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There was no warning, no knock, and no greeting.
The door to the back dressing room slammed open. “I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!”
Stan clutched his shirt to his chest with a startled yelp, as if he had any assets to hide that hadn’t been on full display earlier.
“Do you know how long it took me to find you? YEARS! I finish university and you’re nowhere to be found, so I search and search and search. And when finally I find you, where are you?”
The man who’d stormed in paused in his ranting, and Stan picked his jaw up off the floor just long enough to squeak out, “Stanford?”
Ford looked ready to blow his top, steam practically leaking out of his ears as he screamed, “IN A STRIP CLUB DEBASING YOURSELF!”
Was Stan high? Had a customer slipped him something without him noticing? It wouldn’t have been the first time. What other explanation was there for the sudden appearance of his estranged twin?
“Have you no self-respect?!” Ford was shouting at him. “All these years you were supposed to be waiting for me and you lowered yourself to this in the meantime?!”
This was a weird trip.
Then Ford stormed over and grabbed Stan by the ear, and suddenly the hallucination felt a lot more real.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Stan hissed as his ear was twisted.
Ford tugged him forward. “Well, no more! Get your stuff together, we’re leaving. And you aren’t coming back.”
“What?” Stan was so confused.
“You’re quitting,” Ford told him firmly, face set in a scowl. “Effective immediately. I will not allow you to ‘work’ in such a… such a—den of degeneracy!”
“Den of degeneracy,” Stan mouthed to himself incredulously.
“And put your shirt on,” Ford scolded him. “You’ve been immodest enough already.”
Stan tried to extract his poor ear from his brother’s pinching grasp, and the hand under his felt warm and solid. He was starting to think that maybe he wasn’t actually high.
But not being high posed many more questions.
“Ow, ow! Let go!” Stan finally ripped himself free of Ford and shoved his brother back, cradling his poor ear. “What the hell is going on?!”
“What’s going on?” Ford echoed with a humourless laugh. “What’s going on is I found my little brother working as a stripper under a fake name!”
Wow, okay. Ford hadn’t pulled the little brother thing since they were kids. He used to do it just to piss Stan off.
“Do you know how much I wanted to rip my eyes out seeing you on that pole on stage?” Ford grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “You have lost all sense of decency and I am appalled.”
“Okay, first of all, you’re a prude.” Stan shoved Ford back again and pointedly did not put on his shirt, just to annoy Ford. “And secondly, what the hell is going on?!”
“I just told you—”
“No, you didn’t tell me anything! How are you here? Why are you here? We haven’t seen each other in years and you bust in here and start yelling at me? What do you mean you were looking for me? That I was supposed to be waiting for you?”
Maybe Ford was the one who was high?
Ford stared at him like he was an idiot. It was a look Stan was unfortunately used to.
“You were supposed to wait for me to finish university, remember?” Ford said in his know-it-all tone. “Then I would come back for you and we could go on adventures looking for anomalies together. Maybe even do a bit of sailing in the summers.”
Never mind. Stan was definitely high.
“WHAT?”
Ford scoffed in exasperation. “I told you all this, Stanley.”
“No, you didn’t?!” Stan all but screeched in confusion. “When would you have told me this?!”
“Back in high-school, when I first got the chance to go to West Coast Tech. We discussed it on the swing set, remember?”
“NO?” Stan was ready to rip his hair out. He couldn’t tell if he was crazy, or if this was real and Ford was crazy. He reached out and poked his brother experimentally. Still felt real. “You never said of ANY of that.”
Ford paused, brows furrowing. “I… did I not? I was sure I had mentioned my plans.”
“No! You said you wanted to go to your fancy college, which meant abandoning our dream and leaving me behind.”
“Well, yes. I would leave you behind temporarily. But I was sure I told you that after I was done school I would come back for you,” Ford muttered, rubbing his chin.
Stan didn’t even know what to say. He felt as though maybe he should be reacting more. Maybe he should be more angry, or happy, or something. But he just stood there so dumbfounded by shock that nothing else was registering.
“Stanford.” He tried to lower his voice in case this was all a hallucination. He didn’t want the others to think he’d gone crazy. “We had a big fight and I got kicked out, and you closed the curtains on me. None of that implied you even liked me anymore. Even if you had told me this so called plan of yours, why would I assume that was still what you wanted to do after everything that happened?”
“Well, I—ah. Hmm.” Ford’s nose crinkled in the way it always did when Stan actually made a good point. “Yes, I suppose that would make it seem like I wanted nothing to do with you. No wonder you were so hard to find, if you thought I was still mad at you.”
Stan actually kind of hoped this was all a hallucination. Because if Ford was real, and really here, then that meant he had been keeping his distance from Ford for so many years for nothing. That Ford had apparently still wanted to be brothers and Stan had been lonely for no reason.
Unable to unpack all the feelings that thought welled up in him, Stan threw his shirt at Ford’s face.
Ford let out a disgruntled yelp and flailed, whipping the shirt back at Stan with a scowl. “Very mature, Stanley.”
