Whatever the Impulse

by Tina Amiri

  “I don’t understand anything you’re saying. Are you going to be on TV?”

  Morgen gawked at Night for a moment as his music surrounded them. “That’s not what I said, but yeah, eventually. What the hell is your name anyway?”

  “Night.”

  “No way. Night, as in midnight?”

  “As in morning and night.”

  Morgen sneered and flopped on the couch. “That must have given somebody one big laugh—right before they decided to split us up anyway.”

  “At least you got to have the real life and a real name. You were named after—”

  “Brigitte. I know. She’s my adoptive mom.”

  “I know. I lived with Andrew, and Brigitte used to live with Andrew. I thought he was my father,” Night explained, “but I just found out he’s my…our grandfather.”

  Morgen turned a shade paler. “You’re saying my mom is technically Grandma? Shit… Our real dad must have been twelve.”

  Rather than correct him, Night simply shrugged. “Morgen, do you think she knew about me?”

  “How am I supposed to know? She never talks about the past.”

  “Well if she did…know about me…she let him ruin my life. I could have been normal if I’d lived here too. Do you know that I never even spoke to anyone, except to Andrew, until a few months ago? I never went anywhere… He always said there was a reason I couldn’t be like other people, but there was never a reason. Not a real reason.”

  Morgen looked dazed, but he managed to eject one word. “What?”

  “It’s true. I’ve never been any farther than between the house where I lived and the restaurant where I worked. Andrew even had me pretend that I couldn’t hear. I even learned this sign language…” He echoed his last few words in sign.

  When Morgen stopped being speechless, he uttered, “I don’t believe it. Of all the lost twin brothers in this world, how come mine has to be such a…?”

  “Freak?”

  “Freak,” Morgen accepted. He looked bored now, or tired, as he lifted his head off the couch and stood up. He plucked his demo tape out of the stereo and looked at Night. “If you’re such a recluse, why’d you dye your hair like that?”

  “What do you mean? This is just how it looks.”

  Morgen’s glare sharpened. “You’re the freak, so how come I got stuck with all the aberrant genes? Clearly, I have my own problems, and I don’t need one of them to be you,” Morgen stated, grabbing a set of keys from the sofa table near the exit. “Make sure you’re gone by tomorrow.”

  ****

  A hard push on his shoulder blade was Night’s first indication that he’d fallen asleep. Just for a moment, he thought it was Andrew waking him out of a typical dream. Then, reality set in and he noticed the object of his lifelong nightmares standing right there beside him, in the daylight, in the flesh, with arms crossed.

  “You got blood on your shirt. You know, they put seats in buses so you don’t have to hang on underneath.”

  Night turned his back away from Morgen as he sat up.

  “Where did you say you were from?”

  Night hoped his brother’s questions would keep coming. “Lincoln County…Oregon.”

  “That’s too bad. I hope you have enough money to get back because it’s check-out time at the Dahlsi hotel.”

  “I can’t go back. Lila said I had to stay out of Oregon…and you’re supposed to help.”

  “Who the hell is Lila? What do you want from me?” Morgen threw up his arms and then let them fall limp. “I don’t want you around. It’s not like we’re going to be best friends or anything. I’m not suddenly going to recognize the virtues of brotherhood or what a gas it can be to have a twin. We’re not going to start dressing the same so we can play pranks on people, or spend hours together comparing our experiences.”

  Night did want most of these things, but he no longer expected anything except to hear how Morgen would wrap up his eviction.

  “Look, I have really important things to do today, and I may even have company, so you have to get the hell out before someone sees you. Now, hit the road. Hasta la vista. Good-bye.”

  After being handed his bag of meager belongings, Night quickly found himself alone on the doorstep outside, like a discarded stray—Andrew’s threat realized! He felt some relief to be out of Morgen’s caustic little world, and he still had some of Lila’s money, so he knew he wouldn’t starve right away. He also had Lila’s number…if Morgen really didn’t want him around.

  With an inherent good sense of direction, excellent endurance, and a keen eye for landmarks, Night cleared the neighborhood and walked well into a commercial district before he started to slow down.

  He found a restaurant and ordered off the menu for the first time in his life, although the bill brought with it a realization: he would be broke in no time unless he found cheaper food, or got some more money. Briefly, he fantasized about asking the manager for a job, but when he failed to decipher the conversation at the next table, he remembered that he was a freak…a childlike one at that.

  When he got back to the house, at dusk, Night stared at Morgen’s bedroom window for a long time, after finding the pedestrian door locked. He recalled what worked the last time someone shut him out of his home and he picked up a rock, then hurled it straight through one of the glass panels of Morgen’s wide-open, shutter-style window.

  Morgen’s short platinum mop tipped over the window ledge, but in less than a minute, he reappeared in Night’s face, clutching him by the shirt.

  “You’re a bloody psychopath!” Morgen blasted, yanking Night inside and spinning his back against the stone wall.

  Night didn’t even flinch at the pain. “I need your help,” he asserted. “And I can break more windows…”

  “Fuck!” Morgen let go with a push. “My family could have heard you. Ever think of that, asshole?”

