Samantha leads the way to the front door of the house. She rings the bell and a middle-aged woman answers wearing the modern-day version of the apron: a sweat suit. Samantha smiles and begins to speak. Even to me, she sounds sincere. This has always been her great talent -- convincing people. She can talk her way into and then back out of any situation. I think it's what enables her to live without any fixed address or steady job, though I'm not really sure how Samantha lives these days.

"We lost him about four days ago," Samantha says, facing the woman squarely, looking her in the eye. "We had guests and they left the gate open."

"We found the dog five days ago," the woman says. She has a plain Midwestern face, no makeup; a practical face without time for foolishness.

"Monday?"

"Yes."

"That's when we lost him."

The woman seems suspicious of Samantha, but then she uncrosses her arms and half smiles -- she wants to believe. She wants to be taken in. "We thought it was a female."

"Yes," Samantha is loose, seamless when she lies, "I know, it's confusing. When we got her my sister kept saying she looked like a him, so finally we just named her Him." Samantha laughs. "Everyone gets mixed up."

What can the woman say to this? It's so ridiculous, I expect her to slam the door in our faces. But Samantha has something I don't have, something the researchers can't quantify -- charisma. I find it maddening.

The woman goes inside and comes back with a pug dog wheezing on the end of a red leash.

"Him!" exclaims Samantha. The dog trots over and licks her hand.

She thanks the woman and turns to usher the pug down the walk. It waddles to the car and hops in the front seat like an old hand. I have to shove it over to sit down. The dog looks around placidly, its froggy eyes bulging, its skin hanging around its compact body. It starts to pant.

"Check it out," she says, "these things cost about a thousand dollars new."

"Is that really your dog?"

Samantha looks at me and says, "That's really funny."

"No, really."

"It's your dog," she says. "I got it for you."

"I don't want it."

"Why not?"

"I just don't."

"Okay, fine. Then it's my dog." Then she puts her face in her hands and begins to sob.

Around 80 percent -- apparently that's my chance of having it too -- whatever Samantha has, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia or depression or mania. Except she doesn't seem to have any of these things. Not really, not typically, according to the researchers -- well, according to a particular researcher, Kevin, a bearded sociology professor I captivated one evening at the hotel bar a couple of meetings ago. It's truly amazing, what an amicable one-night stand can accomplish. He's been my man on the inside ever since, a steady source of information. About me, of course, but mostly about Samantha.

"Samantha is just volatile," Kevin explained, at the last meeting. I wasn't married yet but he was; he had made it clear that our "romance" was over. That made me laugh. "It's not necessarily an illness."

"But how can she be so volatile when I'm not?"

"Well," he stroked his little beard, "the interesting thing we've learned is that monozygotic twins raised apart -- in different environments -- still have about 50 percent of their personality traits in common."

"Fine." I'm always impatient with Kevin's professorial tone -- just because he's the researcher and I'm the subject doesn't mean he's a genius and I'm a dolt. "Then twins raised in the same environment must have even more."

"That's the fascinating thing. Twins raised together also have about 50 percent of their personality traits in common." He raised his eyebrows -- a significant look.

"Okay, professor. Meaning what?"

"Well, most identical twins don't like to hear this, but we attribute the 50 percent variation to the fact that they were raised together." "Oh, I see. That 50 percent is us trying to be different from one another."

"Exactly. Trying, on some level."

"We stake our spot. I'm the good twin. Samantha's the evil twin."

"I wouldn't call Samantha evil, personally. She's prone to substance abuse. You may be too. She's more creative."

I reflexively cringed. I'd been hearing about her creativity my whole life.

"Okay. So I'm the boring one, and she's the scarf-dancer."

"Basically."

I remember thinking about this while Kevin chewed handfuls of bar peanuts and gazed around the room. He was short, with narrow hands and a baby face. The beard was a nice try, but even that couldn't deactivate his graduate-student air. The bartender had carded him.

"What if we had been one person? With our genetic sameness, but just one of us, without the other to react to. What would that person be like?"

"That's what happens to everyone else," Kevin said. "But you're a twin."

"Right," I said. "I'm special."

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

Samantha and I drive back downtown without speaking, though she keeps crying for a while. She turns the car around under the concrete awning, then sits there behind the wheel, eyes red, staring at the instrument panel.

