Dishonor Thy Wife

by Belinda Austin

  “Are you undoubtedly my doctor?”

  “Are you truly my son?”

  “Are you genuinely my daddy?”

  “Are you honestly my husband?”

  Not once did anyone suspect, that is how much I fooled them all, every last one of them, the wife, the kid, the parents Viola and Ethan, his patients, and Brad’s staff.

  Boil me, eat me, take a match and burn me but do not ever say that I deliberately misled. It was their perception, their belief.

  Everyone has a double. The comparisons are tiresome. I know someone who looks exactly like you. Oh, my God, you are the spitting image of so and so! If only I had his picture, I could show you the uncanny resemblance. You are his clone!

  Everyone assumed I was Brad because we are identical, down to our cock sizes. Yeah, three months ago my new best friend and I took our measurements in the men’s bathroom of a Philly bar, both of us staggering over a urinal.

  I could kill Brad, step into his shoes, wear his suits, steal his life, and no one would ever know he was dead.

  By the way, my name is Jayden Tremblay. Yeah, the bag with the bloody knife is mine.

  * * *

  Part Two: What Happened in Philly

  May 15th; 14 Weeks Earlier

  Chapter 26

  JAYDEN

  Friday night before the medical conference officially began on Monday, you will never guess whom I ran into at the hotel.

  Yo, Philly! I bumped into myself, my other half, the missing link, my clone, my doppelganger. Yeah, I streamed the old Twilight Zone series. Di-di di-di di-di di-di.

  You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the Twilight Zone!

  The elevator walls were mirrored and it seemed like a fun house at a carnival because there was two of me in the mirrors. Then I realized the other reflection was another man when he brushed his black hair back from my face, yo, his face. Our hairstyles were identical, our complexions an unblemished natural tan. We both even had sexy stubble.

  We both removed our aviator sunglasses, the same brand and style. We had the same cynical expression and a devil-may-care sparkle in our ice-blue eyes. We said simultaneously, “I like to wear aviator glasses when I fly.” We smiled slightly, identical dimples digging into our cheeks.

  We circled each other like two wrestlers. The resemblance was bone chilling, a Twilight Zone moment straight out of the Sixth Dimension or the Sixth Dementia, which is how our cat and mouse game ultimately ended.

  “This is surreal,” I said.

  He slapped his business card in my hand. Dr. Brad O’Boyle, MD, Family Medicine.

  “This is unbelievable.” I took out my business card. Dr. Jayden Tremblay, MD, Family Medicine.

  His office address was Austin, Texas, USofA and mine Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

  The elevator stopped and we both got off on the 14th floor.

  “I always ask for a room on the 14th,” he said. “It’s my birthday.”

  “Me, too!”

  “You’re messing with me, right?”

  I yanked out my driver’s license and showed him that I was born on November 14, 1985.

  “You have my exact birthday,” he said and pulled out his license.

  “Look, we should meet for a drink. This is too much...”

  “Of a coincidence.” He finished my sentence.

  “Yeah, I mean, chills crawl up my spine. Looking at you, is…”

  “Like looking at a mirror. I can’t take my eyes off you, you’re so handsome,” he said, grinning.

  We exchanged room numbers and each grabbed our suitcases. We each had the other’s bag because our luggage was identical brands, two shiny maroon suitcases with spinner wheels and navy blue, nautical carry-on bags. Leopard skins encased our tablets.

  We exchanged bags, laughing uncomfortably. “Pretty weird, huh?” I said.

  “I’ll see you at the bar in half an hour, Jayden?” He made a left fist before holding out his hand to me.

  We both were missing a knuckle on our left hand ring fingers. However, he wore a wedding band.

  “You’re not married,” Brad said.

  I nodded my head, no.

  “Lucky you. I wish there was a way I could get rid of my wife, if only for a little while.”

  Of course, he had to be joking.

