Identical

21

February 29, Cass’s name day-not the make-do event they normally observed on March 1 when they were young, but his real name day, the birth date of St. Kassianos, which rolled around once every four years. In the last month, there had been far more tension with Cass than Paul had ever anticipated, and hoping to smooth things over, he’d planned a grand celebration. It would be the first name day party for Cass in twenty-five years, an open house for relatives and neighbors so they could get acquainted again. Then Tim Brodie had started sneaking around with that subpoena, like a cat after a bird, and the party had to be scotched. Sofia called the guests and blamed the cancellation on campaign emergencies. Even now, when the lawsuit had been dismissed, it seemed to make more sense for Cass to lie low. There was no telling exactly what Kronon was going to attempt next, but he was virtually guaranteed to try to drag Cass into it.

So their celebration had ended up decidedly more restrained. Earlier in the day, the twins went to St. Basil’s Home to see their mother, then continued separately to a round of evening campaign events. Back here at 9, they carried in from Athenian House, and were joined by a few guests. Sofia and Paul’s sons, Michael and Stephanos-Steve to everyone-had driven in from Easton to congratulate their uncle, but stayed only briefly. Both boys still seemed nonplussed by the sight of the twins together. Beata Wisniewski had come for dinner, but left immediately afterwards, with a 6 a.m. flight to visit her mother in Tucson.

Beata had first come into their lives in 1981 as Cass’s girlfriend, his passion before Dita. A big gorgeous blonde, nearly six feet tall, Beata was an eighteen-year-old cadet in the police academy who had encouraged Cass to apply, too. But even before Cass was accepted, they had flamed out. Beata fell for one of her training officers, Ollie Ferguson, whom she married almost immediately. Cass, more disappointed than heartbroken, had gotten involved with Dita several months later. As it happened, neither choice of partners had worked out particularly well for either of them. These days, Beata sold real estate, mostly commercial, but she’d found them this apartment overnight when they’d realized that Tim Brodie was on Cass’s trail. She had even placed the lease in her name. She, too, seemed uncomfortable with the new order of things, of being with the family with secrets to keep, and looked relieved to depart.

Now Cass sat beside Sofia, across from Paul at the round dining table that had come with the furnished apartment. Sofia had stayed up all night, baking baklava, loukoumades and diples, and the vinylized mahogany veneer was dusted with flakes of phyllo and a scatter of crushed walnuts that had fallen off the pastries as they were consumed. A small pyramid of opened store boxes, Cass’s presents, was at the far end.

The apartment was, in a way, a cheery place. The living space faced the river and had good early light through the broad windows. The floor plan was open, without walls between the kitchen, dining room and living area. There were two small bedrooms behind the west wall. Sofia had brought lots of family photos so the feel was less sterile. But it still was basically a hideout. Cass usually came and went in disguise, and Paul had to be careful to coordinate his arrivals so they were not seen together.

Following Beata’s departure, Cass removed the blue cashmere sweater she’d bought him, so that the twins were again dressed identically. Looking across the table, Paul felt almost as if they’d retreated to being six-year-olds in the same sailor suit. Each wore a white broadcloth shirt and the pants from one of the blue 140-weight suits Paul’s tailor had made. The same Easton rep tie was in the pocket of each man’s jacket, hanging on the back of his chair. The only real difference was that for the evening, Cass had shed the black glasses. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and, with the celebrating over, reached into his suit pocket and tossed down the new nasal prosthetic Sofia had had crafted at the end of January. The little knot of silicone resembled the bent joint in somebody’s finger, leaving aside the transparent wings meant to make the piece blend into Cass’s skin. The coloration was so precise it looked as if Cass had dumped a living thing on the table. He could pass easily without makeup, but especially with the heavy powder they both wore every day for the cameras, the prosthetic was indetectable.

“This thing is still killing me,” he said. He’d removed his glasses apparently because of how much the bridge of his nose hurt. Cass sounded put out, which, so far as Paul was concerned, was becoming his regular tone. Sofia picked up the prosthetic and went to the kitchen behind them to hold it under the hot tap.

