Whatever the Impulse

by Tina Amiri

  Several grunts escaped Night as he flipped himself over and kicked at Andrew, while the animal handler started to wake up, near the exit.

  The agitated tiger did a careful inspection of the semi-conscious man, then returned to the conflict, just as Andrew’s hands closed on Night’s throat. The animal pawed and butted Andrew’s head in an attempt to expose the back of his neck, but Andrew stayed dead set on placing his own death grip on Night.

  Under his rival’s full weight—and some of the tiger’s—Night’s words still grated through Andrew’s calculated chokehold. “You can’t handle that I won.”

  “Tell me a little more about your victory…” Andrew’s hands tightened, but his fingers began sliding in the blood of his victim’s mangled earlobe.

  The tiger also botched its death move when Andrew viciously elbowed the creature, but then it sank its teeth in, beside his neck, and began thrashing him around. The tiger’s ferocious flailing lifted Andrew enough for Night to wedge his knee between them and free his emergency tranquilizer pistol. Through all the bumping, the muzzle lodged itself below Andrew’s ribs.

  “I want to hear you say it…” Night exacted in a shot up whisper as he pulled the cocking mechanism back to maximum range. “Say that I won.”

  Andrew’s strangling grip loosened and his eyes glazed. “Yes, you won, Night…but do you have any idea what you cost those you loved?”

  “You set the price.” Night flicked the safety off and fired the dart. A few seconds later, Andrew collapsed next to him, beneath the nose of the wary tiger.

  Shivering and disoriented, Night crawled through the bloody paw prints, stroked the tiger, and gave it a kiss on the head, before he remembered Morgen.

  He stumbled through the doors to the back of the stage. Emergency vehicles had arrived on the field and he staggered toward their lights. An officer was speaking over his radio as Night approached.

  “I have a young male stabbed and the EMTs are in attendance. Hold on… A second male victim, possibly another 217, just surfaced. Stand by.” He turned to Night. “Morgen Dahlsi?”

  Night stared into the distance where an ambulance, with lights flashing, began to drive away as he shot forward. Someone who turned out to be Aden caught him and they both nearly toppled.

  “Where’re you going—and what the hell happened to you?”

  He pushed Aden’s hands off, suddenly realizing he was surrounded by his band, and the rest of the world, all leaning in to hear him say anything.

  Several members of the press pushed microphones into his face.

  “Mister Dahlsi, what happened here?”

  “Do you know the stabbing victim?”

  “Do you have a statement for your public?”

  With charcoal smudges in his eye sockets and bloodstains, highlighted by the camera’s flash, all over his face, he painfully enunciated each word of his reply.

  “Tell them…I fucking won.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Gin struggled to get Night out of the concert grounds and into the limousine. “Not now. Not right now. Move out of the way!”

  The noise from the crowd became muted as the limousine door slammed shut. Gin’s manner bounced between his frustration and his genuine concern. “Some kid got stabbed, you got strangled… Your voice better recover because somebody needs to explain to me what the hell just happened at our concert!”

  Doris leaned into Night and placed her cool hands on his face, but in a peculiar way, like she was looking for something; then she sat back in silence.

  On Night’s opposite side, the borrowed paramedic sifted through his medical kit. “Our dispatcher arranged for you to arrive at a clinic so you won’t be subjected to any public hospital, but first, let’s get you fixed up, okay?”

  Night acknowledged with a scant nod as he held a compress against the side of his head. Now that the bleeding had stopped, from what was left of his earlobe, the paramedic began taping it up.

  After a silence, Gin noted, “I guess the tour’s over. Let’s just thank God we’re near the end of it. As soon as we’re in the clear, health-wise, we’ll try to reschedule the canceled shows.” Night thought Gin had finished, but then he started up again. “What the hell happened? You shot a man with the tranquilizer pistol. Did you know who he was?”

  The only safe answer was a lie. “No,” he stated thinly.

