“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.
“I loved you,” Joachim said quietly, “and Mama still does.” Javier glanced back at her and she was crying as she watched them.
“If you tell the police I was here, I’ll come back and kill both of you,” he said to the room in general, and then with his right hand, he opened the door, walked through it, slammed it behind him, and disappeared down the stairs. Joachim knew instinctively that he would never see him again. And what they had just seen was a ghost. A man in the final stages before someone killed him, either his enemies or his associates. A man like Javier had no friends, not in his world. None of the normal rules of humanity applied.
Joachim put the chain on the door after Javier left, but he knew that they could shoot it off if they wanted to get in. He gently took his mother to her bedroom and tucked her into her bed. Her cheeks were still wet with tears as she looked at Joachim. “They’ll kill him. Maybe that would be easier for us all. He looks like a hunted animal.” Joachim nodded, he couldn’t disagree with what she said, or tell her she was wrong.
He sat on the chair in her room all night while she dozed and woke with a start periodically, and then drifted off again. He wanted to be near her in case Javier came back. But he didn’t think he would.
The police rang the doorbell at eight the next morning. It was Saturday and Joachim was already up. They knew Javier had been there, and wanted confirmation from Joachim, and he didn’t deny it. He said he and his mother had no idea where Javier was going, he didn’t say. Joachim said that they hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years until last night, and he had held a gun on their mother until Joachim got home, and then on him. The police knew he was wounded. They said it had happened when a delivery went wrong and an informant had tipped off the police. He lived in a hard world, on the razor’s edge, at the edge of the abyss at all times.