“You’re not getting all this new adhesive off,” she said. “You have to make sure it’s removed every day from the piece and your skin. You know that.” She told him to apply an antibacterial ointment to his nose every night for the rest of the week. There were other surgical adhesives without the same history of irritation, but they’d chosen this one, newly on the market, thinking it would make the prosthetic more secure in the prolonged heat of the camera lights.

An empty bottle of retsina, and another they’d just opened, sat in the center of the table. Paul removed printouts of tomorrow’s campaign schedule from his briefcase and tossed them down next to the bottles. For a few minutes they discussed who would go where, how the calls and e-mails on legal cases and legislative business would be handled. Sofia had the best mind for timing all of this. The twins could not be in public at the same moment; Paul’s arrival at any event had to occur after sufficient travel time from wherever Cass had last appeared. As the last work of the evening, Sofia went online with her laptop and put dozens of reminders on the calendar that Paul and Cass shared. Paul was thinking what he thought every night: they could not keep this up.

Paul was ready to go, but Cass held up a hand.

“I’ve thought this over again, and I really think we should appeal Du Bois’s ruling yesterday,” Cass said.

Paul couldn’t believe they were going through this again. He had waited twenty-five years for the day when Cass and he could dwell together in free space, but like most of what you looked forward to in life, the reality since the end of January had been more challenging than he’d envisioned, and far crazier than anything that had gone on before. Singletons could never understand what it was like to look across at someone who was basically you, experiencing the tide of love and resentment that inevitably came with the sight. After Cass was sentenced, Paul was in actual physical agony for weeks at the prospect of their separation. But they had adjusted to life apart. People adjust to loss. And now he found dealing with Cass every day, and the similar ways their minds worked, with the same lapses and backflips, often unsettling. He had forgotten this part, how it inevitably felt like they were like opponents on an indoor court, basketball or squash players, throwing their back ends at each other as they fought for position.

“Cass, nothing has changed. We can’t appeal. On top of everything else, Du Bois was right.”

“I think Du Bois did that to fuck us. He’s just been waiting for the chance. Tooley hadn’t figured out that that stuff was legally Hal’s property.”

“You know what I think? I think he’s a great judge, better than I ever believed he’d be, and I always thought he’d be pretty good.” The problem in assessing who’d make a good judge was that the job called on a set of skills less important for practicing lawyers. Smarts served you well in both lives. But patience, civility, a sense of boundaries and balance were more dispensable for courtroom advocates.

Cass laid his plastic fork across the top of one of the black takeout containers. Paul had discovered that his brother got somewhat grouchy with a glass of wine. There were, in fact, all kinds of things he didn’t know about Cass after not living with him for a quarter of a century. His twin was more strong-minded and stubborn than he’d been as a younger man. It had taken Paul a while to realize that he could not simply concede, as he once might have, knowing Cass would defer to him next time. Because Cass no longer easily gave in ever.

“Subpoenas enforced after a case,” Cass said. “That’s murky enough. We can appeal.”

“Cass, there are already a ton of people who think we dismissed the suit to hide something. If we come back and start fighting Hal on a motion that he’s got every right to win, it’s going to reinforce that impression.”

“How about saying, It’s twenty-five years, Cass did his time, this thing should be over and done with, and we’re being harassed by a rich lunatic?”

“Do you really think the average Joe is going to side with us if we try to keep Hal from recovering the relics of his sister’s murder? It’s not my idea of family memorabilia, but people will understand if he wants to have it, rather than let the police throw it away.”

Sofia, who in the last couple of months had tended to retreat from the brothers’ collisions, especially when there was an edge to them, had sided on this issue with Cass, rather than Paul and the lawyers. Like Cass, she was still not content with the decision not to appeal.

“We’re making it easier for him to do the DNA,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

“True, Sofie, but he doesn’t have a good specimen from either of us.”

Cass said, “We’ve asked about that. They’ll extract my DNA from the fingerprints that were identified as mine.”

“They’ll try. That’s no slam dunk, Cassian. And they still won’t have my specimen.”

“They’ll get it. You know that. They’ll pick up some tissue when you blow your nose. Or a pencil you chew on. Or they’ll do a lift from the cheek of some woman you kiss at a fund-raiser.”

“Well, that could screw them up then, right? At least half the time.”

“That might not matter, man. Not if they do the test. That’s why the only alternative is to stop them.”

