Read Online All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison - Free Book Online Page A

own, and maybe she’s confused, or frightened?”
    “Of course I have.”
    “And?”
    “And, if that’s the deal, I want to be there for her, because she needs me.”
    To this day, I can’t see why Harry Pitts indulged my obsession. He must have believed me, or just been intensely curious. Or maybe he had an obsession of his own. He must have felt that there was something there to be recaptured, or rekindled, something worth saving, because he never went out of his way to discourage me, he never told me to wave any white fl ag.
     
     

 

     
     

    Nothing
     
     
    I’ll admit that I never gave the twins much credit. I always regarded them as one person. The notion that Doug and Ross somehow shared a brain between them, or at least the better part of one, helped account for the fact that they were largely controlled by their ids. There wasn’t enough brain to go around. Something had to move all that fl esh. The notion that their brain was spread thin also made it easier to forgive the twins for their Neanderthal ways. Who could blame them for wrestling in stairwells and farting in libraries, when they had only half a brain?
    As I saw it, not only did Doug and Ross share a brain, but they shared a will and a common destiny. I always imagined them at fi fty, still living together in a one-bedroom apartment with bunk beds in Glendale or Cerritos. Maybe they’d own a gym together, or a carpet cleaning business. They’d still punch each other and call each other faggots. But they would always exist as one. Ross was no more separable from Doug, in my mind, than the holes were separable from a block of Swiss cheese, or the skin was separable from a hot dog. Even if Doug stood alone in front of me, Ross was there like a phantom appendage.
    Among the 118 words Lulu and I invented for the number two, we assigned a speci fi c word to describe the oneness that is two, or the twoness that is one—that is, the particular togetherness that characterizes identical twins and, in rare instances, lovers. Loosely translated, the word was: it . And Doug and Ross had it , which meant they were never alone. Maybe it was impossible for me to conceive of separating it , because I’d always wanted it, as long as I could remember, and when I found Lulu, I wanted to be absorbed by her, whether to free myself from the responsibility of being myself, or just to bask snuggly inside her Luluness. Being driven from that garden was hell.
    To walk away from such a state, I reasoned, would be insanity.
    One afternoon I came home and found Ross in the living room, alone, just sitting. No television, no Atari, no steak sandwich.
    “What are you doing home? Aren’t you supposed to be at the gym?”
    “I don’t feel good.”
    “No pain, no gain,” I observed dryly.
    “Screw you. Why don’t you go have some alone time with your notebook?”
    Ross had me there. That’s when I fi rst knew there was hope for him. But I was determined to thwart him anyway.
    He had quit doing his lower-body work on Tuesdays and Saturdays. “Better be careful,” I warned. “If you let your legs get too skinny, you’re gonna have a hard time lugging that head around.”
    “It’s not as big as it looks. It’s just those binoculars you’re wearing.”
    Who was this guy? Certainly not Doug’s better half. Doug could never have conjured something so original. Doug would have called me ass-bait , and left it at that. Was it possible that Ross’s brain was suddenly developing after years of atrophy? By the time he cut Thursday’s ab session out of his regimen, he had even resorted to reading, for lack of occupation.
    “Givin’ the old lips a workout, eh?”
    “Very funny. Shouldn’t you be jerkin’ your gherkin?”
    “Do you even know what a gherkin is?” I said.
    “Duh.”
    “Well, what is it, then?”
    “Screw you. I don’t have to tell you crap.”
    Eventually, Ross abandoned the gym altogether, and in doing so cut himself off not only from Doug,