  Chapter 27

  BRAD

  Jayden and I plop down on a couple of bar stools at the hotel and order an AMF, which is a potent mix of vodka, rum, gin, tequila, and Curacao, blue as the ocean of a Caribbean vacation. The drink is our favorite, at least my favorite. I am unsure whether this guy who looks exactly like me is pulling my leg.

  This hotel is a fleabag. You would think the medical conference could do better. Jayden keeps his mouth shut when I rant about the hotel not having a masseuse on call 24 hours a day. And what if I want a manicure in the middle of the night? I hate frickin’ dirt under my nails.

  Jayden thinks we are exactly alike, but he had a public education, having been raised by a country veterinarian and housewife, probably a woman who sleeps in curlers and drags her slippers around a farmhouse with cat hair clinging to her shoes. He is Canadian, for crying out loud! Those people still suck up to the British queen, that old granny. The only culture in Canada is French Quebec. Frenchies know their wines. Other Canadians just want to be British but speak with American accents.

  Big deal, so we both played basketball, baseball, football and soccer at the same ages, but then so do most boys. I, however, never wore a bicycle helmet with full-face guard and ran across a lawn carrying a stick with a net on it like badminton. I would respect Jayden more if he told me he was a cannibal instead of a Lacrosse player.

  It is bizarre we are both missing a knuckle from having cracked our hands when we were walking our dog Toby and a cat ran out of the bushes. We both named our dog the same and chose beagles, and broke our hands on the same day in the same year.

  It gets even stranger between this Jayden guy and me. We both broke our foot playing baseball, sliding into home base, on the same date and at the same age. We both broke a rib falling down the stairs when we were 13, on the same date.

  I coolly sip my AMF like secret agent Brad Bond, hiding the fact that our similarities are freaking me out. I saw the movie Face/Off, and maybe someone copied my pretty face and put it on this man. My looks can kill and I can see an entire army of Brad O’Boyle’s.

  Anyway, this man is already boring me. Just to get rid of him, I agree to a zygosity test to see if there is a biological reason for appearing on the outside like clones.

  “Hey! I can swab my own cheek,” he says.

  I really was not going to jam the cotton-on-a-stick down his throat even though it is irritating that he looks like me.

  We rub the inside surfaces of our mouths and remove cells from our cheeks and gums via saliva.

  Gung ho Jayden scans his tablet and discovers a 24-hour DNA clinic to do the test. What is even more science fiction is that the clinic is located around the corner from the hotel.

  He shakes the spit-filled plastic bags at me. “One other thing, I was adopted.”

  “Me, too,” I add and squeeze his arm in sympathy.

  Jayden plans to put a rush on our DNA tests. “Wait up with me for the results,” he says all excited.

  “I’m about to pass out, Sherlock, and need to crash.” Jesus, I thought he would suggest climbing in bed with me to see if we both snore.

  He skips on his merry way to the lab.

  There really is no use going to bed so as a wake-me-up I snort cocaine in the privacy of my room using a fifty-dollar bill. BECAUSE I CAN! MY PARENTS ARE RICH! However, Mom and Dad could never buy me an identical twin brother since humans are no longer for sale in the free world else I would own an army of slaves.

  It matters not if Jayden is my identical twin or our resemblance is an
eerie coincidence. My head is spinning with relentless opportunities to use our alikeness to my advantage.

  Chapter 28

  JAYDEN

  The zygosity test confirmed we shared the exact DNA. It is only possible for identical twins to have dead ringer DNA. Our hereditary makeup proved absolutely that we were carbon copies in every way, down to our last gene locus. As fate would have it, we have both discovered a long lost, unknown brother in Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love, which was poetic.

  Brad insisted my balls were not as big as his were because of the independence a military boarding school gave him, which he attended from first grade thru junior college. My parents smothered me with kindness, puppies, and love while Brad learned to be a sharp shooter. He chuckled when my mother called to see if I arrived in Philadelphia safely.

  “The biggest difference between our lifestyles is that I am married and have a kid yoked around my neck,” he said at supper. We both cut into our steaks in the same manner, stabbing a piece of rare-cooked, bloody meat and then slicing in similar fashion.

