Today, he stopped. I stood there looking like a fool, not knowing what to do with my hand. I shuffled my foot.
Kirk said, “Willie, you’ve changed your hair.”
She stroked down her brown curls. They weren’t lustrous. They weren’t even natural—she must’ve bought a home perm at the store every other payday—but there was something beautiful about the way her hair compacted around her skull. I don’t know why this appealed to me. Maybe if I controlled a penis, my taste in women would be more pedestrian in the way of Kirk’s, but Willie was the type of woman I could see myself having a conversation with. A long conversation. And maybe, if we found we had things in common, and we realized that there was a spark between us, we might end up going on a date.
I’d never been on a date before. Kirk was the one who got the school janitor’s daughter to go to the prom with him. Kirk was the one who lost his virginity in the back of a bus parked on the grounds of a gospel tent revival outside the Bethel Baptist Church. He was the one whose lips touched others. He was the one who knew what it was like to feel warm flesh pressed against something other than his thigh.
I was the one who…watched all this happen. Who, if I was lucky, got a tingling and a tightening while Kirk rutted like a wild boar that’s just come upon a mound of fresh chicory.
Willie patted the tight curls of her hair. “Well, bless your heart. My hair’s just the same as it ever was.” She was a good deal older than us, somewhere north of seventy, and she used phrases like this. “Did y’all have a good weekend?”
Kirk smiled. I was pretty sure he winked. “We did indeed, Willie. Church in the morning, then we stayed in all last night watching a movie.”
“Which one’s that?”
“Little Women,” Kirk said, quick as you please. “The one with Katharine Hepburn.”
“That’s the best version,” she said, and I felt my heart soar in my chest. I knew she’d like old movies, and not just because she was around when they were new.
Kirk must’ve felt my joy, but instead of squashing it in his usual way, he asked her, “Why don’t you join us for lunch today?”
She pressed her hand to her large bosom. Bosoms—there was something I thought I could work with. One arm, one face, two breasts. What more did a man need?
Willie said, “I’d be delighted.”
“We’ll see you at lunch, then,” Kirk told her, and I guess I must’ve been caught up in staring at her bosoms, because I have no idea what went on before that. Kirk practically had to drag me down the hall.
He told me, “Easy, right?”
I could barely speak. I felt like I was floating across the floor instead of walking. “She’s never talked to me before.”
“Today’s your lucky day, Wayne-o. A new day. Whatever happened last night is over, right? It’s just lunch with Willie, and maybe lunch with her tomorrow, and who knows what will happen after that? You might be holding hands by the end of the week.”
He was right! My head was buzzing with delight. Was this what it felt like to have a woman in your life? Was this what it felt like to know that you were going to have lunch with someone who had bosoms? “We actually spoke, Kirk. We had a conversation with her. We’re going to have lunch with her!”
“We are. She really likes you, Wayne. Did you see how she was looking at you?”
“She was looking at me, wasn’t she?”
“You tiger. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He patted me on my half-shoulder. I can’t lie about this part. I walked past those cubicles lining the operations center with my head held high. I’d never felt so proud of myself before. It’s like my ball dropped or something. I was the King of Dixie.
We sat down at our desk. Kirk opened his briefcase and took out his headphone and pen. I opened my drawer and took out my headphone and pen. It wasn’t until the middle of my first call that I realized it was Kirk who’d talked to Willie. Not me.
“What is it?” he asked, turning his head my way. He had his hand over the mouthpiece on his headphone.
I covered my mouthpiece, too. “You talked to her.”
“She’ll talk to you at lunch. You can even stare at her tits.”
“She’ll talk to you. They always talk to you.”
“Stop sulking like a baby, Wayne. She likes you. Just roll with it. Take advantage of the situation. Think about the future.”
I could hear someone screaming in my earpiece. A woman yelling at me for waking her toddler during his morning nap. I pulled out the jack from the telephone console. In a flash, I saw myself pulling the jack out of the Town and Country’s entertainment system last night. Marmee was crying about Beth’s scarlet fever, and then Wayne was yelling at Mindy about touching me.
