"What's with all the stupid farms?" Due to the CD player, Jason is yelling.

Ivan stretches the headphones away from his head. "That's where your food comes from," he tells him. "Where did you think?"

Jason looks like his dad, but softer, moppish, due to his age and also the fact that he has hair -- which is greasy and falls into his eyes. I don't know how he manages to be simultaneously sullen and hyper -- it's some trick he does with hormones and Clearasil. In the elevator, I can feel him staring at my breasts. I'm relieved when the doors open. We all tromp down the hall. Lana has managed to exchange our suite for two adjoining rooms. Ivan ushers Jason into his room and shuts his door. Our room sports an intriguing blue theme. Blue bedspread. Blue carpet.

"A romantic weekend in Fresno," says Ivan, pulling me close, "just the three of us."

We've only been married six months so Ivan does a lot of this, pulling me close and so forth. I like it, of course; I love his aftershave. Though at this moment I find myself less appreciative of Ivan and more focused on an idea: I want to show him off to Samantha. Oh God. See how normal I am? See how nice and rich and stable and normal? Without a knock, Jason barrels through the door and jumps onto our bed. He's wearing his swim trunks, and his skinny back is dotted with acne. He rolls onto his back in a kittenish way. "Does your sister look like you?"

"Pretty much. Her hair is usually different." I don't say anything about our breasts, of course. Mine are bigger. I had an operation.

"Hey Dad, don't you think that's weird?"

"No."

"I think it's weird."

Ivan adopts a weary tone. "Okay Jason, why do you think it's weird?"

"Well, you married her. Maybe you'll be attracted to her sister. Maybe you'll want to grab her ass like you're always grabbing Amanda's."

"Enough!" shouts Ivan. "Get out of here. Go to the pool." He chases Jason out and slams the door to the adjoining room.

He just wants your attention, I say to myself, but I don't say it to Ivan. I'm not about to intercede on the little monster's behalf. Ivan takes some work out of his briefcase and settles into a chair. He hasn't come along on this trip just for pleasure -- that wouldn't be like Ivan. He has some business to do in Fresno, some deal with some client or some building or some pile of money. Ivan doesn't bother to explain the mechanics of his firm's doings to me. I find this slightly romantic, as if he's working for gangsters. While he skims his papers I give the registration desk one more call. No, Monozygotic Samantha 173 has not checked in. Not yet.

My sister and I used to have better days. That's one thing the twin researchers don't ask us about, though they ask us about many things -- our habits, states of mind, loves, and incomes -- and they take our blood and measure our brainwaves and so forth. But they don't ask about watching early morning cartoons together, laughing at all the same parts, or running apace through the oaks behind our house, or the perfectly synchronized water ballet routines we made up as little girls. They don't ask what it's like to wake up to one's own double image, realizing you've both just had the same dream about the ocean swallowing the shoreline. They don't ask about the intimacy, the incredible, terrifying intimacy. Or what it's like when it's gone.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I feel restless, so I go down to mill about with the other twins in the lobby. Samantha is nowhere in sight. The Elvis and his non-Elvis twin are sitting on a couch, leafing through a photo album. My stomach is bothering me, so I go to the bar and order a glass of milk.

The bartender is puffy but pretty, an overfed farm girl in a polyester vest. She answers me with a "What?"

"Milk."

"What?"

"Milk."

We go back and forth about four times before I add, "It comes from cows." The researchers don't ask about this either. Do people understand you when you speak? The bartender tells me that I'll have to try the coffee shop. Instead, I wander out of the hotel, to the cavernous entryway -- a ribbon of sidewalk crouching under a huge concrete awning. And there is Samantha, sitting in an idling Impala, a boxy number from the sixties. She's smoking a cigarette and chewing gum, her hair streaked blond and clumped, like she's been driving all day. I guess she's been waiting for me. She slides over and opens the passenger door.

"Come on."

I get in and she puts the car in gear. That's all it takes -- just stepping off the curb, into a car, and it's the two of us once again.

