CHAPTER 5
“It’s like looking in a mirror. I mean, I know we’re actually looking in a mirror, but . . .” She let out a long sigh. “This is just plain bizarre.”
The bathroom lighting might have been unflattering, but it was bright enough for detailed accuracy. “I saw you walking the other day. Tuesday. I was in my car.”
“That was you? I thought I saw someone familiar. I chalked it up to my general disorientation.”
“You’re the reason I’m here.”
She pulled her head back in a pose of guarded curiosity.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I saw you on Tuesday. You looked so much like me. Then I saw you again a couple of minutes ago. You were crossing the street. Maybe I wanted to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.”
She wiped her hands dry and tossed the paper towel into the trash. “You live in Madison?”
“Yeah. I’m Tess, by the way. Tess Kincaid.”
She nodded but kept her eyes on me, like she was sizing me up.
“I’m Mimi,” she said. “I flew in from Boston on Monday.”
She didn’t have a Boston accent. In fact, I didn’t hear any accent at all. Her voice sounded an awful lot like mine. Maybe a little deeper. Fuller somehow. “What brings you to town?”
“Job interview,” she said. “At the university.”
The door opened and two laughing women entered the bathroom. They stared at us for a moment, probably silently counting the number of cosmos they’d imbibed. If it weren’t for our different styles of dress, they’d have been certain they were seeing double.
“You in line?” one of them asked me.
“No,” I said. “We’re finished.” I turned to Mimi. She nodded toward the door and suggested we continue our conversation outside the bathroom. The two women gave us one last look. I heard their tipsy laughter resume as Mimi and I walked out into the busy lobby.
“Should we get a drink?” she asked, pointing to the outside patio. “Out there, if it’s okay with you. It’ll be hot, but at least we’ll have some quiet.” She must have sensed my hesitation and pressed a little harder. “Come on. How often does a person get to sit across the table from her own face?”
So we pushed our way through the crowded bar and took a seat at a table in the middle of the empty patio. The heat and humidity didn’t bother me. In fact, I like those dog days of summer, even though most people can’t stand them. The world seems smaller somehow when the air is that heavy and close. More manageable.
Mimi told me she wasn’t much of a drinker and wanted nothing more than a glass of water. We waited, but no server came.
“Maybe they figure anyone insane enough to sit outside in this soup doesn’t have cash or even room enough on their credit card for a couple of drinks,” Mimi said. “But I’m used to it. It gets so humid in Florida during the summer you swear you’re gonna have to sprout gills if you hope to keep on breathing.”
“I thought you said you were from Boston.”
“Only the past five years. I took my PhD from Tufts. Florida’s my home. Well, since we moved there when I was about twelve. Coral Gables.”
“Near Miami, right?”
“Actually, Coral Gables is like a donut hole of tranquility surrounded by the spicy Latin wildness that is Miami.” Mimi looked back into the restaurant. There was no sign of anyone coming out to see what we wanted. “Should we stand and flap our arms?”
I offered to get our drinks. She reached for her wallet, but I waved her off. Mimi was a visitor to my town. Besides, she wanted only a glass of water. The least I could do was get it for her while I picked up my own drink. I headed back into the hotel, elbowed my way up to the bar, and returned a few minutes later with two glasses. She thanked me as I set her ice water in front of her. I sat back down and took a sip of my gin and tonic.
“You’re here interviewing for a faculty position?” I asked.
She held up a finger, signaling me to hold on. I realized she’d taken a sip of water and was holding it in her mouth for a second or two before swallowing.
Like I always do.
“My PhD’s in history. I research American popular music. Faculty positions are hard to come by these days. I’m applying everywhere and doing the face-to-face wherever I get asked.”
“Any luck?”
“Here?” She shrugged. “Who knows? The position I interviewed for is only for one year. Somebody’s taking their sabbatical. I met with a lot of people. Even the man whose classes I’ll be covering. That must be strange, huh? Sitting across from the person who’s replacing you?” Mimi’s eyes were teasing. “I mean, how do you convince someone you’re genuine enough to step into their shoes?”