  Night followed his brother up the now-familiar staircase in the back of the garage. A third of the way down the upper hallway, Morgen stopped and gestured at the first door on the left.

  “Park your ass in my guestroom, for now, and don’t make a bloody sound—even if you think it’s just me in the suite. My window will have to be fixed so it could be anyone going in there in the next while. I’ll look for you when it’s necessary—not the other way around. Got it?”

  ****

  Night couldn’t understand how his brother never developed the slightest interest in him, even after their fairly intimate conversation, now three evenings ago. While Morgen came and went, Night continued to siphon any clues about the world through the television in Morgen’s common room. Sometimes, he too slipped out of the house, like every time he got hungry. He discovered where to buy cheap, fast-food, and even groceries to stretch his dollars, but regardless of when and why he left the house, Morgen had learned not to lock him out.

  He gained clues about his brother’s health from the number of times Morgen’s head went into the toilet. It didn’t make sense to Night that someone could be sick and then healthy again, often within the same day, and seemingly without end.

  On one occasion, Night skulked back into the house and found his brother holed up, like a wounded animal, in one corner of their shared bathroom. Morgen didn’t even move as Night stood in the breached doorway and stared down at him.

  “What happened?”

  Seconds passed before Morgen lifted his face from between his bent knees. Although he wasn’t crying, the charcoal under his brother’s eyes had migrated south and Night gathered that the emotional phase had long exhausted itself by now.

  Night finally noticed the empty pill bottle, and its contents strewn all across the marble floor. Morgen sat amidst this evidence, decked out in telltale attire: a sleeveless black shirt, silver and crystal studs on both ears—all plainly visible beneath teased hair—leather bracelets on his wrists, a bandana loosely twisted around his neck and a studded double belt—everything screaming that this was the night of Morgen’s epic ev
ent.

  “Your telephone keeps ringing. Why won’t you answer it?”

  In his unwavering trance, Morgen turned onto his knees and faced the water in the toilet bowl as though he was completely resigned to this routine by now.

  Night lingered as he retreated and then laid his head against the flipside of the doorframe to listen. He wasn’t sure why, but something made him envious of this room that already knew more about his brother than he did. This feeling began to extend to the whole house and the people that lived in it, and he resented being so behind when it came to setting things into their rightful order.

  ****

  Andrew grudgingly welcomed a detective, along with the two familiar cops, into his home.

  “This case keeps getting more interesting, Mister Shannien. Your ex is coming up with some pretty serious allegations, and we’d like to hear from you now.”

  “Of course, but I don’t understand…”

  “Even Ms. Hughes doesn’t deny that Night meant to burn down the restaurant, but she says he was driven to a desperate, irrational state by abuse—at your hands. She claims she saw unmistakable marks on his body.”

  Andrew tipped his forehead into one hand and paced opposite his audience. He stopped and gripped the top of his armchair with his free hand. “I’m sorry… Give me a minute. This is terribly embarrassing for me. That’s why I wasn’t forthcoming when you asked me about the altercation that led to the fire.”

  “Mister Shannien, it’s not in your best interest to withhold anything right now.”

  “I know, I know.” He turned to face them when he sensed that their curiosity had peaked. “This explains so much about Lila’s behavior.” He chuckled shortly. “It isn’t her fault that she’s accusing me of this—anybody would think the same thing if they saw him. God, no…it most certainly was not me who did that to Night, it was that little tramp who he’s obviously in the company of, right this minute.”

  “You are referring to that missing girl, Daphne Swanson?”

  “Yes! Only now they are both missing—together—and there is still nothing I can do about it, just like I couldn’t do anything to stop him from seeing her in the first place. Like I told you, Night is a bit…slower than most teenagers, and him knowing that, and with his hearing loss, he always wanted to prove that he could fit in with anyone. So, yes, I sheltered him, a bit too much, but for good reason because this girl, this freak…she came into his life and introduced him to her vulgar lifestyle and kept him hooked—God only knows how that’s possible. I started noticing bruises… Really, I can’t talk about this.”

  “We understand she was once a stripper—but much reformed, according to her friends.” The officer chuckled while his partner grinned. “It seems she just moves around in her field.”

  Andrew expunged their amusement with a scowl. “I can only tell you that we had some horrible fights, the worst being after he came home virtually disfigured. Your marks... You guessed it…courtesy of Miss Swanson. That last morning, I vowed he would never see her again, and Night decided to put me in my place.”

  “So, when the fire happened, tell us how Ms. Hughes got involved.”

  “She was simply there, and Night had become so resentful of me… I’m sure he said, and would continue to say, anything to defend this little slut and make me the villain. I’m sure, after using Lila to make his getaway, he found his way back to the bitch. Pardon me…” He took a seat in his armchair and stared at the floor as one of them scribbled some notes.

  “Thank you, Mister Shannien. Although what a nineteen-year-old chooses to do with his own body is not our concern, the restaurant arson is, and you just connected a whole lot of dots for us. I’m sure we’ll have a few more questions before this is all over.”

  “That’s fine. Just find my son and do what you have to. Sadly, he does need a lot of help—which is why I dreaded police involvement, at first. But the truth is, I would rather see him in prison than with her.”

