:: chapter six ::

I’ve never been much of a morning person. This is just one way of many in which Mark and I are nothing alike – my twin lives for them, which has served him well in his career. Being a musician inevitably means a lot of early mornings.

On the morning of April second, I knew I was going to have to learn to like them.

I burrowed even further beneath my bedspread as my alarm clock went off, the harsh and discordant beeping reverberating around my bedroom. It was too early by far for any decent person to be awake. I snaked a hand out into the open and felt around for the snooze button, jabbing it when I had located it. Satisfied that I’d headed off fully waking up for at least another ten minutes, I settled back down to sleep.

At least, that was the plan. As soon as I felt myself drifting off, something about the size and weight of Ratchet landed on my back and started pawing at my shoulders. Seconds later my bedspread was torn off of me, and I sucked in a sharp breath as the cold air hit my bare back.

“Please tell me you don’t sleep naked,” pleaded a pained voice that sounded suspiciously like Jessica’s.

“I can if you’d like me to,” I mumbled, still half-asleep. It hit me barely half a second later that this was my sister who I’d said that to.

“No thanks,” my sister replied, sounding vaguely disgusted. “Come on, you need to get up. Bel’s out in the living room.”

That woke me up. “What?” I asked, twisting around so that I could see my sister. “She’s here?”

“Yes, she is,” Jessica said, now sounding very irritated. “You have work today in case you had forgotten – she’s here to pick you up.”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I mumbled. “It’s too early for this…”

“It is not. It’s only half past seven. Now come on, get up or you’ll be late. There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it.”

I kicked Jessica out so I could get dressed, settling on the clothes I’d worn to my interview – black pants, light blue long-sleeved shirt, and black shoes. It was a far cry from my usual work attire of jeans, sneakers and the first T-shirt that I pulled out of my hamper of clean laundry of a morning. I felt my mouth twist into a wry smile – I’d never thought I’d actually have a steady job, not when I was sick most of the time. I was fairly sure that most employers didn’t look very kindly on people who had to take a few days off at the drop of a hat. Stephen, evidently, wasn’t most employers.

I looked back over at my bed as I buttoned my shirt and tucked it into my pants. Ratchet lay curled up in my blankets, looking expectantly over at me. “Sorry Ratch,” I said apologetically. “I have to go to work – Jess’ll probably take you for a walk, though.” I quickly zipped and buttoned up, and started rummaging around in my top drawer for a belt.

Once I had a belt on, had quickly run my brush through my hair and tied it back, and had grabbed everything I was sure I’d need, it was almost a quarter to eight. I still wasn’t completely awake and was essentially operating on autopilot. I wouldn’t feel at all like myself until I had my medication and approximately half of Colombia’s yearly coffee exports circulating through my system.

Isobel and Jessica were sitting on the living room couch when I emerged from my room and headed to the kitchen, Ratchet at my heels. There were five things that needed to be done before I left for work, in no particular order – Ratchet needed to be fed and watered, I needed to take my medication, I needed to have my breakfast, and I needed to find something to put my morning coffee in. Feeding Ratchet, refilling her water bowl and taking my medication was simple enough – I dropped a handful of leftover chicken into her bowl, and while she was eating I picked up her water bowl and filled it from the tap. I followed this in short order with a glass from the draining rack, filling it while the tap was still running.

“Taylor! Move your ass! You’re going to be late!”

Jessica’s yell of what sounded like annoyance almost made me choke on my mouthful of water. Rather than yell back, I flipped her the bird with one hand while I drained my glass, having already taken my medication. She couldn’t see me making that particular little gesture through the wall, but it made me smile anyway.

Isobel looked up from her conversation with Jessica as I walked into the living room, carrying my travel mug by its lid. It was full of piping hot black-as-pitch coffee, having just filled it from the pot that I could only assume had been brewed by Jessica. Mark had been back home in Tulsa for a couple of weeks now – with little more than a month left until May sixth, preparations for the tenth anniversary acoustic recording of Middle Of Nowhere had well and truly shifted into high gear. Sometimes I couldn’t believe it had already been ten years since the lives of everyone in my family had been changed so drastically. I was thankful for it, though – even though I was mistaken for Mark on a disconcertingly regular basis, I knew that otherwise Isobel and I would likely never have met.

“Ready to go?” Isobel asked as she stood up. She smoothed creases out of her black skirt once she was on her feet, and straightened the sleeves of her pale pink blouse.

