blows on the liquid exaggeratingly slowly, and takes a leisurely sip.
I sigh. “Are you going to make me beg?”
She swallows her tea with relish. “Why do you want to know?”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “To paraphrase Leonardo DiCaprio in Django: when I first saw him, he had my curiosity. But after I saw his fully erect cock, he had my attention.”
“Fine. It was Tigger.” She peers at me intently over her cup. “Remember?”
I stare back uncomprehendingly. “Remember what? Is he a big fan of Winnie the Pooh?”
She chuckles. “I thought something similar when I first heard that nickname. I suspect he was dubbed that because he bounced around a lot as a kid.”
Oh. Well, he can bounce—or pounce—on me anytime he wants. “What is it that I’m supposed to remember?”
The tea receives another exasperated-sounding blow. “That I offered to set you up with him.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” She takes a dainty sip. “You refused. Said he sounded like a manwhore.”
“Oh.” On pure autopilot, I steal Manny’s watch as I strain my memory. “Do you mean your new bestie’s boyfriend’s brother’s cousin?”
Until recently, I was worried that my twin was anti-social. For years, I’ve been her best and only friend, while she’s been one of my many. I was pleasantly surprised when she met a guy and became close with his sister—and I’m not jealous of their friendship at all. Not even when she waxes ecstatic about how beautiful, smart, and inspirational said new BFF is, and how cool her dildo-making business is. My sis even received something like a friendship bracelet from her new friend—except it was a dildo.
She looks longingly at her diminishing tea. “He’s not a cousin, but yeah, that’s the guy.”
I sneak the watch into Manny’s left pants pocket. “Is this the guy who tried to dance with you?”
“Indeed. I figure that means he finds our face attractive.”
I narrow my eyes. “Isn’t he also the one who dry-humped your boyfriend’s mother?”
She snorts, and it’s a marvel the tea doesn’t pour out of her nose. “They just danced, and she dry-humped him.”
Sounds plausible. If I were a middle-aged woman, he’d make a cougar out of me in a heartbeat. Then again, I’d find him delectable at any age, even—
“So.” Now Holly looks so much like our mother I half expect her to spout off tips on how to achieve a proper orgasm. “Do you want an introduction?”
Do I?
The memory of the porn debacle is back with a vengeance. To calm myself, I steal the wallet again. As casually as I can, I say, “No, thanks.”
The disappointment on her face is pure Octomom. “Why not?”
“Because he’s still a manwhore?”
The full truth is obviously subtler than that. Holly doesn’t know about my intimacy issues. Back in high school, I created one of my best illusions: I made all seven of my sisters believe I was sexually active when I was anything but. If I’d told them the truth—that my perfectly reasonable germ avoidance has prevented me from so much as kissing a boy—they would’ve mocked me until our parents put me in therapy. Fluid exchange is sacrosanct for our Octomom, as well as Octodad. Granted, Holly wouldn’t have mocked me, but she can’t keep a secret to save her life, so I fooled her along with the sextuplets.
Now that we’re grown, I’m too ashamed to admit even to her that I still haven’t kissed anyone. No one knows that I’m a virgin—one who broke her hymen with a dildo many years ago, but still.
“If you’re after some casual rumpty-tumpty, you won’t find a better match.” She puts her teacup down.
“Rumpty-tumpty? Is that another version of ‘shag?’”
Holly attended college in the UK and came back sounding like a character in a Jane Austen novel, providing me with the joy of making fun of her for a while. Now she’s lost the accent but still drops an occasional (and usually charming) Britishism, so I don’t get to mess with her as much as I’d like.
She makes a circle with her right index finger and thumb, then pierces it with her left middle finger. “Baking the potato, putting the bread in the oven, planting the parsnip, a cucumber in—”
“Stop,” I say sternly. “My food choices are limited as is.”
She looks smug. “I bet he would be up for a one-night stand.”