"Are you coming in?

"Maybe later." She keeps her hand on the pug dog's head. It's wheezing through its little stoved-in nose. I wonder if she'll ever get over this. I wonder if she's ever gotten over anything in her whole life.

"It's just not a good time for a pet right now," I tell her.

"No, that's fine." Samantha waves her hand.

"Call me in my room. I want you to meet my husband."

"You got married?"

"Yes, of course. I would have invited you if I'd known how to reach you."

"You got married? My God. Why?"

"Love," I say, but somehow it doesn't sound quite right.

Samantha keeps petting the pug. Something about her seems about ten years old. This makes me want to throttle her.

"Do you want to know why I'm naming her Diego?"

"Okay."

"Because she's bug-eyed and fat and a communist, like Diego Rivera."

"How do you know she's a communist?"

"The red leash. And she was free."

That night I lie in bed with Ivan's arms around me, listening to the hotel windows ticking. I don't know what happened to Samantha. She never called.

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

If a statement is true or mostly true, as applied to you, blacken the circle marked T. If a statement is false or usually not true, blacken the circle marked F. If a statement does not apply to you, make no mark on the answer sheet.

1. I like mannish women.

2. If I could get into a movie without paying and be sure I was not seen I would probably do it.

3. The top of my head sometimes feels tender.

4. If I were a reporter I would very much like to report news of the theater.

5. Horses that don't pull should be beaten or kicked.

6. It's only natural for me to note the color of my bowel movements.

7. There is something wrong with my sex organs.

Every year, they give us the same ridiculous, ancient psychological test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and every year I try to pick answers I know Samantha will not pick. After all, we're supposed to have only fifty percent of our personality traits in common. And yet every year, according to Kevin, Samantha and I pick the same answers to virtually every question.

I'm struggling with number 4: "If I were a reporter I would very much like to report news of the theater." For me, the answer is F, I hate the theater. It's too slow. Samantha, though, always liked plays and even worked on one or two during high school, when she wasn't busy smoking pot with her stoner friends. But there's something about this question -- the way it feels like a pale attempt to sniff out homosexual tendencies -- that makes me think that Samantha would mark F in an attempt to be subversive, even though her true answer is probably T. Yes, that's it. I decide that Samantha will answer F; therefore I will answer T. My hand hovers above the bubble marked T. But wait! Since we always choose the same answer, I realize that this time I should invert my reasoning process now, at the last minute, and flop over to F.

F is the answer.

I answer each question via this rather laborious process, with the last-minute flop.

Afterward, I come across Kevin in one of the long, carpeted hallways of the hotel.

"Ninety-seven percent!" he says, holding up his hand for a high five. "Same as last time!"

"Damn it."

Kevin grabs my hand and veers into me. He keeps coming until he's backed me into a windowless room containing a table and a soda machine. Kevin looks at me. I look at Kevin. His narrow fingers are gripping my hand like squid tentacles.

"You two certainly are interesting."

I've become used to a kind of abstracted fondness from Kevin, so I'm surprised by his unstable, nonacademic demeanor -- magnified by a spray of wild eyebrow hairs I've never noticed. I wonder whether they've sprouted due to advancing age -- or did he give up trimming them? I ponder this while Kevin clutches me. Clearly, he's making some sort of play for me.

He leans in closer. "I could tell you things about your sister."

"Go ahead."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I signed a confidentiality agreement."

I laugh. "That never stopped you before." I pull my hand away.

"Yeah, well," he crosses his arms over his chest, "that was then. Things are different now."

"Why are you acting like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like you want to fuck me."

The blood rushes to Kevin's cheeks. "I never said that."

"You didn't say it."

"It's not that," he mops his sleeve over his face, "it's just this thing with my wife." He lets out a long sigh. "Our relationship is kind of rocky right now."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's just this thing." Kevin stares at the floor. "I love her. I do. It's just that she won't perform certain sexual acts ..."

"Okay, stop."

"I really want to get this off my chest."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Amanda," Kevin extends a hand toward me -- tentacle fingers, imploring and threatening.

"What?" I'm already halfway around the table and heading for the door.

He has dark circles under his eyes. "You're so pretty," he says, in a rancorous tone.

I slide past him, into the hall.

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

Recent Stories