  ****

  Night could no longer stand being ignored and he thought he might burn down another building if he didn’t get some acknowledgment soon. The ringing of the telephone started to peel the air until he forced Morgen to deal with both him and the call by lifting the receiver and bringing it to his own ear. Morgen snatched it from his hand.

  “…I know. …Probably not. …Yes, sorry! ….It wasn’t my fault. …You know why!”

  Night lost track of how many similar sounding retorts Morgen fired through the line. He could sense his brother struggling just to articulate the words, groggy from the combination of substances he’d gulped, snorted and injected into his body the night before. Night found himself strangely vigilant over the ungrateful creature when the cycle repeated itself after the call.

  Facedown on the couch, Morgen didn’t even stir when Night tripped over the electric guitar, still in its case, and abandoned near the common room door. He picked it up and carried it over to the rest of his brother’s mystery equipment, but this time, he didn’t ignore the cloaked object within the mix.

  He spread his arms along the width of the thing and carefully lifted the black leather protective cover off. His heart skipped at the sight of a piano keyboard, although it didn’t look much like any piano he’d seen before, except in music videos. He had to pull the unit away from the wall to really examine it and that’s when he realized it consisted of two parts: the keyboard and a metal stand…and the keyboard tempted him.

  Night glanced at his brother who didn’t look like he would notice if his ceiling caved in. He looked back down at the keys and struck his first chord, but his action produced no sound. He hit the keys harder, and harder again.

  “You’re a real genius, aren’t you?” came Morgen’s voice…the only noise to stab the air above the dull plunk of the keys hitting the frame. “Try turning it on!”

  Night twisted around. “I almost had it.”

  “Right. Even if that were true, you’d probably just end up launching a magnitude seven earthquake across Los Angeles.”

  Scowling, Night searched the mass of controls all along the top and soon found what he wanted. Power surged through the keyboard, as it did through his arm, and he didn’t wait to begin his angry recital. By now, Morgen had wandered off and closed himself inside the bathroom.

  But the music brought him back. When Night looked up at Morgen’s face, now only inches away, he saw something familiar, and it had nothing to do with the likeness of his features. One time, on his way to the restaurant, Andrew had accused him of having stars in his eyes, and now he knew exactly what that looked like. He broke off in the middle of a haughty crescendo and turned to Morgen, awaiting his reaction.

  “What the hell was that? I didn’t know you were into music. Why the fuck didn’t you say anything about that?”

  “I didn’t know you had a piano.”

  Morgen slapped his sides and groaned. “It’s not a piano, by the way. It’s a synthesizer—a keyboard.”

  “It looks like a piano…and I’ve played piano all my life.”

  “Have you ever considered learning guitar?”

  It seemed like a good time to confess. “You mean that thing?” Night pointed to the acoustic guitar on the floor. “I think I figured it out, but I can’t play it like you.”

  Morgen’s eyes peered right through Night, at something that thawed his stare for a second time. “What would you say if I offered to teach you to play it…just like me?”

  His expression must have given away plenty because Morgen grinned.

  “Come on. Let me see what you already know.”

  There was a slight hobble in Morgen’s gait as he moved toward the couch, but Night couldn’t help notice that an uncustomary spring also came with his brother’s newfound purpose.

  ****

  Morgen’s tune had completely transitioned, like Night’s hair, by the end of the evening. It appeared that Morgen now required his “pain-in-the-ass brother” to stick around.

  “It�
�s not going to work, Morgen. We’re still going to look different.”

  “Just shut-up. You can’t stay here for much longer without ever being spotted.” Morgen sniffed neurotically as he combed the peroxide solution from a bottle through Night’s rich auburn hair.

  “But can’t people just know who I really am for a change?”

  “If that happens, I’m done, you’re done.”

  Morgen left him sitting on the marble rim of the sunken bathtub without explaining that the bleaching process would take some time, and when he came back, he still had the nerve to sound irritated.

  “Lean back,” he ordered, already yanking Night’s head into position to rinse his faded strands.

  Night couldn’t wait to look into the mirror. “What did you do? Look at it, Morgen. It’s pink!”

  “I’m not a goddamned hairdresser. We’ll just do it again, okay?”

  Night sat through another application of the stuff that burned his scalp more than the first time. Some of his hair fell out, but the end result startled both of them.

  “Nobody’ll question it,” Morgen pronounced, in spite of Night’s healthier complexion and yellower shade of blond hair. “Just don’t let me down.”

  Night stared through the mirror, into his nightscapes, while the most profound sense of déjà vu swept over him. Maybe not in one succinct phrase, but Morgen had been thrusting this sentiment at him for as long as he could remember. His nightmares had altogether ceased since his arrival at the house. Instead, each night he slept with a feeling that he had answered Fate. At last, he had answered Morgen.

  Chapter Eleven

  Morgen kept fidgeting in his movie theater seat as though he really didn’t want to be there. Night couldn’t be certain, but it occurred to him that Morgen had only brought him to see the big screen so he could watch his freaky brother’s reaction to yet one more ordinary experience.

  “Isn’t anyone wondering where you are these days?”