  “I read about twin brothers separated at birth who both wed women with the same name,” I pointed out.

  He threw his steak knife down and it bounced off my plate, nearly stabbing me. “But you’re single, man. This proves I should not be married! Our stars were knocked out of alignment then by a teenage tease named Ronni.”

  “Your wife?”

  Brad twirled his wedding ring and then removed the band, shoving it in his pocket. “A piece of trash took advantage of my broken heart.”

  “You sound like you really hate your wife. Why not divorce her?”

  He poked his finger on the table, lecturing on Marriage 101. “A woman thinks she owns you once she gives you a kid. Oh, childbirth is so hard. My figure is ruined. I went to hell and back for you! Ronni’s fingers pinch my wallet, and we have no prenup. You’re lucky, dude, to not have a wife.”

  Brad did not act married. He got fresh with the cocktail waitress, and she smacked his hand from her butt. “Twat,” he snarled under his breath.

  She smiled at me and Brad slammed his glass on the table, breaking it. The waitress walked away, shaking her rear, seemingly for my benefit. “See, even though my ring is hid, she notices the aura of marriage around me so flirts with you instead.”

  “She probably saw you take your ring off. Oh wait; there is a gaseous ring around you. Did you just fart, bro?”

  He stared into his AMF, as if he was drowning.

  Seriously, to see my brother so unhappily married, well, it was as if our heartstrings were joined. We shared a connection unknown to the majority of the human race. We had earlier spent the day with an arm around each other’s shoulder as we took a historic tour of Philly. We now continued our party in his room and stripped. Brad actually played a stripping song on his iPod and stripped like a professional whereas I was always a bit shy in the gym locker room.

  We both wore the same style underwear! Our Scandinavian underwear was so scandalous; the U.S. banned the shorts. We twirled our Comfyballs undershorts around our heads and strutted around the room in our birthday suits.

  We puffed out our chests, acting like gorillas, displaying the same pattern of chest hair.

  We stood rubbing our butt cheeks together and were both six-foot-one of towering male beauty, resembling twin statues of Michelangelo’s Michael.

  We stood on bath scales, giggling like schoolgirls. We weighed 185.1 pounds of taut muscle. Our shape was still identical even given our age. Some men over 30 had beer guts, not us.

  We ordered room service and doled out the same portions of each type of food. We even left the same amount of leftovers on our plates. On our foils of butter, the smudges of unused butter were duplicates.

  I surfed the internet and discovered studies where identical twins separated at birth often chose the same profession. In addition, some sets of twins even had the same scar on the same location of their bodies, which they got at the same age doing the same thing, such as falling down the stairs. Ditto for all our other similarities, including the butter spread.

  To experience having a clone (identical twins are nature’s clones) was like science fiction. To celebrate, we both got roaring drunk, running around naked in Brad’s room and screaming, “I have a brother who is the coolest on the planet!”

  We both passed out and I woke in the middle of the night, lying naked beside Brad. No, we did not have sex. We are both a bit wild but not into anything kinky. Besides, we are both heterosexuals. We just like to have fun and were a bit immature. Any male whoever belonged to a fraternity would understand.

  I tiptoed to Brad’s bathroom and closed the door so my tinkling the toilet bowl would not disturb his sleep. I snooped, feeling smug that we used the same brands of shaving cream, toothpaste, mouthwash, aftershave, etc. It seemed neither of us liked the hotel brands and were both picky.

  In the morning, we both sat wrapped in towels, sipping our coffee cold.

  This was way too neat—we both used to ride Harleys until we crashed, on the same date, and broke our right foot. We then each bought a black Mercedes Benz and named it the Darth Vader Death Star.

  Brad smiled lazily. “You should take a shower in my room,” he said.

  I boiled in a hot shower, soaping my body with the same masculine soap I have always used. However, the bar was Brad’s soap.

  The shower curtain slid open and Brad climbed in behind me, washing my back with a sponge. Brad was somewhat creepy and the way he scrubbed me down seemed a bit jealous, not in an envious way, but in a possessive I am his way. I swear if that cocktail waitress from last night flirted with me now, Brad would clutch her wrist, and twist her arm until her bones cracked.

