Unlikely Twin Souls(Barry) Jade Salinger was a freak of nature, a grotesque caricature of what most women considered modest and sensible. Over the past ten years Jade seldom held a job for more than a handful of months. She had a creepy, Goth girlfriend she called her husband and paraded about town during the dog days of August wearing skimpy tank tops and no bra. Kimberly Weston had no contact with the woman in years and yet, out of the blue Jade texted requesting a meeting at a local diner. The fact that Jade was lesbian was never an issue. Kimberly had numerous openly gay friends and valued both their friendship and company. No, it wasn’t Jade’s sexual predilections but the outlandish posturing and pretense that turned Kimberly’s stomach.

Arriving early, she spotted Jade at a small booth in the rear of the restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee and cheese Danish. “Breakfast special,” Kimberly requested when the waitress arrived to take her order, “with an English muffin in place of toast.” She turned her attention back to the young woman sitting opposite. “When you contacted me last night, you mentioned something about your brother.”

“Kurt’s been going through some dark times and, short of a family intervention, we don’t know what to do.”

“I’ve had no contact with him in over six years and can’t imagine why you’re seeking my advice.”

“You dated for a while and I thought -”

“It didn’t go well in the end,” Kimberly brought her up short.

“Yes, I know.” Jade scratched a reddish welt on a forearm sporting a heart-shaped tattoo. Finishing her pastry, she washed the crumbs down with a swig of coffee. “I heard you opened an investment firm.”

“A year and a half ago.” Kimberly was still sorting through the earlier remark. “Dark times… what did you mean by that?”

“It’s best you speak with Kurt.”

“He isn’t going to hurt himself.” Kimberly phrased the question as a hypothetical.

“No, of course not… nothing that extreme.”

Kimberly was becoming increasingly irritated. “If you can’t describe what’s wrong, I can’t help.”

“Last week Kurt told us he’s moving away,” Jade noted in an offhand manner.

“Where to?”

“Floyd… Floyd, Virginia, population four-hundred forty-nine.”

Kimberly’s features contorted in a mix of uncertainty and bewilderment. “Has he ever been there?”

“Not that I know of.” Jade shrugged and rose to her feet. “Kurt’s waiting tables at Angelo’s’. It’s a gourmet, five-star restaurant at Patriot Place in Foxboro. He gets through around six today if you care to stop by.”

* * * * *

Kimberly drove back to her condominium. There were several messages on the answering machine, two from clients regarding their stock portfolios and one from a broker looking to join a new firm. She teased a bottle of wine from the cabinet but thought better of it. It was much too early to be nursing drinks.

She had known Kurt all through middle school but only began dating during their senior year. Her parents didn’t like the soft-spoken boy with the brown hair and willowy torso. “I don’t know what you see in that fool,” her father noted in a disparaging tone. He was a lean-boned, angular man with a nose as narrow as his hidebound mindset. “He’s got no direction.”

“Kurt’s attending community college in the fall,” Kimberly replied.

“Community colleges are for losers,” he snarled harshly.

“He wants to write.”

“Write what?”

“Novels… short stories.”

“And exactly how many hard-cover books does he currently have on the New York Times Best Seller List?” Every sneering sentiment was bathed in a brittle-minded certitude that set Kimberly back on her heels. When there was no immediate reply, her father added, “Good luck trying to support a family and pay the mortgage on a mix of vapid pipedreams and hot air!”

The community college lasted less than three months.

Kurt dropped out and went to work at the local diner scrubbing pots and pans when he wasn’t clearing away the greasy debris from soggy, half-eaten meals. In late August Kimberly left for college in Upstate New York, and Kurt Salinger became little more than a fond, if bittersweet, distant memory.

* * * * *

Several weeks after Kimberly left for college, Jade sashayed into her brother’s bedroom. Barricading herself in the family bathroom for over an hour earlier in the day, she dyed her hair neon blue. “Your heartthrob shit the bed,” she snickered.

Kurt looked up from the book he was reading. “Yes, Kimberly gone.”

“I haven’t a clue what you ever saw in that snooty bitch.” Even without his active participation, Jade was clearly enjoying the nasty repartee. “Her parents hated you,” she added for good measure.

“Just the father,” Kurt corrected. “Kimberly’s mother was always reasonably pleasant.”

Jade cracked her knuckles then stretched her limbs, raising both arms up over her head. Kurt could see that his sister was braless, and her lack of modesty made him increasingly uncomfortable. “What’re you reading?”

He held the paperback up. “A novel by Sarah Orne Jewett… The Country of Pointed Firs.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s about a woman living in a fishing village on the coast of Maine during the eighteen hundreds.”

Jade farted, making a loud, rather abrupt noise. “Sounds boring as hell!”

“It’s actually quite good. Some people compare it to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.”

“Ain’t familiar with that one either.” She farted raucously a second time before strolling listlessly toward the door.

“Do you remember Danny Chesterton?”

“The blond haired kid on the varsity basketball team?” Kurt nodded. “He was a couple years ahead of us in school… enlisted in the marines.”

“I visited him earlier in the week. He got his leg blown off by an IED, a roadside bomb, in Afghanistan.”

Jade gawked at her brother trying to decipher his intent. Her fingers lingered on the doorknob. She didn’t like what she was hearing and would have preferred trashing his former girlfriend and nothing more.

