The Butler(52)

    “What are you doing here?” Joachim asked him, walking into the room slowly, not wanting to startle him. Javier’s eyes were wild, with the pain of his wound, and probably because he was on drugs. “I’d been told you were in Colombia,” Joachim said calmly, and sat down next to his mother on the couch. Her eyes were steady as she looked at Javier, but her hand was shaking in Joachim’s. It was deeply emotional for her to see Javier again, and for Joachim too.

“What are you doing here?” Javier spat back at his twin. They still looked exactly alike, one filthy, one clean, same face. “I thought you were a servant in England,” Javier said in a mocking tone. Joachim had no idea how he knew about that, since he had gone to London long after Javier had cut off communications with them. But news traveled both ways. It surprised Joachim that his twin had made inquiries about them. Maybe he was human after all, but he didn’t look it, with his hair a matted mess, a heavy beard, and his arm bleeding in the towel. It was his left arm, and Javier was left-handed, so it would make him a less accurate shot if he fired at either of them, and Joachim didn’t want it to be their mother.

“Why don’t you put the gun away. I don’t think you need it to defend yourself against Mama.” The irony wasn’t lost on Javier, and he shrugged and put it in his belt. If Javier shot anyone, it would be his twin brother, not their mother. “Why are you here?” It was a cruel way to meet after twenty-five years.

“I have business here. It’s a new market for us.”

“Are you married? Do you have children?” Liese asked him, struggling for normalcy. She wanted to reach out and touch her son, but she didn’t dare. He looked like a wild animal ready to strike. Joachim was deceptively calm, watching his every move.

    “No, Mama,” Javier answered her, sounding like her son again. “I don’t have kids, or a wife.” It was an absurd question in the circumstances, but she wanted to know. A long, long time ago, he had been her baby, and would be until the day he died. “Do you have whiskey?” he asked Joachim in a rougher tone. Joachim decided not to argue with him, walked away, fished a bottle out of the cupboard, and handed it to him. Javier turned the cap with his teeth to open it, let the blood-soaked towel fall, and poured whiskey over the bullet wound in his arm. It was nasty looking and Liese cringed. He wrapped it in the blood-soaked towel again.

“One of your new business associates must have gotten pissed off at you,” Joachim surmised. “That looks ugly.”

“I can’t go to a hospital,” he said roughly.

“No, you can’t,” Joachim agreed.

“We have doctors. I can see one tomorrow if I need to.”

“You can’t stay here, Javier. It’s too dangerous for Mama, if someone finds you here. Whoever did that will try again.” Whoever did it had been aiming for his heart. Joachim wasn’t afraid of his twin, he was soaking up the look of him. As it always had been, it was like looking in the mirror, except there was something missing. As his own mother had said about him, no heart. He didn’t look happy to see them, or moved by their mother, who was an old woman now. She had been middle-aged, in her fifties, the last time he saw her. Now she was eighty-one, but the fire in her eyes was the same, and her spirit was just as strong.

“Where will you go?” she asked him, still his mother. She didn’t want Javier to die or be killed, no matter how bad he had become.

    “I’m staying here,” he said belligerently to Joachim.

“No, you’re not. You’re not safe here. I spent five very unpleasant hours in the airport in New York, where they thought I was you. You’re on the No Fly List in case you didn’t know. You’re barred from the United States.”

“I don’t care. I never go there. Why did they think you were me?”

“They have your picture and your name in their computers, they thought I was using an alias.”

“Why did you go there?”

“My boss took me to work. She didn’t enjoy being interrogated for five hours either. So they know where our mother lives, they know who I am, and they know a lot more about you than I do. If anyone knows you’re in France, they’ll come here and kill you. Either your business associates, or the police.” Javier thought about it then stood up. He pulled out the gun and pointed it at his twin again.

“I could take you with me as a hostage, for safe passage.”

“I don’t think they’d care. I’m expendable, to get you. They want you badly. Our mother lost one son, she doesn’t need to lose two. You have to go.” Their mother didn’t argue with Joachim. She knew it too. Every minute he stayed there, they were all at risk. The police might even already be on their way, or the bad guys Javier knew, who wanted him dead.

Javier took a swig of the whiskey and walked across the room. He stood inches from the brother he had once shared a womb with. They had been like one person with one heart while they were growing up. But the heart had been Joachim’s, not Javier’s. He knew that now just looking at him. “I cried for you every night for ten years,” Joachim said to him, and Javier made a sound like a low growl. “And then I stopped, because I knew you weren’t there anymore.”

    “I never was. You didn’t know me. You never knew who I was. I wasn’t you, the perfect little boy, kissing everyone’s ass and getting good grades in school. I’m not like you.” That they all knew. “I’m important now, while you’re a servant to the rich.” Joachim didn’t try to answer him. There was nothing left to say. “I spit on you,” Javier said with a murderous look in his eyes and spat at his brother’s feet.