When Alan lost his first tooth, Felix followed suit within the hour, wedging it out with the aid of a pair of pliers from the toolbox under the sink. He bled all down his white t-shirt, leaving a dribble along the kitchen floor that damn near gave their mom a heart attack when she returned from the store. When Felix got picked for little league baseball first, Alan practised his swing every evening after homework until the sun went down so he got picked too. When Alan experienced his first kiss, had his first break-up, lost his virginity, Felix wasn’t far behind in any of those three formative experiences. When Felix took extra credits, upped his GPA, and got into State, Alan made sure he did those too.

Twin brothers in damn near unison. Where one succeeded, the other couldn’t be far behind. Big brother Felix was good enough not to labour the point that he’d been born eight minutes earlier too often, just as he’d promised their mom when cancer took her just shy of their nineteenth birthdays. But he did like to keep score. It kept things competitive.

So, when it came to killing, one brother shouldn’t be left behind.

Felix met his searching out a Michael Ondaatje book about some jazz musician between the library stacks. She had long, lank black hair that usually hung around her face, glasses thick enough to stand a coke on and the heavy physique of a girl following mommy and daddy’s tradition of unhealthy eating. She stood there while Felix talked about ‘The English Patient’ – he’d seen the movie – barely cognisant of the line this god among men was spinning her. Few freshmen had bothered to pay attention to Amy Lou Harris, let alone a junior from the university baseball team whose upper arms stretched the fabric of his tee almost to tearing. She stuttered an acceptance when he asked her to meet him in the car park after the library shut. He had a weakness for cheeseburgers, he whispered, and knew this place across town which he swore was the state’s best kept secret.

Alan sat across from his choice at lunch a few days later. It was a lot more of a public forum than Felix had sought, but Amy Lou was already being consigned to the category of whispered cautionary tale, a missing poster around campus using a high school graduation photo that she’d have just died if anybody ever saw. Alan’s choice was tall, willowy, with freckles across her nose and fair hair that flowed below her shoulders to half-way down her back. ‘You’re not picking a date,’ Felix had warned him. ‘Choose a girl who nobody will remember.’ The choice was unsuitable enough, but when Alan carried the blonde’s books for her to her next class, Felix damn near chased him down the corridor and throttled him. ‘I’ll choose another one,’ Alan yelled from the passenger seat of their mom’s Oldsmobile Cutlass saloon. ‘No blondes,’ Felix responded as they weaved through traffic, the twilight settling in. ‘You need someone darker. Plain.’ He paused for a few seconds before adding a slur that made Alan blanch.       

 ‘Mom would slap you across the mouth if she heard you say that word.’

‘Well Mom’s been dead two years now and I don’t believe in ghosts. Meaning you can forget about what she’d say or want me to say.’

When asked later, Alan said it was then that he began to feel like Felix was shifting away from him. Their mom, he insisted, had taught them better than that.

Not long after, a freshman disappeared from outside one of the women’s dorms. And, perhaps initially as a middle finger to Felix, Alan kept seeing the blonde. Six months later and Amy Lou Harris was already a tattered page on a lamp post. The other girl never even warranted a proper mention in the college newsletter. The police, seeing education but also seeing color, didn’t even consider putting the two together.

Both brothers graduated with honors. Felix got offered a position in upstate New York. Alan talked up the growth of their home city, quibbled over the salary a similar concern was offering only 50 kilometers away from Felix, and thought about the blonde who was two years from finishing her degree. One night she coaxed him into her bed and he told her he loved her. Felix smashed a glass off the kitchen wall when Alan outlined his marriage plans after her graduation. ‘I told you to choose a kill, not a goddamn wife. What the hell do you think she’d say if she knew half of what I do about you? You think she’d marry you if she knew how close she was to being the top story on the evening news?!’

Alan reckoned she never would unless Felix wanted company on death row. Felix went north alone. Alan stayed, did the books for a local sporting goods chain, and eyed a four-bedroom unit on an estate under construction on the outskirts of town. Every so often he’d get a letter from his brother, sprinkled with women’s names that were rarely repeated. He tore up the letters so Stacy never read them. On their wedding day, Felix sent a bouquet and a card citing a prior engagement. ‘He must be serious about her,’ Stacey remarked, seeing how Felix’s dismissal of their special day stung. ‘He’s taking her away for the week.’

Alan gave it a few days before taking a trip to the local library. The microfiche made a whizzing noise as he scanned the pages of the New York dailies for missing person’s reports. Sure enough, the names from Felix’s letters that were burnished in his memory showed up. Probably to be joined soon enough by the name from the wedding card. They were no longer doing everything in unison, but Felix wanted to remind his brother that he was still keeping score.   

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-60373a473047d', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });