Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear: A Novel by Matthew Salesses

Author:Matthew Salesses [Salesses, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-11T07:00:00+00:00

BREAKING UP

I found an empty bench and lay down to cry, pretending to be a sleeping homeless person. I envied the power the homeless had over sheltered people. Wherever a homeless person appeared, making their invisibility visible, sheltered people tried to disappear.

In my dreams Charlotte and I sat in a theater watching a black-and-white noir. I knew this was some kind of daddy-daughter day; I was supposed to apologize. She kept her eyes glued to the screen. In the film the private eye was me. I locked the door and hung a “Closed” sign. I flipped through a thick case file. I narrated that I had to be alone to get my work done—my clients always screwed things up, since they didn’t really want answers, they wanted the mystery prolonged. The mystery shined a faint light in their dull lives. I sympathized, but it was my job to give them the information they had hired me to give them. It was the information I satisfied, never the client. Suddenly the door rattled. The dream shifted. With a start I remembered that I was in the audience with Charlotte. I realized the office didn’t belong to the on-screen me. Outside stood the real private eye, trying to get in. Who was the on-screen me? A client? A suspect? In the theater Charlotte pinched my arm. “Dad,” she said, “you’re mixing everything up. It’s not a murder mystery, it’s a love story. And stop talking to yourself. Everyone’s looking at us. Ew. It’s bad enough you aren’t wearing any pants.”

A homeless man shook me awake. He said he’d never seen me before, but I should know this was his bench, he’d taken the money someone had dropped, as it was rightfully his, the most he could leave me with was half of my stuffed animal. In his hand was the dog-cat—in two parts, just like the last one. I must have taken it from the box. I wondered whether the toy naturally made people want to rip it apart. He inspected both heads and handed the dog to me. “Now stop crying and find your own bench. It’s going to be okay.” I felt oddly accepted. I got up, and he lay where I had lain.

I went the long way around to Mount Auburn Street and walked back to The Cave to clear my head. The perv rushed out and blocked the door. He said it was bad for business, breaking up, and I should leave if I knew what was good for me, he’d always wanted to kick my Chinese ass.

In the past I would have pretended to leave and later would have either snuck in or waited until Yumi’s shift ended. But something was different now. I wiped my eyes. Maybe because my daughter had freed me from jail or because she had run away again after three years or because she had waited for me on that hill before or because the toys had reappeared in a box in

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