Had she touched me? Maybe it was an accident. Maybe her hand had trailed down my chest without her realizing what she was doing. Non-conjoined people probably did that all of the time. A body was a lot to keep up with on your own. Two arms. Two legs. One brain. Maybe her hand brushed my nipple by accident. Let’s face it, no one expected a nipple to be there.
But she had looked at me while she was doing it. She had looked me in the eye, and then…Kirk had killed her. He had beaten her with his fist. He had screamed so loud that our stomach clenched and our heart trembled.
I said, “You talked to Willie so I wouldn’t call the police.”
“She talked back to you. That’s the important part.”
“She barely even knew I was there.”
Kirk started shaking his head. “We’re not turning ourselves in. You’ve been in prison before, Wayne. Do you want to go back?”
“It was jail. Not prison.”
“And you had a good time?” He saw my expression and snorted a laugh. “Hell, Wayne, if you think that’s the only way you’re gonna get laid—”
“Mindy Connor has a family. She said she had a brother. Surely there’s a mother and father. They’re probably wondering where she is right now.”
“They probably think she’s out blowing guys for dime bags.”
“Don’t talk about her that way. She was a human being.”
He went quiet. I could hear the murmur of operators around us, cubicle-bound, solitary people calling young mothers during nap time and asking them if they were happy with their car insurance carrier.
Kirk’s low rumble vibrated in our chest. “She called us freaks.”
“She called you a freak.”
He was quiet again. The hum continued, and I had this image in my head of Mindy Connor and her family. It was Christmas. They were all wearing red and green matching sweaters with reindeer stitched onto the fronts. Their grandmother had knitted them. She was in the old folks’ home now, but they were going to visit her after they said prayers and carved the turkey.
Kirk cleared his throat. “Wayne, just listen to me. It was a mistake. We have to put it behind us.”
“She has a family. A family who wears matching—”
“They look retarded in those sweaters. Come on, the sleeves are too long and the neckline’s a mess.”
He had a point.
“She was a junkie. You saw her arms.” He gave me a meaningful look. “You saw them when she was stroking your shoulder.” I chewed my lip as I straightened my paperclip dispenser. He added, “You’d better be glad I’m not making you go halfsies with me. Twenty-five bucks.”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “And it would be twenty-two-fifty.”
“You felt something, didn’t you? I could feel you feeling it.”
“No.”
“We had a deal. Sunday nights are mine.”
“I went to the club with you.”
“You’re supposed to leave me alone. It’s my only time to be alone.” I could tell he was getting angry again. His fist clenched. His voice became strained. “How many times, Wayne? How many times was I with somebody, but she was secretly with you?”
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Do I?” he demanded. “Is that what y
ou’re really telling me? All those women, and you never felt anything?”
“Now is not the time to discuss—”
“Because I felt something just now, Wayne. I felt it when you were looking at Willie.”
My head snapped around.
His lips were twisted in a nasty grin. “You think I don’t know what you feel when you stare at Willie’s tits?”
“I would prefer you didn’t use such coarse—”
“That time she sneezed and her whole rack shook, I thought your ball was gonna shoot out enough sperm to—”
“Stop it,” I hissed. “Just stop it, all right? I’m sick of this. I’m sick and tired of covering for your mistakes. I’m sick of the way you treat people. I’m sick of the way you treat me.”
“You?” He looked shocked. “What the hell does that mean, Wayne? I treat you better than I treat myself. Hell, half of everything that goes into me gets shared with you.”
“And all of what you’re finished with comes out of me.”
“Oh, we’re gonna have that conversation again? You’re gonna whine to me about getting the asshole?” He threw up his hand in disgust. “Do you know what it feels like when you have to piss and someone doesn’t want to get up because they’re going to miss the last two minutes of Dancing with the Stars?”