“Ready as anyone can be for their first day of work,” I replied.

“Indeed.” Isobel gave me a smile. “Well, come on then.”

As Isobel drove us to work in her bright red Volkswagen Beetle, she gave me a quick rundown of who she worked with.

“There are twenty of us, basically. We have three departments – Editorial, Advertising, and Design. I work in Editorial, and you’ll likely be part of the Design department.” She pulled to a stop at a red light. “Each department except for Advertising has six of us working in it – advertising has five. We have a receptionist, Amaya – you’ll meet her when we get there – Stephen’s our editor, and he also has a personal assistant.” The light turned green, and she drove forward. “Stephen will probably introduce you to everyone once we get there, but don’t worry if you can’t remember their names right off the bat. Everyone’ll understand, and they’ll probably go out of their way to help you out.”

We arrived at High Fidelity at about twenty past eight, Isobel parking her car in the underground car park beneath the building that the magazine’s offices were housed in before we headed upstairs. “I don’t usually drive to work, mostly because it’s such a pain in the arse,” she told me as we took the lift up to the sixth floor. “Usually I take the subway out from Queens – I can make the trip from my stop a few blocks away in about five minutes if I run for it.”

“Doesn’t that cost you a lot of money in fares?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I buy a 30-day MetroCard at the beginning of every month. It ends up paying for itself in the end. This way at least, I don’t have to make sure I have change for my fare every morning, and I don’t have to worry more than once a month about whether the vending machine’s going to eat my debit card.” I snickered at this last bit, and she gave me something of a dirty look. “It happens. Mum had hers eaten by an ATM once. So you’ll have to excuse me for being cautious.”

“You’re excused,” I said. This time she eyed me, as if I were a specimen underneath her magnifying glass, before turning her attention back to the row of numbers above the lift doors.

Almost as soon as we stepped out of the lift, I saw a young red-haired woman get up from behind a desk and dash out into the foyer. “Excuse me, are you-” she started to say, before stopping short. “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else,” she finished.

“Mark Hanson, right?” Isobel asked, and the woman nodded. Isobel chuckled. “Might’ve known. Taylor, this is Amaya Forbes, our receptionist and resident Mark Hanson stalker.” Amaya mock-scowled at Isobel. “Amaya, this is Taylor Hanson, our new photographer.”

Amaya tilted her head to one side. “Taylor Hanson, of 78th Street Productions?” she asked.

“That’s me,” I replied.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, sounding excited again. “I have to say, I love your work – I have one of your prints on the wall of my living room.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Saturday In The Park, I think.”

I couldn’t help but grin as Amaya named the very first print I had ever sold, barely two months after starting out as a freelancer. I’d taken it on a sunny Saturday morning in Central Park, during the middle of summer. That first sale had been conclusive proof that spending more than half a decade at college, even despite my health issues, had been well worth the time, money and effort.

“We should get in there before Stephen fires both of us,” Isobel said.

“Yeah, I should get back to work too,” Amaya agreed. “It was great to meet you, Taylor.”

“Likewise,” I agreed. Almost as an afterthought, I added, “There’s a pretty good reason why you mistook me for Mark, by the way.”

Amaya raised one eyebrow. “Oh really?”

I nodded. “Mark and I are brothers. He’s my identical twin.” And with that parting shot, I followed Isobel into the offices proper. Isobel arrowed off to the left almost immediately, leaving me to head through to Stephen’s office. It was easy enough to find, as I knew he was the only person working here who actually had an office, and within minutes I was knocking on his door.

“Come in,” he called, and I let myself in. He looked up from his computer and motioned for me to close the door. “Excellent, you’re here early.”

“I am?”

Stephen nodded. “About five minutes early. I assume that Isobel is already at her desk?”

“I think that’s where she was headed when we got here.”

“Good, good.” He gestured to the chair before his desk. “Take a seat – I’d like to discuss your first assignment.”

I already had an assignment? That had to be a first. “What would this assignment entail?” I asked as I seated myself, immediately putting on a professional demeanour.

“As I understand it, you travel with your brothers during their summer tours. Would I be right?”

“I do, yes.” That was the truth – during touring cycles, at the beginning of May I cleared my calendar and didn’t take any new freelance jobs until September at the earliest. Normally that would be a financial disaster, as not taking on any new work meant that I didn’t have money coming in, but I did get paid while I was on tour – my brothers budgeted it into their expenses. “I’m their official tour photographer.”

