Doppelganger

‘All affairs are in order. Should be at McAuber’s by 9.’


‘Excellent. Drive safe. Kiss my wife goodbye for me.’


‘Kiss mine hello.’


The bar was mostly empty, except for a few lone men watching the baseball game. Along the opposite wall was a row of booths, lit from above with conical green lamps. In the fifth one back sat a man facing the door, stirring an olive around his lowball and occasionally glancing up at the TV. He wore the entropic business attire of a man recently off work, his loosened tie the same pale blue as his eyes. His hair was graying and cut short around a clover-shaped bald spot.


It was eight o’clock. The wooden door swung open and in walked a crowd of like-dressed men and women, shouting and jostling one another; they swarmed the bar, until someone called his name and a subgroup poured itself into his booth.


‘Ethan!’


‘So this is where you’ve been hiding.’


‘Skipping out on staff meeting, eh? Well played.’


Ethan looked startled as they piled in around him.


‘Hello there,’ said Agnes, who had slid in next to him, a large woman with fluffy red hair and a mustache. She worked across the hall from his friend Tommy. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’


Ethan smiled, nodded and accepted their company stoically. Agnes pressed her ample body to his in a pretense of crowd-coziness.


‘Were your ears ringing today?’ she cooed indelicately, her eyes half-closed. ‘We were talking about you. I could’ve sworn I saw you in the cafeteria! It was—déjà vu? No, another French word.’


‘Menage a trois,’ someone offered.


‘No, that’s a threesome,’ said hapless Tommy. ‘She means—’


‘Seriously, he had the same bald spot,’ said Agnes. ‘I mean hair.’ She giggled into his ear. ‘Your double, that is.’


‘Impossible,’ said Ethan. ‘I was with my double all day, and we didn’t go to any cafeteria.’


At this Agnes shrieked with glee, and someone passed her another pint.


‘An omen! In literature,’ said another friend, a paunchy brunette with an updo, ‘in literature your double often heralds your death.’


‘Well! You feeling okay, Ethan?’


‘You don’t have a brother, do you?’


‘Not too sick to drink, though?’


Ethan graciously fielded the group’s increasing disarray, even as the beer spilled more freely and he himself never got any drunker. At one point Agnes’s Guinness sloshed into his lap and she attempted to dry it off herself. He pardoned her and took the opportunity to excuse himself.


McAuber’s was an ideal meeting spot in part because the restrooms were at the front, near the entrance.


He went in and tried to dry his pants while he waited. Within a few minutes a man in entropic business attire and a fedora came in. Without a word he joined the other man at the urinals and passed the hat over along with his wallet and keys. Their pale blue eyes met for a split second in which they exchanged an identical curt nod. A quick tie adjustment, some whispered names, a splash of water on his groin, and he was gone.


When the man wearing the hat left a few minutes later he stole at glance at the raucous crowd in the booth, still exchanging drunken banter, a mustached redhead fawning over the man on the end. Satisfied, he ducked his head and made his way out to a blue Accord, still warm from its trip north.


Before he started the car he checked his new phone for messages.


‘All clear,’ it said. ‘See you in a year, old buddy.’