  Brad slapped my butt in a guy way. “I scrub your back, brother, you scrub mine. Always remember I’ve got your back,” he said which made me feel relieved. For a minute there, Brad worried me, but I always wanted a sibling, especially a brother. To have an identical twin was like living on another planet, especially having a twin like Brad. I thought I was a wild and crazy guy but Brad was more insane, you know like those Saturday Night Live sketches. Yeah, Brad and I streamed a few episodes, mimicking the loony Czech brothers, only we were naked when we did so, wiggling our peckers along with our necks and chests. “We are two wild and craaaaaazy guys.” What a riot!

  At this moment, I would do anything Brad asked of me, as long as it did not concern anything gay.

  We made plans to play hooky from the medical conference and hang out. We only just found each other and have 32 years to make up for our biological mother cruelly separating us. If my adoptive mother had not been such a loving woman, I would probably be scarred for life. Unlike Brad, I was not shipped off to boarding school by cold parents who did not want me around. Surely there were plenty of private schools in Austin Brad could have attended.

  When Brad mentioned his rich adoptive parents, his eyes appeared frigid. His adopted last name was Irish and mine French. We speculated as to our ethnicity, but as God stated in the Old Testament, “I am that I am.” We are who we are and screw the woman who gave birth to us. Brad called her a tramp, which made me feel uncomfortable. My heart squeezed at the thought of her, but no way would I ever try to find our biological mother. One, she did not want me. Two, she split us up. Brad would like to punch her in the stomach for not ordering that we be adopted together.

  “Our mother is a selfish broad,” he snarled. His violent nature maybe came from his military school training. We were built alike but Brad stood so much straighter as if at attention, his eyes scanning the hotel for enemies.

  Chapter 29

  BRAD

  We partied hard all week like frat boys, trying to make up for what we missed not growing up together.

  The 27-ton statue of William Penn on top of City Hall was due for cleaning so scaffolding was in place. We climbed the scaffold steps and urinated on William Penn’s enormous bronze shoes. The cops nearly caught us. We were bo
th running while pulling up our pants and laughing so hard, we nearly wet our underwear.

  At Longwood Gardens, we ran through the Lily Pond naked.

  We threw water balloons from the top level of a double-decker bus.

  We laughed, drank, and whored our way through the City of Brotherly Love. There were even orgies in our rooms. It was like if you want my body and you think I'm sexy, come on, sugar, let me know. We actually sang that song to three naked girls in Jayden’s bed.

  I never really had a best friend but now my brother and I are both hung over at the Philly airport waiting for departing flights, mine to Austin and his flight to Victoria. “Ugh! My head is splitting,” I mumble.

  Jayden has a headache from some Vanessa chick. A selfie video she sent on his cell phone irritates him, but her cute laugh makes me hard. Then she breaks out in song and my tool goes soft. Jayden hits the end button, shutting her up. “Vanessa claims that I am immature. She should talk. She acts like a dumb Disney princess singing her way through life.”

  “Which princess, dude? Cinderella? Jasmine? Ariel? Snow White? Mulan? Let’s see, who else? Pocahontas?”

  “Bro, that’s kind of gay.” He moves his stool further away.

  I resist the urge to fling my glass at him. “I have a six-year old daughter, numbnuts.”

  “Oh, I forgot that I have a niece. Vanessa sings her sentences sometimes, like in the hills are alive with the sound of music but off-key.” Jayden gives a deep sigh and orders another AMF. “I would like to break up with her, but I have problems with personal confrontation probably because my folks never raised their voices in anger.”

  “I can easily ditch any hot babe. I am the break up artist. What if there is a way I can break up with Vanessa for you?”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Let’s change our flights to spend more time together and sit beside each other on the planes. We can plan what to do about a problem named Vanessa.”

  By the time our plane lands in Boston, I am ready to lay out my scheme.