Paul put his forehead against both of his palms. It was this circle. It had been for months, this tension between preventing the test and winning the election.

“If we could stop them. But we can’t,” Paul said. “Every court will decide against us, and they’ll do it quickly with a month to the election. It’ll be a parade of bad rulings accompanied by a barrage of bad publicity, and each one will say, in effect, Gianis is hiding something. So we hunker down. If Hal comes up with a result we don’t like that he tries to publicize, we deal with it then, depending on what he’s saying. But at least there’s no nightmare scenario. No prosecutor will touch this case, because Hal’s broken the chain of evidence. He’s too much of a zealot for anybody to believe beyond a reasonable doubt he didn’t tamper with the specimens.”

“That’s still not the best alternative,” Cass said.

“You’re right. The better alternative,” Paul said, “is for me to drop out.” He put his head back in his hands, but he could feel both his wife and his brother staring. “There are ten times a day,” Paul said, “when I’m ready just to announce that.”

For a minute, Cass looked like he was going to come over the table.

“It’s not simply your decision.”

His brother’s statement, uttered so baldly, inflamed Paul.

“The fuck it isn’t, Cass. That’s how it is.”

Cass struck the table with both of his palms, which jumped the opposite edge into Paul’s ribs. The moment of bright pain brought him to his feet, and Cass followed, both with closed fists at their sides. The last fistfight they’d had was at age seventeen, but Paul could still feel the primacy of those struggles, as he’d tried for a second to obliterate life’s most central, and often troubling, fact, his brother. If it was true, as some psychs said, that their connection was more intense than anything other humans experienced, then the same had to be said about their anger. In twenty-four years, he had never really raised his voice to Sofia in their occasional quarrels.

Sofia had popped up, too, and had imposed herself in front of Cass, taking him by both of his shoulders.

“Don’t be juvenile,” she said to them.

They stared at each other, in animal posture, nostrils flaring and breathing hard, just one more second. Sofia pressed Cass back down to his chair.

“Paulie,” she said, “we can’t give in to Hal Kronon. You’ve promised Ray, and everyone who works for you, that we won’t.”

He was exhausted. A campaign was vitalizing when you were winning, but at low times, it felt like you were undergoing a form of ritual sacrifice.

“We’re going to lose anyway.”

“The hell,” his brother answered.

“I told you. The Trib is going to publish a poll on Sunday where we’re running third now.”

“I told you that,” Cass said, “and it’s thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight. We could still be first given the margin of error. Their story is going to say tie.”

“We were twenty points ahead two months ago. And inside the campaign people understand trends. The troops were restless anyway, now that you fired Crully,” Paul said.

Cass looked stricken. “You agreed Mark was a pain in the ass.”

“I’m not blaming you. I said that the wrong way. I think it was the right move on balance.” They had resolved long ago that they would never second-guess one another on decisions that had to be made in the moment. And they’d talked a dozen times about what to do if Du Bois gave Hal the DNA. They had agreed that it would be best to dismiss the lawsuit, which made it inevitable Crully would quit. It was better for Mark, anyway. In another week or two, he’d have been looking for a way to jump off the sinking ship, blaming Paul for the hole in the hull. Mark was not the kind to hang around and keep bailing. He’d already been hired by Hillary to take over in Pennsylvania, where he was from. “I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying the direction is obvious. Hal’s going to keep hammering us. He may never have anything more than Georgia, but she’ll be a household name with the media buy he’s made for that ad.”

Peering at Georgia Lazopoulos every time he turned on a TV filled Paul with clotted emotions, mostly horror and guilt. The brute fact that clobbered him was that she would have been someone else if he’d made a different choice. Sofia had added to his life as much as he’d subtracted from Georgia’s, if not more. But romance wasn’t ordinarily a zero-sum game.

“Cass, it looks bad. That’s all I’m saying. So why hang in and worry about the test?”

“Dropping out won’t stop Hal. It’ll motivate him, in fact. Hal would do the DNA even if you announced tomorrow that you were leaving the US and becoming a citizen of Belarus. And besides, now that Camaner has taken over, he’ll get his arms around the campaign, and we’ll win, once the focus is back on the actual issues.”