  The paramedic gave the singing star some advice before moving to a less prominent seat within the limousine. “Don’t speak until you’ve had your pipes checked out, or you might cause more damage.”

  ****

  Into the early morning, Colby and Aden waited at the hotel for everyone to return from the clinic. They followed Gin, Doris, and Night into the hotel’s finest suite.

  Gin gripped Night’s arm. “I’m out of here, Morgen, but before I send you home tomorrow, I’m going to arrange for you to see a voice specialist. You just take it easy because you won’t get that chance again for a while.”

  Night groped for the armchair as though he couldn’t quite see beyond the turmoil in his mind. His face sank into his palms. Doris and the others gathered around him.

  “Who are you?” she pleaded. When he didn’t answer her, she didn’t stop. “I saw him on the grass, and I knew, right away, that it was Morgen.”

  “What are you talking about?” Colby sneered.

  Night refused to look at any of their faces and Aden stood transfixed.

  “Just stop it…please!” She squatted before him and tugged at his wrists. “You can stop pretending. I’ve wondered about the changes ever since we played at the New Year’s party, but I couldn’t seriously accuse you of being Morgen’s twin…not until tonight. I saw him—I saw my Morgen, and you are not him.”

  As Doris pulled her hands away and stood up, Night pressed his palms into his lap and looked up. “Morgen wanted this.”

  “Holy shit!” Aden reeled back and paced in a complete circle while Colby interjected.

  “Look, obviously there’s a reason for this, but you have to tell us who you are.”

  Night stood up and shoved past everyone. He ended up in the kitchenette where he slumped over the countertop.

  Doris followed him, halfway. “I want to say something to you before we go on. I want to thank you for fending me off for as long as you did. I mean, you could have just jumped right into bed with me, but you didn’t. And as for the other night…I think that was real.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet, Doris,” Aden groaned. “But I think we should be getting a nice fat explanation for everything that went down, right here, right now! Who the hell are you, man, and why would you guys pull a stunt like this?”

  “Leave him alone. He shouldn’t be trying to talk right now—and he may have just lost his brother…”

  “Oh, come on! We just want a name!”

  Night looked up. “Morgen…” he pronounced in an icy whisper. “That’s the only name you’ll ever get.” Then he marched into his bedroom and locked the door.

  ****

  At the Dahlsi mansion, the following afternoon, Night was sure he wouldn’t get away with his silent treatment, once Morgen’s parents entered the forum.

  Brigitte clamped her arms around him, in the foyer. Her whole body shook with dry sobs that Night imagined were fueled by turmoil, rather than relief at his homecoming in light of his close call with death. His belief was confirmed when Brigitte led him into the living room and Frederick came at him as though he wanted to blast him clear through the wall.

  But Frederick broke one step short of Night and threw a newspaper headline in front of his face.

  Night scowled at how Frederick could think he needed a reminder about yesterday’s mayhem, but when he finally focused on the words, his expression melted.

  “‘Morning’s Desire Stabbing Victim Dies,'” Frederick broadcasted, dropping his arm with the paper.

  Brigitte, who’d been pacing near the back of the room, began to cry again, and Frederick grew more agitated wi
th him for managing to keep a straight face.

  “It says here the victim looked a lot like Morgen Dahlsi…but I think these pictures say it all!” He flashed the lower half of the page in front of Night, indicating the portrait shot of him, next to a grainy shot of Morgen on the stretcher. “Everything makes sense now! Come on! How about you show us your chipped tooth?”

  Night’s chest began to heave. Each breath brought him closer to seething. “Of course I’m not Morgen! And I know you saw it…but did you really not believe it until now?”

  “Don’t turn this on us!” Frederick warned. After a long silence, his manner softened. “Just tell me how it came to pass that Andrew Shannien targeted my son when he could only have been connected to you?”

  Confusion washed out Night’s heated countenance as he reflected on the latest word from police. His attacker had carried no ID, and no abandoned car had been found on site. “How’d you know it was Andrew?”

  Brigitte stopped pacing and answered him boldly. “Because I was warned!”

