Free Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden Page A

man turned his back. He’d been holding his piss for hours and the stream splashed loudly into the bucket. Frank had pissed and shit in the bucket with this bastard in the room many times by now, but the shame had not relented. He doubted that it ever would.
    Just as he’d finished, the man spoke again.
    â€œI also wanted to share the good news. I got the job. They loved my samples—”
    â€œ My samples,” Frank said, his voice cracking as he turned, nakedness and humiliation forgotten. Anger made his heart race as he took a shaky step toward his captor. “You used my portfolio to get that job?”
    The man with his face reached under his suit coat and drew the gun from his rear waistband, not even bothering to take aim. He could see Frank had grown too weak to be much of a threat to him.
    â€œEvery one of those articles was written by Frank Lindbergh,” the man said, his smile returning. “And I’m Frank Lindbergh, now. That’s my byline. My samples. My job.”
    Frank clenched his fists and howled. “It’s my life!”
    The new Frank pointed his gun at the original. “Not anymore. You had your chance and you blew it. Now put those cuffs back on so I can dump your shit bucket, and if I’m feeling generous later, I’ll bring you something to eat.”
    Frank wanted to kill him. He wanted to cry. But he didn’t have the strength for either. Drained and defeated, he turned and slunk back to the support column, sat on his smelly blanket, and put the handcuffs back on his own wrists. The son of a bitch had his face and now a job he’d dreamed of. Not the teaching post he’d dreaded, but the career rebirth he’d promised himself. Hell, the fucker had his name. Without those things, who was he?
    Again he felt himself fading. Diminishing, as if his very existence were a cup that had cracked, its contents bleeding off into nothing.
    What use was a broken cup?
    How long before the cup would just be empty? How long before it would be discarded?

 
    FIVE
    Tess stood beneath her black umbrella, rain pouring off the edges in drips and cascades that reminded her of a childhood spent on the corner of Little Tree Lane and Bosworth Road, waiting for the school bus. On rainy days the bus would always be late and the rain would crash down, and a fifth-grader whose name she could no longer remember would always be there without an umbrella, soaking wet. Tess sometimes invited her beneath the shelter of her own umbrella, but not always, and the sometimes of it had haunted her in her adult years. Why had she ever hesitated to offer the little girl shelter, waiting for someone else to do it? Had she worried that it would become her responsibility?
    The way that childhood hesitation disturbed her had helped her become a better human, she thought. A better grown-up.
    Or so she told herself. There had been times when she had seen homeless people in the area near her Boston office building and given away money, sweaters, and—yes, more than once—her umbrella. But not today. Sometimes had come back to haunt her, because today the rain poured down from the cold gray sky and her spine ached and she wanted to hold on to her umbrella. Today she wanted the man sitting beneath a makeshift poncho next to a shopping cart full of sodden belongings to be someone else’s problem.
    A finger tapped her shoulder and she let out an eep and spun around, heart pounding. Lili jumped back a step as they bumped umbrellas and they both laughed, there in the rainy gray Boston afternoon, with the after-work crowd rushing around them. Streams of people raced for cabs and parking garages and the T station, all clad in black and gray and brown. With the buildings of International Place looming nearby and the cars roaring through puddles, throwing sheets of rainwater onto the sidewalks, it seemed to Tess that Lili’s red umbrella was the only patch of vivid color in the