“What I propose is this.” He leaned forward slightly. “Isobel has already signed on to go on tour and to keep a tour diary that, upon her return, she will turn into a travelogue of sorts. I would like you to team up with her and act as not only Hanson’s tour photographer, but also as tour photographer for the magazine. I will pay you your freelance rates along with what you would normally earn working here day-to-day, and I am prepared to reimburse you for any expenses you might incur along the way.”

“Would I be able to think it over for a few days?”

“Oh, of course. But I will need an answer by next Wednesday.”

I nodded. “I’ll let you know by Friday, definitely.”

“Excellent.” Stephen stood up. “Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to your fellow photographers and the rest of the Design department. They’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

Isobel’s birthday, the seventeenth of April, fell on a Tuesday that year. The sensible thing to do here would probably have been to wait until the following weekend to celebrate, but nobody ever said I was a sensible person. So it was that afternoon after work that I drove out to Queens, a cooler bag and a brown paper shopping bag of supplies for the evening sitting on the front passenger seat of my BMW.

Isobel opened the door to her apartment barely a minute after I had rung the doorbell, still dressed in her work clothes. Her hazel eyes lit up as soon as she registered that I stood on her doorstep, and she grinned when I lifted the bottle of red wine I had brought with me to the level of my shoulder.

“You are so good to me,” she said happily. “I knew there was a reason I was dating you.” As soon as I was inside she took the bottle from my hand and dashed off into the kitchen. “What’s in there?” she asked as she returned to the living room, indicating the shopping bag that I held in my left hand.

“It’s a surprise,” I replied. She tried to peek inside the bag, but I snatched it away. “Ah ah ah,” I scolded. “I said it was a surprise!”

“I saw pasta in there,” she said, sounding suspicious. She frowned. “You’re not cooking tonight, are you?”

I let out a sigh of mock disappointment. “You don’t like my cooking?”

“When have I ever tried your cooking?”

“Last Monday, when I brought chicken cacciatore for my lunch – you sneaked a bit of it when you thought I wasn’t looking, and I distinctly recall that you liked it. I’d cooked that the night before for mine and Jess’ dinner.”

“Oh!” She seemed to brighten at this. “Now see, that’s something else I love about you. You can cook, and you actually pitch in around the kitchen. My dad and my brothers can cook, but they refuse to help my mum when she’s fixing dinner. Or in the case of Martin, his wife.” She snorted. “Lazy bastards.”

“Yeah, well, Jess would go on strike if I didn’t do either.” I shook my shopping bag slightly, before nodding toward the cooler bag I’d slung the strap of over one shoulder. “So can I put this in the kitchen?” I asked. “It’s just that I need to put some of it in the refrigerator – it’s not going to stay cold forever.”

“Yeah, sure.” As I headed through into the kitchen, Isobel followed along close behind. “So Mark’s still in Tulsa?” she asked as I set the shopping bag on the kitchen bench. The cooler bag followed it in short order.

“Yeah, all three of them are.” I unzipped the cooler bag and took out a Tupperware container that was filled with meatballs. “They’re doing the acoustic recording two weeks from Sunday, so they’re having to do some serious work to get ready for it.”

“Why May 6?” Isobel asked as I kept taking items from the cooler bag.

“Tenth anniversary of the release of Middle Of Nowhere,” I replied.

“Oh, I see. That makes sense, actually.” She came up beside me. “Are you heading down there for it?”

“I was planning on it, yeah.” I gave her a smile and took a block of Parmesan cheese out of the cooler bag. “And before you ask, yes you’re invited – if you think you can handle a couple hundred screaming women, that is.”

“‘Course I can handle them. I’m not helpless. And it’s not as if I’m dating either of your brothers anyway – they’re not going to go after me.”

“True,” I conceded. “Here’s the thing though.” I put the empty cooler bag down on the floor and started unpacking the shopping bag. “It doesn’t matter that it’s been a decade already, and therefore they should know better, but people are always confusing Mark and I for each other. Therefore, they often think that Schuyler is my girlfriend. And Hanson fans…well, they can be vicious. Some of them don’t like the fact that my brothers have girlfriends that aren’t them, for want of a better word. Isla and Alli have both received their fair share of abuse. Schuyler’s escaped it so far, but it’s really only a matter of time.” I took out a block of dark chocolate from the shopping bag. “All I’m saying is that you need to be on your guard – it’s a dangerous business, dating any of us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She surveyed the food that I’d set out on the bench. “So you want me to clear out?”