“I’m just a lump to you. That’s all I am. A lump. An appendage. A-a-a…”
He stared at me. “Parasite?”
I shook my head and looked down at my desk. The blotter was lined up parallel to the back of the cubicle wall. My pen and paper were equidistant from the edge. I liked to keep things neat, tidy. Unlike Kirk, who’d already stuck a wadded-up piece of chewing gum on a crinkled work order. I shuddered to think what our prison cell would look like.
“I’m not going to prison,” Kirk hissed. “I swear to God, I’ll swallow a bottle of pills first.”
“Great. So I won’t get into heaven because you committed suicide?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you believe in a God who’d give two grown men one asshole.”
“Don’t you dare blaspheme right now. I’m warning you, Kirk. I have very little patience today.”
He took a deep breath and let it go.
I tried to be reasonable. “Look, we’re in this together. As long as we stick by each other—”
“Do I have a choice?” he snapped. “I’ve been stuck by you all of my life, whether I wanted to be or not.”
And there it was, the unspoken truth. Or maybe the passive-aggressively hinted at truth. Kirk wanted to live without me. Kirk could live without me.
I said what I knew he was thinking. “You should’ve killed me if you were going to kill someone. Wouldn’t that solve all your problems?”
His voice turned serious. “We need to get our story straight right now.”
“I have work to do.” I tried to put the jack back into the telephone, but he grabbed my hand. “What is wrong with you?”
He was looking over my shoulder. “The police are here.”
“Don’t joke with me.”
I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t Wayne’s. I looked at the hairy, knobby knuckles and let my eyes trace up a dark blue sleeve to the man standing behind me.
“Mr. Edgerton?”
I felt my throat work. Both Kirk and I said, “Yes?” at the same time.
The man looked confused. He scratched his square jaw. His beard was coming in even though it was early in the morning. His shoulders were broad, though they only contained one head. “I’m Detective Peter Jensen with the Atlanta Police Department. I need to talk to you about a case.”
“The police?” Kirk gasped. “What do the police want with my brother?”
I shot Kirk a look. “Which one of us do you need to speak with?”
He looked from me to Kirk, then back again.
Kirk asked, “Which is it? Are you here to talk to me or my brother?”
The detective was obviously not in the mood to be questioned. “Could you please stand, Mr. Edgerton?”
“Which one?” we asked in unison. I could feel a bead of sweat roll down my back. And then another bead roll down Kirk’s.
Suddenly, Jensen jammed his hand into my armpit and jerked us up from the chair. He spun us around, and we had to reach out to keep from smashing face-first into the cubicle.
“Oh God,” I prayed as I felt my arm being jerked behind my back. There was the metallic clinking of handcuffs.
“Screw you, pig!” Kirk’s hand flew into the air in his John Travolta move. Jensen reached for Kirk’s wrist, but Kirk was taller. “I want a lawyer!”
“You want me to add resisting to the charge, too?” Jensen pressed Kirk’s face into the wall. “Give me a reason, asshole. Just give me a reason.”
“Officer,” I tried. “I’m not resisting—”
Jensen kicked me in the back of the knee, and I crumpled to the ground. Kirk fell on top of me.
“No!” he screamed. “It’s not fair!”
“Neither is what you did to that woman.” Jensen’s knee dug into my back as he clamped the cuff around Kirk’s wrist. “You beat her down like a dog in the street,” he mumbled. “What kind of animal are you?”
“It wasn’t me!” Kirk screamed. “It was my brother!”
CHAPTER THREE
Chang and Ang Bunker are perhaps the most famous conjoined twins in history. Called “Siamese twins” because they hailed from Siam, they worked in a traveling circus most of their lives. Having made their fortune as a freak show, they retired to Tennessee, where they farmed the land by day and tended to their wives and families by night.
