the Third Twin (1996)

He said what she was thinking. “But until I really leave, you can’t be sure. And if I leave and come right back, that doesn’t count either. For you to know it’s me, I have to really go away.”

“Yes.” She was sure now that this was Steve, but her doubts would return unless he really went away.

“We need a secret code, so you know it’s me.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Okay.”

“Good-bye,” he said. “I won’t try to kiss you.”

He went down the stairs. “Call me,” he shouted.

She stood still, frozen to the spot, until she heard the slam of the street door.

She bit her lip. She felt like crying. She went to the kitchen counter and poured coffee into a mug. She raised the mug to her lips, but it slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor, where it smashed on the tiles. “Fuck,” she said.

Her legs went weak, and she slumped on the couch. She had felt in terrible danger. Now she knew the danger had been imaginary, but she still felt profoundly grateful that it had passed. Her body felt swollen with unfulfilled desire. She touched her crotch: her leggings were damp. “Soon,” she breathed. “Soon.” She thought about how it would be the next time they met, how she would embrace him and kiss him and apologize, and how tenderly he would forgive her; and as she envisioned it she touched herself with her fingertips, and after a few moments a spasm of pleasure went through her.

Then she slept for a while.

46

IT WAS THE HUMILIATION THAT GOT TO BERRINGTON.

He kept defeating Jeannie Ferrami, but he was never able to feel good about it. She had forced him to go sneaking around like a petty thief. He had surreptitiously leaked a story to a newspaper, crept into her office and searched her desk drawers, and now he was watching her house. But fear compelled him. His world seemed about to fall around him. He was desperate.

He would never have thought he would be doing this a few weeks from his sixtieth birthday: sitting in his car, parked at the curb, watching someone else’s front door like a grubby private eye. What would his mother think? She was still alive, a slim, well-dressed woman of eighty-four, living in a small town in Maine, writing witty letters to the local newspaper and determinedly hanging on to her post as chief flower arranger for the Episcopalian Church. She would shudder with shame to know what her son had been reduced to.

God forbid he should be seen by anyone he knew. He was careful not to meet the eyes of passersby. His car was unfortunately conspicuous. He thought of it as a discreetly elegant automobile, but there were not many silver Lincoln Town Cars parked along this street: aging Japanese compacts and lovingly preserved Pontiac Firebirds were the local favorites. Berrington himself was not the kind of person to fade into the background, with his distinctive gray hair. For a while he had held a street map open in front of him, resting on the steering wheel, for camouflage, but this was a friendly neighborhood, and two people had tapped on the window and offered to give him directions, so he had had to put the map away. He consoled himself with the thought that anyone who lived in such a low-rent area could not possibly be important.

He now had no idea what Jeannie was up to. The FBI had failed to find that list in her apartment. Berrington had to assume the worst: the list had led her to another clone. If that were so, disaster was not far away. Berrington, Jim, and Preston were staring close up at public exposure, disgrace, and ruin.

It was Jim who had suggested that Berrington watch Jeannie’s house. “We have to know what she’s up to, who comes and goes,” Jim had said, and Berrington had reluctantly agreed. He had got here early, and nothing had happened until around midday when Jeannie was dropped off by a black woman he recognized as one of the detectives investigating the rape. She had interviewed him briefly on Monday. He had found her attractive. He managed to remember her name: Sergeant Delaware.

He called Proust from the pay phone in the McDonald’s on the corner, and Proust promised to get his FBI friend to find out whom they had been to see. Berrington imagined the FBI man saying, “Sergeant Delaware made contact today with a suspect we have under surveillance. For security reasons I can’t reveal any more than that, but it would be helpful to us to know exactly what she did this morning and what case she was working on.”

An hour or so later Jeannie had left in a rush, looking heartbreakingly sexy in a purple sweater. Berrington had not followed her car; despite his fears, he could not bring himself to do something so undignified. But she had come back a few minutes later carrying a couple of brown paper sacks from a grocery store. The next arrival was one of the clones, presumably Steve Logan.

He had not stayed long. If I’d been in his shoes, Berrington thought, with Jeannie dressed like that, I would have stayed there all night and most of Sunday.