Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

In truth, you continued to shower as the eye watched you. You
looked up and the eye moved away, but you knew that the eye was aware that
y ou had sensed its presence. You continued to shower, closing your eyes and
turning your face towards the shower jets, occasionally glancing up as the eye
stole away. You continued to run soap over your body and you washed your
hair. When you got out of the shower, you sat on the floor and massaged
lotion onto your legs. You stood at the mirror with a towel around your waist
and plucked your eyebrows. You dressed and went back to your room.
"We have to do something," the woman from the outside says.
Maybe someone she knows is looking for a flat-mate. You study her profile -a
small nose, Irish features, freckles. She is glamorous, almost model-like, but she
also looks fun. You like her.
"Tell me about your sister," you ask. "Younger or older?"
"Older by a minute and a half," she replies. "She is my twin."
There have always been other women: the facialist, the woman who
prints the business cards, the shower attendant at his father's nursing home,
the occasional Tuesday afternoon shopper, standing in the dressing room in her
lingerie, separated from adultery by a flimsy curtain.
You know about them all. Your boyfriend used to take you with him
to his weekly therapy session. He would hand you his knapsack before he
went into the office, and in the waiting room you would read the last days'
entries from his journal. You felt guilty about this at first, but later, you real­
ized that he wanted you to do it. He wanted you to know about all of them,
what their skin felt like, how they tasted and sounded when he went down on
them. He told you what they talked about afterward, the questions they asked
about you, the sense of triumph some of them felt by seducing another
woman's man. Sometimes, in his entries, he confessed his love for you. He
told you that he knew he was hurting you, and that the first thing he thought
about after the women left was you. Those were the times, he wrote, that he
called you for no reason, just to hear your voice.
Your boyfriend would emerge from the therapist's office smiling.
You have known about them all, but this is the first time you have
seen one of them face to face, heard her voice, studied the freckles on her
shoulders.
"We are total opposites," the twin says. She takes a photograph out of
her wallet. The two sisters are leaning against one another, back to back, smil­
ing. They look like a butterfly or a Rorschach test.
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