My Evil Twin

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She's out there somewhere. She goes by the name of...well, I don't know her name. Should you ever meet her, don't let her social skills fool you. She speaks seven languages and is very charming, but if you turn your back she'll scalp you before you can say "hoo doggy!" My evil twin and I were born in a stormy port off of Portugal. My mother was fleeing her home country, trying to join my father who was a Basque resistance fighter. (This was all before he settled down and became a butcher in Poughkeepsie. Yes, the politically correct term is "meatcutter," but back in the days when they still had sawdust on the floors to soak up the blood, they were butchers.) Before my mother could reunite with my father, she went into labor on the lower hold of the cargo ship called "Serendipity." The result was two baby girls. I was immediately sent to the U.S. to live with my cigar-smoking grand-uncle while my twin was sent to live with relatives somewhere in (at that time) a Soviet bloc country. I never thought much about my twin. At least not until I started getting calls from creditors. Once I looked into the matter, I found that someone had been using my identity...someone with overly-short bangs and teeth smaller than mine. I called my mother (who had now settled with Dad in Poughkeepsie). For a moment, she was silent on the phone. Then she spoke. She told me it had to be my sister, as a gypsy mystic in Barcelona had told her that one of her children would have overly-short bangs and small teeth – "signs of the devil," the gypsy had said decades ago. I didn't know whether or not to believe my mother, but I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. I bought a lucky amulet at the flea market from a legless but good-spirited Chinese immigrant and started the hunt for my evil twin. To be continued...

ixNay!