Two Much!

30

Suddenly, in the middle of the proceeding, the thought came to me, I am cuckolding myself! This was so startling that for a minute I wasn’t at all sure it would be physically possible to go on. However, I rallied, and I don’t think Betty noticed the slight sag in my narrative.

But the thought did not go away. God knows I’ve applied the horns to other men’s brows, and I’ve always suspected the existence of some antlers of my own from my marriage to Lydia, so I know the appropriate state of mind for each of the potential roles, but what was I to think when playing both roles at once? Has such a thing ever happened before? Maybe somewhere in the Decameron, but what about real life?

As to Betty, this little bitch was supposed to be the good sister. Married four days, and straight into bed with another man, by God. Well, maybe not exactly another man, but certainly not her husband. Or in any case she didn’t know it was her husband.

Just what sin was this, anyway? She was trying to commit adultery, God knows, but in truth she wasn’t succeeding. On the other hand, she didn’t know that. Was it a sin of intent? Can a sin that involves an action be a sin of intent?

And just who was I, in all this? For the first time, the twin brothers did both exist, simultaneously and in the same corpus, both thinking away at top speed. I was both sinned against and sinning, in identical proportions.

And as if that weren’t enough, not only was Betty wildly different from her sister, a fact I’d already known, she was also very different from the Betty who slept with Bart. This Betty was rather more demanding, more vocal, and more readily satisfied. What madness was I into here? Doesn’t anybody have a solid reliable personality you can count on?

Betty, who as Bart’s bride always followed sex with a relaxed and boneless dreaminess, turned out in this version to be a toucher and a commenter and a nibbler, darting this way and that on my chest like a kitten on a shag rug. She consoled me for my rib bruises — I did my usual muttering about an accident, when asked — and complimented me on my belly button, which she apparently found of abiding interest.

So did I. Some of her other activities were also interesting, and soon we were at it again.

After that one, Betty loomed over my supine body, resting her forearms on my chest and smiling down at my face as she said, “Isn’t it amazing?”

“Amazing,” I agreed, though I had no idea what she was talking about. Perhaps just twin-ness, the idea of distinction within identity.

“Sometimes I wonder about you two,” she said, grinning knowingly at me.

“You do?”

“Yes,” she said, and then she chilled my blood. “I’ve never seen you both at the same time,” she said, and laughed at her idea. “Wouldn’t that just be too awful? Then you’d be Bart, and you’d know everything.”

“I don’t think I’d like that,” I said. “I’d rather be me.”

“Mmm, you.” She kissed my chest, while I searched frantically for a change of subject. But she switched all by herself, lifting her head again to say, “Well? Is there any difference?”

“Vive la difference,” I told her, stroking her cheek. And then, since a certain curiosity on my part would surely be considered normal at this point, I said, “What about me? Am I different?”

She was smirking, grinning, giggling at me. “Close your eyes,” she said, “and I’ll tell you.”

So I closed my eyes. I felt her leaning down over me, I felt the warmth of her breath in the cavern of my left ear and the trembling of her lips around my earlobe. “YOU’RE BETTER,” she whispered.