  “What?” For a moment, Frederick looked as disgusted as Night.

  “A woman called here, about a year ago. She said we were connected through Andrew Shannien. Then, said she was trying to assist someone who was with her and she mentioned Morgen’s birth mother… I hung up…because I thought she was speaking for her, but she wasn’t. She was calling about you.”

  Night could have nodded, but he just let her continue.

  “That’s why we haven’t been able to recognize our own son in months… Everything came together when I saw the newspaper, this morning.” Brigitte’s voice dropped two octaves. “Just tell me Andrew didn’t raise you.”

  Even while it consoled him to know, at long last, that Brigitte hadn’t meant to leave him behind, Night answered her with a scathing blink.

  Frederick’s unstable expression exposed both his sympathy and rage, but he was saved from having to comment from either standpoint when the doorbell rang. “It’s Charles… He said he’d be over as soon as possible.”

  ****

  The lawyer invited everyone to sit down as though they were his guests. He nodded at Night, coldly, before turning to Frederick.

  “Tell me, how’s your housekeeper doing?”

  Frederick balked. “Sandy? He’s recovering. He should be back with us very soon…”

  “Well, I’m quite sure he won’t be. It’s about an article—”

  “What article?”

  “Another tabloid thing, Fred. It hit the stands in the latter half of the Morning’s Desire tour.”

  Night felt the urge to run.

  “Your housekeeper claimed to have been tracking two Morgens inside this house…until he got hit. He mentioned having pictures—and other evidence that never surfaced—so like everybody else, I didn’t think anything of it until all this shit hit the fan, last evening.”

  Night knew he looked distraught, but he quietly waited for the lawyer to finish piling all the damage onto the table.

  “Your children are adopted, and that’s not a crime,” Lehman continued. “But you made a statement to the public, after that sex scandal you called a hoax, to say your children are both Dahlsis. Now, can you imagine the impact on your political career if pictures were to surface that proved Morgen had a twin after you continually denied the possibility? I’m looking out for you, Fred. I’m doing everything I can to deal with this—but you have to deal with your housekeeper, and find those pictures, if they exist.”

  While Brigitte held onto her throat, Fred struggled to cough up the right words, sighing several times over. “Charles…the best thing you could do for us, right now, is find out for sure if…Morgen’s twin is really dead. What if he’s not, because I may just want to come clean about my family’s history and welcome him into—”

  “Relax, Fred. That’s what I’ve been doing all morning, and I can guarantee he won’t be back. I’m the one who informed the media of his status, early this morning. I’m sorry you had to see it in the paper before I could get here, but this twin rumor is being shut down.

  “I can always get an official death certificate in case the Oregon police get tempted to probe this—no matter what links they make later on. Now…my advice to everyone in this house is to get your stories straight. I don’t need to know what really happened here, but I need to know that we are all moving forward from the same page.” He threw another derisive glance at Night. “As for your housekeeper, as long as no pictures show up, he’ll be remembered as nothing more than another celebrity chaser.”

  ****

  “Okay, now talk!” Frederick bellowed in Night’s face, the moment Lehman walked out the door. “I still need to know how Morgen became involved in a man’s vendetta against you.”

  “It wasn’t just me,” Night retorted, his damaged voice still breaking in and out of a whisper. “Morgen drove to Oregon, one time, and he said he got back at Andrew for all the things he did to me.”

  Brigitte winced. “All the things…?”

  Night ignored her. “I never wanted to take Morgen’s place. He begged me to do that. I can show you.”

  Night led Frederick and Brigitte to Morgen’s suite where he showed them Sandy’s confiscated videos and photographs. On Morgen’s TV, he showed them video clips that detailed Morgen’s late stage illness.

  At the same time, Frederick shuffled through the photographs and his complexion ran pink. A tear exploded on one of the photos Sandy had snapped off his television screen. “God…! Why didn’t he just tell us he was sick? I suspected it—more than a few times—and he always denied it. That visit to the doctor…of course it was you.”