"You know what I don't get?"

No hellos, no catching up. It's always like this.

"I don't get why there are no dog petting zoos." She rolls down the window and lets her arm hang out. "Then nobody would have to be responsible for one full time. We could just pay our money and go into a yard full of really nice, fluffy golden retrievers and dachshund puppies or whatever."

"Someone would have to clean up all the shit," I say.

"Not me. I paid my money."

I think about it. "That's actually kind of a good idea. There could be a cat section too."

Samantha tosses me a pack of cigarettes. I put one in my mouth but don't light it. It feels so easy, to just fall into things with Samantha. It feels so easy to just be half of her and let her be half of me. Everything else begins to get dimmer. I half-think of Ivan, back in the room, leafing through papers. I half-think of the twin researchers, sharpening their pencils, waiting to interview us in the morning. Question: Do people understand you when you speak? Answer: Only my sister.

"Check this out, up here on the left," she says. "Hair sperm."

There's a strip mall with a haircutting place called "Hair & Perm" beside the road; the ampersand has been placed unfortunately close to the word "perm."

"That's really funny."

"You always say 'That's really funny' instead of laughing."

"I know, because you always complain about it."

I lean against the car door and look over at Samantha. She's blonder than I am, which is new, and certainly grubbier, wearing jeans and a tank top vs. my tasteful little linen suit. As always, she has our long legs and thick hair and golden skin that tans out to a flat brown. We are nice-looking girls -- it's hard to mess that up. Though some years it seems like Samantha is trying her best to. She keeps her eyes on the road. I check her arms. They look muscular. Not bad, like they were last time, bruised with track marks.

"Do you think, since there's no aesthetic plan in the suburbs, like there was in Haussmann's Paris or Vienna or wherever, that this planlessness is Zen?" Samantha chucks her gum out the window. "Do you think the suburbs, with their lack of human design, are an expression of God's plan?"

"Well, a lot of suburbs are planned. There are master-planned communities, like Brasilia and all those retirement towns in the Sunbelt."

"I would like to be a slave in a master-planned community."

"That might be good for you."

"I could break out my leather underwear." Samantha has piloted us out of Fresno's dying downtown and into its thriving sprawl. The suburbs here look the same as the suburbs anywhere in the country -- the same stores, the same chain restaurants serving the same chain food. We're not the only clones.

"You know what I really wish?" There's a tremor to Samantha's voice. "I wish I lived in a world where nobody knew how they felt about anything."

"Really? That's weird. What would a world without feeling be like?"

"It wouldn't be a world without feeling," Samantha explains, "it would be a world where no one knew how they felt. No reflection. No self-reflection."

"No unhappy feelings."

"No guilt," says Samantha. "People would just do things and then feel really satisfied with themselves."

I think of Ivan, his brow serene after a day of cutthroat litigation. "You know how you just meet some people, and after five minutes you can tell they've never felt guilty their whole lives?"

"Boys!" she says.

"Yeah, for one, boys. Grown men. They're happy being jerks."

"And then we're all, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I'm sorry everything isn't perfect. I'm sorry I'm not Shirley fucking Temple making everyone happy with my little face.'" Samantha is excited now, steering with one hand and smoking with the other.

"It's pathetic."

"I wish I had a cock. I read an article that said PMS killed Sylvia Plath."

"You've gotta admit, Sylvia Plath killed Sylvia Plath."

"Oh no. I don't gotta admit anything." Samantha grins at me, a too-big grin. Something is going on. We are in for a Samantha Moment. Samantha loves dramas, big, small, whatever. When we were kids, Samantha would always beg me to go first, but when it came time she'd throw an arm across me and bolt forward, itching to do something daring or stupid or just strange. Now she stops in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, in front of a row of identical houses with tiled roofs, typical Taco Bell-style architecture. I notice that Samantha has a piece of paper in her hand. It says:

FOUND: PUG

And then there's an address.

"Are you coming with me?"

"I guess."

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