Terry’s Double Part 2

It's dusky dark outside, an early Tuesday evening, as I sit at the bar. The bar is slow tonight. Darlene works the bar; I'm the only bar patron. The restaurant is crowded, and a group of people hover just inside the door, waiting for a table to open up. Finally, another customer comes in and sits at the bar. I don't know him, but Darlene does, so he must be a "regular", though his visits are on a different schedule from mine. He talks to Darlene for a while, then I hear him ask, "Who is that?" as he points toward the kitchen door. Terry (see the vignette titled Terry's Double) is disappearing through the door.

Darlene shrugs. She didn't see Terry in time. So he tries to describe her—brunette, thus and so tall, etc.

"He's talking about Terry," I tell Darlene.

"Does she have a twin?" he asks Darlene.

Darlene isn't sure. I tell him no, she doesn't have a twin.

"She has a twin," the newcomer says. "I've seen her around here." He pauses, then reiterates, "She has a twin."

Then I understand. He doesn't mean "sister". He just means a lookalike.

So I tell him, "There's a woman I've seen around here who looks just like her."

"Yeah," he says, "that's what I'm saying. There's a woman around here who looks just like her."

So I'm wondering, if he doesn't know Terry well enough to know her name, why would he think that Terry isn't the same person as this other person? Maybe he really did see two women who looked enough alike to be twins. Or maybe it's just a ploy to start a conversation with Terry, which he tries to do moments later when Terry walks by.

"Hey, you've got a twin, you know that . . . ?" He tries a couple more times to get a dialogue going.

Terry handles it like a pro. If he was hitting on her, he got nowhere. Three and out.

He may or may not have been hitting on Terry. But I believe him when he says he saw Terry's twin.

Too weird.