  Night nodded and glanced down.

  Frederick shook his head, clearly embarrassed, and frustrated. “Lehman’s right. We have to destroy these. I’ll do whatever it takes to preserve this family, and that means you will remain Morgen Dahlsi, but after today, there will be no way to go back on that decision. Do you understand? Does everybody understand?”

  Brigitte placed a reassuring hand on her husband’s arm, then the other on Night’s, although she looked as though she might lose it again at any second.

  “This discussion isn’t finished, but it’ll have to continue later. I don’t even know who I’m talking to when I look at you.” Frederick set his glare on Night. “You don’t talk like my son, or act like my son—and even though I haven’t really seen Morgen in months, I still convinced myself it was his image I was seeing almost daily on the TV—and I still see him in front of me right now… I still see him. I still see Morgen!”

  This was the first time Night had seen a grown man cry, but Frederick pulled himself together quickly.

  “How am I supposed to feel? You deceived us for almost a year—and all the while you were making us feel closer to our son than ever. What should I think of you? I don’t even know what to call you!” Frederick threw down the photographs.

  “Right now…I think it’s time I pay another visit to our housekeeper in the hospital. I swear, if I had learned about what he was hiding from me, earlier, I would have taken my car and run over his goddamn fucking legs myself!”

  ****

  Beth had been on a school trip when she received the news. She arrived at the house to discover that Brigitte had taken Night onto the lanai to get acquainted with the child Aileen Coleman had failed to tell anyone about. She’d overheard much, by the time she reached them at the patio table and, instantly, her mission became to not lose her substitute brother as well.

  Her mother leapt up and embraced her before offering her a seat and a summary of events, which included everything Lehman had divulged about Sandy.

  It didn’t really surprise her. Morgen had always disliked the guy, whether this transpired through experience or intuition, and now she knew he’d always been a step ahead of everyone else. When her mother asked how long she’d known about the twins, she didn’t lie.

  “For a long time. It was stupid and I didn’t want to keep it a secret,
but if you saw how much Morgen wanted this…” Through her tears, she pleaded for understanding. “And Night actually did it… He did it for Morgen.”

  Not feeling much like talking, Beth excused herself and started for her room, but someone grunting in Morgen’s hallway froze Beth on the staircase. For a few seconds, she dared to hope she would see Morgen, but a peek through the rail posts quickly ended that fantasy.

  If her father had been volatile when he left the house, he was really going to combust when he reached the hospital and found out that the vermin he’d come to exterminate had just slinked back to their home. She watched Sandy propelling himself down the hallway with his new titanium forearm crutches and she strategized for a minute.

  She rummaged through her bedroom to find her camera and then raced down the south hallway, halting abruptly at the threshold of Morgen’s breached doorway.

  “Hello, Sandy. Say ‘cheese’.”

  Sandy spun around with his hands between two sofa cushions, only to have his eyes kissed by her camera’s flash.

  “Gee, Sandy, think of the headline: ‘Dahlsi’s Housekeeper Caught Stealing from Private Rooms.'” With that, Sandy picked up his crutches and tried to follow her.

  “Fuck, Beth…it’s not like you guys didn’t steal anything from me!” But Sandy couldn’t keep up. “Fuck your stupid picture. It doesn’t prove anything anyway!”

  Beth tossed the camera on her bed then retraced her steps as she decided she wasn’t finished with Sandy. Not finding him back in Morgen’s common room, she dashed straight into Sandy’s old suite. He’d left his bathroom door open and she could hear him urinating.

  He didn’t have a chance to react to the intrusion before Beth kicked him in the back. He crashed forward, over the toilet bowl, and corkscrewed into a wet landing between the bowl and the wall.

  “Crazy bitch!”

  “Asshole!”

  She grabbed one of his crutches while he scrambled to get up. “They say Morgen’s dead! Can’t you just leave us alone? And this is for last Christmas!” She jabbed at him heedlessly as he retreated into a protective ball.