Yes, they had wives and families. Chang and his wife had ten children. Ang and his wife had eleven. Because their wives—who, by the way, were sisters—did not get along, the two men had separate households. Three nights would be spent in Chang’s marital bed, and then the next three nights would be spent in Ang’s. They were gentlemen farmers. Respected citizens. Their sons fought for the Confederacy, which, while not exactly laudable, had some tinge of honor.
The twins died on the same day. Chang succumbed to pneumonia during a long January night. The next morning, Ang woke to find his brother dead. His wife and children heard his cries of grief and came to comfort him. A doctor was sent for. The plan was to separate the two, but Ang refused. He would not be parted from his brother.
He died a few hours later.
Today, the surgery to separate the two men could be performed in a few hours. Doctors would refer to them as xiphopagus twins, joined at the sternum by a tiny piece of cartilage and sharing a liver with two independently functioning halves. The liver is a remarkable organ, the closest thing to a salamander that the human body has. Slice it into pieces and it will grow back as one.
The adorable Hensel girls are craniopagus twins, meaning they are joined at the head but, for the most part, have two separately developed bodies.
The more reclusive Gaylon brothers are omphalo-schiopagus twins, with four arms, four legs, and fused abdomens. They live in the embrace of their loving family, which consists of nine brothers and sisters.
Kirk and I are thoraco-omphalopagus twins. We are fused from the upper chest to the lower chest. We share a heart. A liver. Part of the digestive system. We are also, to my knowledge, the only conjoined twins in the American penal system.
Aggravated assault. Rape. Murder. It was hard to quibble with any of these charges once they showed the crime scene photos. Poor Mindy Connor. The police photographer’s flash was even more harsh than the xenon parking lot lights of the Pink Pony. She was not a pretty girl. Nor was she a girl. Forty-three years old. She’d lost custody of her children five years ago because she preferred the needle to the demands of motherhood. Her father said she was trying to get off drugs before she died. She’d taken up knitting to give her hands something to do. Maybe it was Mindy, not the grandmother, who’d made the sleeves too long on the reindeer Christmas sweaters in my dream.
<
br /> Kirk’s idea had been to throw Mindy’s body in the Dumpster behind the Pink Pony. In retrospect, that might have been a wiser choice than my scheme to leave her lying on the ground by the Blue Ridge Parkway. What can I say? I was much more sentimental back then. Fresh mountain air. Towering pine trees. Deer. Rabbits. Truckers who would look out the window of their cab, see a dead body on the road, and immediately call in the state troopers.
Kirk and I had separate lawyers during our trials, separate defense cases during which we blamed each other for the murder. Was Kirk solely responsible for what happened to poor Mindy Connor? Being honest, I really can’t say. The forensic evidence was compelling. My hands had left bloody fingerprints on her back. Was that because I had helped carry her body or because I had prevented her from escaping while Kirk’s fist pummeled her face like a windmill? The rape wasn’t really rape, but a transaction that took place before the deed went down. This is hardly the kind of defense you can put up when the dead woman’s mother and father are sitting in the front row behind the prosecutor. Neither Kirk nor I even tried—him, because it would make him look even worse, and me because my sperm is genetically no different from Kirk’s.
We were neither of us arguing innocence. We were arguing levels of complicity. In the end, Kirk was right. The state couldn’t sentence one of us to death row without sending the other.
Six months have passed since Kirk’s conviction, six and a half since mine. We haven’t talked to each other since Detective Peter Jensen put us in the back of his police car.
“Tell him she attacked us!” Kirk hissed while Jensen walked around to the driver’s side of the car. “We were defending ourselves!”
“Shut up,” I said. “You freak.”
That was it. Kirk wouldn’t speak to me after that. Wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t help me tie my shoe or straighten my belt. Not that our lack of vocal communication mattered. I knew Kirk’s excuses before they came out of his mouth. This wasn’t like our previous brush with the law where he could play the conjoined card and get away with it. Beating up a barfly with a gold tooth and a diamond earring was not the same as brutally murdering a woman and dumping her on the side of the road.