Fixin’ Tyrone by Keith Thomas Walker

to you,” Crystal said.
    “A lot of guys have proposed to me,” Mia reminded her. “And most of them had a job, had never been to prison, and didn’t drive ’88 Bonnevilles with bad mufflers. They had a ring, too.”
    “Yeah, but he looked good ,” Crystal reminisced.
    “You’d sleep with a handsome hobo,” Mia predicted.
    Crystal opened the door, and TC and Mica could be heard clamoring inside.
    “You liked it when he grabbed yo booty,” Crystal teased.
    “I don’t know what part of my story gave you that impression,” Mia said, a little surprised by her sister’s take on things.
    “You woulda hit him in the face if you didn’t like it,” Crystal said and disappeared inside the house.
    That was odd. Mia never even told her Tyrone said the very same thing.
    * * *
     
    Eric wore dark slacks, black, square-toed Stacy Adams shoes, a white button-down, and an unbuttoned black sports coat. He stood and pulled Mia’s chair out for her.
    “I thought we weren’t getting dressed up,” she said as she sat down.
    Eric sat across from her. “I’m sorry. You’ve had so many bad impressions of me already, I just want to make sure all the rest of them are positive. You look great, by the way. You look good in anything you have on.” He grinned, but Mia didn’t smile back.
    “You don’t know how happy I am,” he went on. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
    “Where are the pictures?” she asked.
    “Wow, straight to the chase, huh?”
    “Well, they are important.”
    A redheaded girl approached their table. She wore a white blouse with black pants. “How you guys doing? I’m Sarah. I’ll be taking your orders tonight. Would you like to start off with our boneless buffalo wings?”
    “Mmm, I’m not sure.” Eric picked up his menu and Mia did the same. “Do you want an appetizer?” he asked her.
    “No. I just want dinner,” Mia said. “I could order right now, actually.”
    “Okay, and what would you like?”
    “The Cajun chicken pasta,” Mia said. “Bleu cheese on the salad.”
    Eric looked at her over his menu. “You have to be home soon?”
    “Crystal’s going out tonight. I can only stay a couple of hours.”
    Eric ordered the same thing she was having and sent the waitress away with their menus.
    “So, where are the pictures?” Mia asked again once their waitress was gone.
    “I have them.” Eric reached and produced a blue notebook from the seat next to him. “You still think I’m lying, don’t you? You can’t see, for half a second, how I might be telling the truth?” He placed the folder on the table before him, and Mia looked down at it.
    “Sure I can see how you might be telling the truth,” she said, then looked into his eyes. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But you’ve got to admit this whole thing is pretty hard to swallow. You have a perfect explanation for everything. This twin brother of yours is pretty convenient.”
    “You’re right,” he said. “I would have told you about him on our first date if I thought she would use his kids to hurt me. But we really haven’t talked about our families a lot. I don’t know much about your mother and brothers . . .”
    “But you know they exist,” Mia said and looked down to the folder again.
    “Well, my brother exists, too,” Eric said and opened the folder. His index finger trembled a little as he did so, Mia thought. But it might not have. There was a flickering candle on their table.
    Eric produced three photographs. He handed each of them to her, and Mia studied them with a feeling of tremendous guilt rising within her. The twin brother was a spitting image. He and Eric had the same haircuts, the same features, and even the same clothes in one of them.
    “His name is Anthony. We’re both thirty-four, and we’re identical. That one is us when we were seven, at Coney Island. The other one is when we tried out for football. We went to Skyline, in Dallas. Here’s our most recent one. Christmas,