“For six months he suffered from phantom limb syndrome, but the pain has been steadily diminishing.” Kurt stared into the far corner of the room, his eyes focusing on nothing. “The brain misses input from where the amputated limb should be and that triggers the body’s most basic message that something’s terribly wrong.” Kurt cleared his throat and ran a tongue across his lips. “For the past fourteen days I’ve felt Kimberly’s loss like a phantom limb that can never be restored.”

* * * * *

Midway through her first semester at the business college, Kimberly came home. “Why does Dad hate Kurt so much?” Kimberly asked her mother.

“You know how your father gets,” Mrs. Salinger replied. Her eyes were rimmed with darkened circles, the bitterness having taken a toll on the beleaguered woman. “Where your father’s concerned, sometimes it’s just better to…” The sentence trailed off into dismal nothingness.

“The last day we were together Kurt confided I was his twin soul.”

“Such an unlikely choice of words,” Mrs. Weston stammered with an awkward hitch to her voice. “Thank God, that’s over with.”

Kimberly stared at her hapless mother then shook her head. “It wasn’t mindless prattle… twin souls endure through eternity.”

Mrs. Weston raised a cautionary hand; her lips fluttered as though she were suffering a mild seizure disorder but there were no accompanying words.

* * * * *

“Is Kurt Salinger working today?” Kimberly asked the hostess at the restaurant’s front desk.

“He was supposed to be waiting tables in the main dining room, but one of the bartenders called out sick so you can find him in the lounge.” She gestured over her shoulder with a flick of her head to a darkened room at the far end of the hallway where a row of lights recessed into the tiled ceiling blanketed the space in cozy elegance. Several customers at a booth near the window were talking in hushed voices, while the burnished tones of the jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis, drifted through hidden speakers.

Kurt was behind the bar chatting with a customer. When he saw Kimberly his features went blank. Once his composure returned, the faint hint of a smile reemerged. “Jade says you’re moving to Floyd, Virginia, population four hundred forty-nine.”

Kurt, who began rubbing down the mahogany surface of the bar, chuckled good-naturedly. “I’ll be finished here in ten minutes and then we can talk.”

* * * * *

“What would you like to know about scenic Floyd?” Kurt picked up on Kimberly’s initial remark, when they were outside in the walkway with trendy shops, boutiques and eateries nestled around the huge football stadium where the New England Patriots hosted their home games.

“Jade said you’ve never even visited the town.”

“Not so!” he protested.

As Kurt explained it, when they were children, the family drove the coastal route on an excursion to the Disney World Resort in Florida. Somewhere along the way Mr. Salinger took a wrong turn and the family ended up in Floyd, Virginia. “We arrived in time for the famous Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store, the largest collection of traditional bluegrass and old-time music.” Kurt glanced up at the sky, where the lingering light was fading to dusky darkness. “There were cow pastures and chicken coops everywhere; the local yokels - mostly dirt farmers - were pleasant as hell.”

“You remember this all the way back to grade school?”

Kurt blew out his cheeks, his affable demeanor suddenly turned grim. “There’s nothing holding me here in Massachusetts, where ‘woke’ liberals are transforming the state into an East Coast version of California.”

A young couple emerged from a Bass Pro Shop diagonally to their right. The man was carrying a deep sea fishing rod, while his mate lugged a pair of snow shoes balanced on her shoulder. “And how long would you stay in Floyd?”

“A year… a lifetime. I dunno.”

After an uncomfortable pause, Kimberly asked, “How’s the writing going?”

“Good.”

“Anything published?”

“No, not yet.” Kurt glanced at her briefly then looked away. “Creative fiction is it’s own reward… a victimless crime, solitary pursuit.”

“And what exactly are you in search of?”

Kurt’s lips congealed in a thin sliver of a smile. “You’ll be first to know if I figure it out.”

Kimberly shook her head violently from side to side as though shedding some unmanageable burden. “My father hated you with a passion. He ridiculed and demeaned you whenever your name came up at home.” “A year ago, in his late fifties, the bastard packed a handful of belongings in a burgundy Pullman, left the house and deserted my mother.”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt said.

“It was a loveless marriage.” Kimberly suddenly threw her arms around Kurt’s waist and pulled him close. Her grip continued to tighten as though she were holding on for dear life. “We need to talk.”

Kurt snaked his arms around her. “I thought that’s what we’re doing.”

Only now did she pull away ever so slightly. Kimberly took his hand, raised it to her lips and kissed the palm. “No, you don’t understand. This isn’t about Floyd, Virginia or woke agendas.” “What if the whole freakin’ lot of them… my tyrannical father, that gooney bird nitwit you inherited for a sister and my clueless mother who frittered her happiness away in a worthless marriage… what if they all got it dead wrong?”

“Welcome to the new normal,” Kurt shot back.

“Romeo and Juliette be damned, this isn’t a Shakespearian play.”

“And we’re far too old,” Kurt quipped, “to be star-crossed lovers.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the palms of both hands. “I haven’t eaten all day. There’s a delicatessen two blocks down and -”

“Better yet,” Kimberly interrupted, “let’s head back to my apartment, where I can fix you something nourishing and we can pick up where we left off.”

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