“So what did you think then?” Stan demanded. He had to know. “After Pa kicked me out. Did you think I’d just hang around New Jersey in my car waiting for you to finish school?”
Ford sputtered. “I thought you’d go to a relative’s or something!”
“Why would you think that?!”
Ford threw his hands up. “Because apparently I’m an idiot!”
“Your words, not mine,” Stan said quickly.
Ford’s mouth went into a flat, unimpressed line. “Just put your shirt on. We’re leaving.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Hah?!” Ford’s anger came back quickly. “When it comes to this I do!” He waved a hand around. “Look what you decided to do with your life without me! A stripper, Stanley? Really? And don’t think I didn’t notice all the drugs! I saw people snorting lines of coke off each other back there. I can’t believe you’d lower yourself to something like this! I won’t allow it!”
Stan squared his shoulders despite the flush of shame he felt. Yes, he was incredibly embarrassed about Ford finding him here, but that didn’t mean Ford got to talk down to him like that. He had no idea what Stan had been through!
“You don’t get to judge me when you don’t know what my life has been like,” he growled back. “You think I do this for fun? You think I woke up one day and thought, ‘hey, you know what would be a great job? A stripper!’ You think I want to be here?”
“Then why are you here?!” Ford shouted in exasperation.
“I—!” Stan choked.
The truth was hard to admit. In an attempt to stall for time, he finally put his shirt on. When his head popped out the neck hole, Ford was staring at him expectantly, his arms crossed and one foot tapping.
“I…” Stan ran a hand through his long hair, unable to look his brother in the eye. “I, um. I owe a guy some money. Which I don’t have. So this is, uh, this is where I ended up instead. To pay off my debt.”
Ford’s annoyed expression fell off his face, replaced by something indiscernible.
“So I can’t leave,” Stan explained. Saying it aloud felt worse than having a tooth ripped out—and he was quite familiar with that experience. “Even if I did want to quit, I can’t.”
Really, he’d love to go. Running off with Ford and leaving this place in the dust sounded like a dream. But his boss would never let him, and if he didn’t finish paying off his debt, they’d come after him. That would put Ford in danger.
There was silence for a long time. Stan stared resolutely at the rack of gaudy and revealing costumes he and his fellow ‘co-workers’ wore on stage.
“How much?”
“What?” Stan turned back to his brother.
Ford’s brow had hardened with determination. “How much do you still owe?”
“Ford, no. I can’t let you—”
Ford held up a hand to silence him. “Stanley. I’m not just going to leave you here. What kind of brother do you think I am?”
Stan was not going to cry about this. He wasn’t. He swallowed the lump in his throat and whispered, “I can’t pay you back.”
“I don’t care. You’re being forced to work here against your will. I have half a mind to simply burn this whole place to the ground. I don’t care how much money it is, you’re my brother. You’re worth more to me than any currency.”
Stan swiped furiously at his eyes that felt suspiciously wet. Never mind what he’d thought before. He really hoped this wasn’t all a hallucination now. He wanted to leave. Here was Ford, appearing from nowhere, unannounced, and offering Stan an open hand, willing to pull him out of the pit he’d dug himself into.
It was too good to be true, but Stan desperately wanted it to be.
“Okay,” he blurted out.
Ford looked triumphant. “Okay?”
“Okay. I still owe about…” Stan sucked in a breath and did some mental calculations. “About three grand.”
Ford whistled lowly, brows raising. “Three thousand? What have you been getting yourself into?”
Stan winced. “That’s not—let’s not talk about it right now.”
Ford’s mouth pinched. “Fine. But we will be talking about it later.”
“And you don’t have to pay—”
“I can afford it,” Ford cut him off. “Just tell me who to write the cheque to.”
“My boss will only take cash.” Stan knew they wouldn’t let him go on a cheque until it was confirmed that it wouldn’t bounce. And the people he worked for always preferred cash. It was less traceable.
Ford’s pinched look increased. “Then I’ll get cash. I’ll need to go to the bank. Wait here for me and don’t get into trouble, okay?”
“Okay.”
Ford turned on his heel and marched out of the room with just as much purpose as he’d had coming in.
“You’ll come back, right?” Stan couldn’t help but call after him, something like nerves building in him watching his brother leave. He felt weirdly lightheaded.
Ford paused, looking over his shoulder and giving Stan a little smile. “Of course, Stanley. I’m coming back for you, I promise. I’ll get you out of here.”
“Okay.” Stan didn’t know why it suddenly felt scary to see Ford leave, grasping onto whatever reassurance he could get. “Okay, if you promise.”
“I promise. Just wait for me here, I won’t be long.”
Ford walked out, shutting the door behind him and leaving no trace that he’d ever been there in the first place.
Stan stared at the spot where his brother had stood a minute ago, and desperately hoped it hadn’t all been a hallucination. Dragging his tired and heavy body over to the worn couch in the corner, he dropped heavily onto it.
He waited for Ford to return.