Rabbits(52)

I really wished he were still alive.

“Who’s going to make coffee?” Chloe asked.

“Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested.

“I’ll do it,” Chloe said, but she didn’t move.

“Maybe we should go out? Eggs?”

“Eggs sound good.”

“So good,” I said.

“Do you really think Richard Linklater is going to do another Before movie?” Chloe asked.

“I hope so,” I said. “But Before Midnight was a pretty perfect way to end the trilogy.”

“Trilogy?” Chloe said. “Since when are two movies a trilogy?”

“Um…there are three movies, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. You know this. I’m pretty sure we actually saw Before Midnight together at the Cinerama.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, K?”

Chloe pulled out her phone and searched Richard Linklater’s filmography to prove her point. Before Midnight wasn’t listed. She showed me a list featuring a dozen websites. There was no mention of the third film in Richard Linklater’s Before series.

“That has to be a mistake,” I said, and searched the title myself.

There was nothing.

“What the hell is happening?” I said. I felt a lightness in my head and the room started to dim. I tried to stand, but I could feel the walls and ceiling closing in. I sat back down.

“Are you okay?” Chloe sounded worried.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I remember that film. This doesn’t make any sense.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Chloe and I yelled in unison.

“What did you forget?” Chloe added, as the person both of us expected would be Sidney Farrow entered my living room.

“It looks like somebody forgot to lock the door,” said a voice that sounded nothing like Sidney Farrow’s.

We spun around to see who’d spoken.

It was the mystery woman I’d met at the diner, the woman who claimed she worked for Alan Scarpio.

“I hope we’re not interrupting?” she added.

“We?” I asked, just as two women in their late twenties or early thirties trailed her into the room. They were identical twins, dressed in matching black leather jackets, white T-shirts with dark red stars in the center, denim shorts, and black motorcycle boots. They had cropped bleached-blond hair, wide green eyes, and matching tattoos of two machine guns crossed in the shape of a long X on their right thighs. There was no difference in their hair, expressions, and movements, and—outside of the matching tattoos—there wasn’t a single visible beauty mark or scar visible on either one of them.

They were absolutely alike. Perfect copies.

The missing Richard Linklater film was suddenly the furthest thing from my mind.

“Have you spoken with Alan Scarpio?” I asked.

The woman ignored my question and began exploring the room. “Who’s your girlfriend?” she asked, as she ran her finger along a row of books on one of my three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

“I’m Chloe,” Chloe replied. “Who the fuck are you?”

Although we were confronted by all kinds of threatening weirdness, I couldn’t help but smile a little when Chloe didn’t flinch at this strange woman referring to her as my girlfriend.

The mystery woman smiled. “I’m a brand-new friend. You can call me Swan, if you like.”

“Okay, Swan, what’s with the suicide girls over there?” Chloe nodded toward the twins leaning against the wall near the kitchen. They looked alert, but there was an air of boredom as well, as if they’d seen this conversation play out a million times before.

“They’re with me,” Swan said. Clearly that was all we were going to get by way of explanation.

“Scarpio?” I asked again.

“I haven’t heard from Alan,” she said as she went through a stack of vinyl sitting next to my turntable. “But we do need to find out what happened to him. It’s important.”

“We?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You and me.” She slipped Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home back where she’d found it and sat down between Chloe and me on the couch. “I need you to tell me what you found on his phone.”

“We didn’t find anything,” Chloe said—probably a bit too quickly.

“Is that right?” Swan asked, as she picked up my Patti (from The Leftovers) Funko toy from the coffee table and looked it over. “Which one of you has Scarpio’s phone?”

I looked at Chloe, then back over at Swan. I was torn. Part of me wanted to tell her about the rhubarb, the weird video, Tabitha Henry, and Jeff Goldblum, but there was another part of me—the suspicious part currently watching the two oddly dangerous-looking identical twins leaning against the wall outside my kitchen—that won out.

I handed Swan Scarpio’s phone, but didn’t tell her anything. I was pretty sure they’d eventually find the video, but, whoever Swan was, I didn’t think she was police, which meant we didn’t legally have to give her anything.

“Thank you,” Swan said as she stood up and tossed the phone to one of the twins. Then she just stood there, staring at me for a long time before finally shaking her head and smiling.