Sure. Great idea. Lose virginity to a sex god and be ruined for any other man for the rest of my life. Not that he would even want to be used in such a fashion, not to mention—
“If it helps,” my sister whispers conspiratorially, “he’s a prince.”
“Excuse me?” I shove the wallet into Manny’s pocket without any stealth and thumb up the volume on my phone. “What did you just say?”
“It’s called velikiy knyaz in his homeland,” she says. “Which translates to something like a Grand Prince.”
Her face is earnest. Either she’s suddenly mastered the art of lying, or she’s telling the truth. Or maybe she’s finally re-watched one too many episodes of Downton Abbey.
“He’s a prince?” I say incredulously. “An actual prince?”
“Indeed.” She hands her cup to someone outside the view of the camera and says something (probably in Russian) that sounds like, “chai.” Looking back at me, she says, “If you married him, you’d be a princess.”
As she says that, I see a Disney-esque montage playing out. Me bursting into a song about how badly I want to become a renowned illusionist. Me talking to my (likely animal) sidekick, who’ll sound just like a famous comedian. Me having the one true kiss with the prince—
“Here,” a male voice says with a slight Russian accent as a giant hand holding a steaming teacup appears in the video.
I was right. She’s at her boyfriend’s place.
“Spasibo,” she says with an adoring grin.
So she can speak Russian now. Cool. If I’m lucky, she’ll develop a Russian accent as well, and I’ll get to tease her about it.
Cradling her tea, she peers into the camera. “Didn’t you hear me? You could be a bloody princess.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, too distracted by the topic at hand to make fun of that “bloody.” “This doesn’t make any sense. Who is royal nowadays? And if he really is a prince, why does his nickname reference a tiger? Wouldn’t a lion make more sense? As in king of the jungle?”
“Maybe in Ruskovia, they think tigers are kings of the jungle.” She gives her new cup a disturbingly seductive-looking blow.
Is she putting on a show for her beau?
Then I register the country she mentioned, and my right eyebrow shoots up. “He’s a prince of Ruskovia?”
That makes sense, as much as meeting a real-life prince could make any sense. It explains the Eastern European language he spoke in to his dogs, and the design of his belt buckle—that was probably a family crest. It may even explain the cocky attitude.
She nods. “You’ve heard of Ruskovia?”
Is that a dig at my lack of a college degree?
I steal Manny’s wallet, a feat no college can prepare you for. “Of course. My favorite female illusionist resides there. Rasputina. Have you heard of her?”
“From you, I think.” She pointedly looks at my hair. “Wasn’t she the one you stole this vampire guise from?”
“No,” I say indignantly.
I didn’t steal it. I was inspired by it. In general, I adore Rasputina. If I had to sleep with a woman—gun to the head scenario—I’d choose her.
I put-pocket the wallet once more. “My stage persona is closer to that of Criss Angel, with some Winona Ryder from Beetlejuice thrown in.”
“Sure,” Holly says. “In any case, you and Tigger would make a cute couple.”
I snort. “Why would he even need me? Has he run out of women in his homeland?”
“I have no clue, but if you decide to do anything more than just sleep with him, you should know that he’s a daredevil.” She proceeds to tell me about his crazy stunts—with BASE jumping being the tamest thing on the list.
“Don’t worry,” I say when she’s done. “I’m not going to do anything with him at all.”
Having said that, if my twin’s goal was to scare me from wanting the man, the list of activities he’s into has had the opposite effect. I’m now picturing Tigger as the Most Interesting Man in the World, à la the Dos Equis beer commercials. I can practically hear the voiceover guy saying, “His only regret is not knowing what regret feels like. He’s won the lifetime achievement award… twice.”
“You know,” Holly says. “If you did go out with him, it would make your upcoming get-together with our parents that much easier.”
Houdini help me. I totally forgot about that. Not long ago, Holly owed me a favor, and I asked her to grab lunch with our parents in my stead—a task she managed to screw up, badly. Now, besides fending off the parental units’ prying concerns about my dating life, I have to hear Octomom’s lamentations about that (pretty tame) deception.