It seemed easy. Talking to her, I mean. I’ve never been the kind of person who likes to make small talk. Particularly with someone I’ve just met. They always seem to be asking questions. Prying, really. How do you feel about this? When’s the first time you whatever? I operate on the assumption that if someone wants me to know something, they’ll tell me. Other than that, I figure it’s none of my business. But having a conversation with Mimi was different. Thirty minutes after we sat down, I was halfway through my gin and tonic, talking to her as easily as I do Rosie. She didn’t pounce on me with questions. We just shared. We learned neither of us was married. We were both only children, and each was more a dog than cat person. Anyone listening to us would never guess we’d met less than an hour before.
“What was your dissertation topic?” I asked.
Mimi rolled her eyes in self-mockery. “I did three hundred forty pages on the healing influence of Barry Manilow. Don’t laugh. I put a lot of solid research in there. The man was a god back in the day. I would love to have been living when he was in his prime. Every heart broken in the seventies and eighties was made a little better with a Manilow tune. I’ll bet you don’t even know who he is.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “My mother was addicted. I remember her cranking up ‘Copacabana’ every Saturday morning while we cleaned the house. To this day, whenever I smell furniture polish I think of Lola and Tony. And good old reliable ‘Mandy.’ You could always count on her to give without taking.”
“Ah,” Mimi added. “But he sent her away.”
“And yet has the nerve to ask her to kiss him and stop him from shaking.”
It had been a long time since I laughed that hard.
“What about you?” she asked. “Where’d you go to school?”
I pointed over my shoulder. “Right here. General studies. Got slogged down second semester of my sophomore year and withdrew instead of taking the hit to my GPA. Never finished.” I pointed again. This time to the west. “I work down there. The Monroe Street Library.”
“You like it?” she asked.
“Depends on what you mean by it. I like the library. The patrons are all neighborhood people, so that’s great.”
“I hear a ‘but’ in there. And that could mean one of three things. You’re underpaid, there’s too much bureaucracy, or your boss is a jerk.”
“How about all three?”
“You deserve better. I can already tell.”
We were quiet for a bit, content to watch the people coming and going. Things were slowing down. Madison closes up pretty early on a Thursday night. Even in summer. Midwesterners would never let a night of revelry interfere with their up-with-the-sunrise attitude. There was another day of work tomorrow. Around these parts you’ll hear middle-aged folks still referring to weekday evenings as “school nights.”
“So, back to the elephant in the room,” Mimi said to break our repose. “What’s your theory on what’s going on?”
I looked into a face so much like mine. “I don’t know. I’ve always heard there’s a duplicate of ourselves somewhere. Today I had a discussion about how there’s only so many permutations you can make with facial features. I’ve read there’s even an app that will help you find yours. Maybe that’s what we are. A pair of those look-alikes people talk about.”
She drained the last of her water and pushed the glass away. “Still, it’s odd that we’d meet, wouldn’t you say?”
I thought about that. “I work with this woman. Rosie’s her name. She’s the analytical type. Rosie would call our meeting a statistical fluke. The whole damned world’s nothing but a chaotic, random shuffle and deal according to Rosie. Maybe she’s right. I mean, you could as easily have been on a job interview at Columbia this week. Or North Nowhere Community College. I could have missed the traffic jam on Tuesday if I’d left my dad’s two minutes earlier and not seen you walking down the street. Sometimes paths cross. It might seem like something more, but it’s really a coincidence.”
“You seem way too young to be such a Polly Pragmatist. Where’s your sense of mystery and magic?” she asked. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-nine. How about you?”
“When’s your birthday?”
“October 11th. Which means I’ll be turning thirty soon. I guess I hadn’t realized how close it was. Maybe I’m growing into my Polly Pragmatahood.”
Without preamble, Mimi pushed herself away from the table and stood. “You said you lived near here?”
“Two blocks away from that library I told you about.” I had the feeling she was dismissing me.
“Let’s go to your house. If we stay here we’ll end up spending money we don’t have drinking more than we should.”
“You seem in a hurry. What’s up?”
“Maybe you and your friend Rosie are right. Maybe our meeting was the randomness of the universe.” She pulled her purse over her shoulder. “But, like you, I have a birthday coming up. And I’m turning thirty. On October 11th. Does that sound like a coincidence?”