“We’re running out of cash, Cass. The crowds are thinner at every event, especially the fund-raisers. You’re seeing the same thing. And we agreed when we started that we’re not running this campaign on debt.”

“I don’t think we make this decision now. Camaner has to get a chance. A campaign is a rodeo ride. We both know that.”

Paul nodded. He was ready to sleep. He stood up and hugged his brother. “Hron-yah poh-lah,” he said in Greek as he held him. ‘Many happy years.’ This was still one of the greatest feelings he knew, hugging Cass, lingering with the solid fact of his presence.

Sofia and he went to the garage, where her Lexus was parked.

“You’re trashed,” she said. She took the car key out of his hand.

“No,” he answered.

“You’re trashed,” Sofia repeated. When they came up to the street, there was a sleety rain falling and the asphalt reflected the lights, making it feel as if it were Christmas again.

“You know the basic problem, don’t you?” Paul asked. “He likes being me more than he likes being himself.”

“God, Paul. That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“I should never have agreed to this. The fact that he can pass himself off as me doesn’t mean he has the right to do it. I should have drawn a line. It was crazy.”

“Are you forgetting the last twenty-five years?”

“Hardly. That’s why I said yes. It was a horrible, hard time and we hung in together, no blaming or recriminations, and I couldn’t imagine ending that period with all-out war. But truth? I was shocked that he didn’t want to go back to his own life.”

“That’s naïve, isn’t it? You’re one of the most important men in this county. This state. Cass Gianis is an ex-con. And a convicted murderer.”

“But you know, as adults, when the world went to hell, he’d become so determined to be himself. He was proud of all the differences between us. He was funnier and more spontaneous than I was, less disciplined. That was the whole thing with Dita. Even if it was stupid, he insisted on making the kind of decisions I never would have. I’d always taken it for granted that come January 31, 2008, he’d be in a heat to get on with his life, have kids, all of that.”

“You liked this idea, Paul. When we first discussed it.”

“Because I thought it meant time off. Instead, Cass has added events to the schedule and we’re both working like we’re in chains.”

“It’s been incredibly convenient at times. You can’t deny that. He loves the fund-raisers, squeezing dollars out of every handshake. And you can’t stand them any more.”

“I can’t stand any of it,” he said. “I can’t. If we lose, this is the end.”

“Wanna bet?” When she sneaked a glance his way, she was smiling.

“You haven’t heard me say this before. Hal has changed my perspective. Politics won’t be the same. I’m not the first. This is just a grander version of what they did to John Kerry with the Swift Boat thing. So now the rich nuts call you a murderer. But what I believed in, building coalitions and organizations, is out the window. It’ll all be about how fast you peddle your ass to some billionaire, so you can counteract the guy on the other side who’s done the same thing. A pox on all of it. Honestly, when I think of the future, I’m more excited about the idea of working with Cass on that charter school for ex-cons-something simple and within our control, where I can be sure I’m actually leaving the campsite a little cleaner than I found it.”

“Paulie, we just need to get through the election. That was what we all agreed to start. You’ll be less exhausted and you two can figure it out.”

“What is there to figure out? Something has to give, baby. You got two guys and one life. I love Cass, but I can’t put up with this a lot longer. My mother always worried about the brothers in the bible, Jacob and Esau, and Cain and Abel. Cain is always the bad guy, but I’m beginning to feel for him, with his brother moving in on him.”

“What do you mean moving in on you?” Sofia asked. The light from the streets was on her eyes when they shifted briefly in her husband’s direction.

“You know what I mean,” he answered quietly. There was so much he had failed to anticipate by living one day at a time until Cass’s sentence was over. He never had to weigh his relationship with his brother against his marriage. Now the geometries seemed confusing to them all. In the month before they rented the apartment, Paul had returned home frequently from late-night events to find his brother and his wife together, padding around the house in their socks, still lingering over a meal, or side-by-side watching TV or a movie. Their familiarity with each other, and especially the physical aspect of it, which he had somehow never imagined, had been disquieting. The speed with which Sofia placed her hands on Cass to restrain him tonight, and even the way his brother received it, had troubled him again. Why hadn’t he realized what would confront him?

He was too tired for all of this. His mind was spinning down to dark places. It was past midnight and he’d be up at 5:30.

“I’m trashed,” he said.