Oh, and this reminds me: Holly still owes me one. I’ll have to make sure to collect.
“You are seeing them, right?” she asks guiltily. No doubt her thoughts went in the same direction as mine.
I sigh. “Of course. But I’m not telling them anything about Tigger. The last thing I want is for Octomom to try to breed me.”
My twin cringes.
Ah. Right. She doesn’t like it when I call our mother Octomom, and not because of inaccuracy—Mom birthed the two of us and then our sextuplets sisters, not octuplets. No, Holly just doesn’t like the number eight. Or nine. Or six. She prefers primes, like five. I bet if she’d had foresight when the two of us were hanging out in Mom’s uterus together, she would’ve choked me with her umbilical cord to make sure the total number of Hyman siblings ended up being seven. She’s also the only one of us who wouldn’t have minded Mom spawning three more siblings to make it eleven.
7-Eleven must be a heavenly place for her.
“When are you meeting them?” she asks.
“In a few days.”
She chuckles. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” I sneak Manny’s wallet out of his pocket once more. “I’ll need it.”
She nods at someone outside my view—no doubt her boyfriend. “I’d better go.”
“One last thing,” I say. “Is the Ruskovian language similar to Russian?”
“I think so. Why?”
I scratch the back of my head. “I’d like to know what me-dick or me-o-dick means.”
She grins. “Do you mean myodik?”
“I think so.”
“In Russian, it means little honey,” she says in a professorial tone. “Probably the same in Ruskovian.”
Wow. Either she’s learned all the words related to teatime, or her Russian vocabulary is already sizable. Either way, that accent is just around the corner.
A male voice says something on her end that I don’t quite catch.
“Ah. I’m being told you don’t call a woman myodik in Russia,” she explains. “Honey is a masculine noun.”
“It is?”
Does that mean I look masculine to him?
She sighs. “Don’t get me started on this. Russian is a hard language to learn.”
“But why is honey masculine? The bees that make it are female, so why should their excretions swap genders?”
She nods enthusiastically. “There’s no logic to bodily fluids in Russian, period. Blood is female, sweat is male, poop is neuter. Why?”
Eww. I grimace and shake my head. “I’m still on honey. It’s a liquid, so shouldn’t it be gender fluid?”
She groans. “The one that bugs me the most is flowers. Why are they masculine? They’re shaped like vaginas and usually contain both sex organs. And not to stereotype, but it’s women who like flowers, not men.” A male laugh sounds behind the camera, so my sister looks at the source and pointedly asks, “Why is the moon feminine, but the sun neuter? Why are spoon and fork feminine, but knife masculine?”
“They just are,” he says. “Not my fault, kroshka. You don’t have to learn it.”
“There,” she grumbles. “Kroshka means breadcrumb, and it’s female. Bread itself is male. A slice of bread is also male, but as soon as you get down small enough, the gender changes?”
“Hey, I’ll let you get back to linguistics,” I say and reach toward my phone to terminate the call.
“Wait, sis, I’m sorry.” Holly looks back into the camera. “Want to say hi to my Russian teacher?”
I nod, and her beau, Alex, comes into view.
I’ve met him before, but damn. Good for Holly. She’s got herself one impressive specimen. I bet that’s what Henry Cavill would look like if he were cast as the Red Son—a version of Superman whose space crib crash-landed in Soviet Russia instead of Kansas.
Is it weird to feel an ego boost from knowing that a man like that would date a woman with my face?
“Hey,” I say to him. “Do you have any new Russian jokes?”
He flashes a sexy grin. “The door rings. Young Vovochka opens it and sees a young man with a bouquet. He stares at him thoughtfully and says, ‘You’ve been visiting my sister quite a bit lately. Don’t you have your own?’”
After the chuckles over the joke die down, we say our goodbyes. Both of theirs are in Russian.