“If you want it all to be a surprise, yeah. I just need to know something before I kick you out – are you allergic to anything?”

“Garlic,” she replied. “It’s not a life-threatening allergy or anything, like I won’t go into anaphylactic shock if I eat it, but I break out in one hell of a rash.”

“I don’t cook with garlic anyway – Jess is allergic as well. Any other allergies?”

“Nothing food-related.”

“Good.” I waved her off out of the kitchen and set about the important task of cooking dinner.

At exactly six-thirty, I had dinner on the table. I’d whipped up two huge bowls of spaghetti and meatballs, each bowl topped off with a liberal handful of Parmesan cheese. Beside each bowl was a glass of the wine I’d brought with me. I had a heatproof glass bowl of cream and dark chocolate on a low heat on the kitchen stove, nestled inside a large saucepan of boiling water. In the refrigerator I’d stowed a bowl of strawberries, banana slices, blueberries and pitted cherries, and had left an unopened bag of marshmallows on the kitchen bench. And next to what I intended as Isobel’s place at the table was a neatly-wrapped parcel and a white envelope.

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” Isobel asked as we seated ourselves at the table. “It looks amazing.”

“From my mom,” I replied with a smile. “When it became clear to her that I had very little interest in teaming up with my brothers to make music, she decided to teach me to cook. It more than paid off in the end, because it meant I didn’t starve when I was at college.” I indicated the parcel. “But open that before you start eating.”

“Okay…” Isobel put her fork down and started removing the wrapping paper. “Holy shit,” she whispered when the paper revealed a dark grey cardboard box that had a picture of a white iPod on the lid. “You got me an iPod?”

I nodded. “I figured that seeing as you’re coming on tour this summer, you might want something to listen to your music with. It can get pretty boring on the bus when you’ve got nothing to do except look out the windows.”

She gave me a wide smile. “Thanks, Tay,” she said. “I love it.”

“You’re welcome, Issie.” I reached across the table and tapped the envelope. “Open that next.”

She did so, and her mouth dropped open when she extracted two tickets from the envelope. “Oh my God…” She looked up at me. “Tickets to Rent?” she asked, sounding a little stunned.

“It’s not at the Nederlander,” I said, “but I thought that you and me could go out one night during the tour and see it together. Schuyler told me that you’ve never actually seen the stage show, so…” I shrugged.

“You are incredible,” Isobel said softly. “How the hell did I get so lucky?”

“You were in the right place at the right time, I suppose,” I replied. “Isn’t that how these things usually happen?”

“Oh, I suppose you’re right,” Isobel agreed. She slipped the tickets back into their envelope, got up from her seat, and came around to where I sat. “I’ll say it again – you are incredible,” she said, seconds before she kissed me.

“And what about my cooking?” I asked as we broke apart.

“Hush, I’m getting to that.” She resumed her seat and speared a meatball with her fork. “And so’s your cooking,” she informed me once she had eaten it. “I’ll have to thank your mum – she taught you well.”

Once we had finished eating I took our silverware, glasses and empty bowls into the kitchen, rinsing them out before placing them in the dishwasher. As I worked I sang part of a song I’d heard on the radio a few nights earlier.

“He’s a stranger to some and a vision to none…he can never get enough, get enough of the one… for a fortune he’d quit but it’s hard to admit…how it ends and begins…on his face is a map of the world…a map of the world…on his face is a map of the world…a map of the world…”

I broke off singing as I heard footsteps coming up behind me. “I didn’t know you could sing,” Isobel said as I closed the dishwasher and switched it on.

“Most people don’t,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t exactly advertise it.”

“Well, you should.” She leaned against my back, wrapped her arms around me and rested her chin on my right shoulder. “You have a very good voice. I swear I had a chill run down my spine when I heard it just then.” She hummed tunelessly for a few moments. “You sound very much like Mark when you sing, but your voice is a lot more powerful. Like you put your all into it, if you get where I’m coming from. When you sing, you sound as if it’s the last thing you’ll ever do, so you put an incredible amount of passion into it. I can honestly say I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

Almost in response, I drew Isobel around to stand in front of me and started to sing again, spinning her around the kitchen while I did so. “So raise your candles high…‘cause if you don’t we could stay black against the night…oh raise them higher again…‘cause if you do we could stay dry against the rain…”

“I didn’t know you liked that song,” Isobel said as I turned to check on what was to be our dessert.

“I don’t,” I replied. I picked up the wooden spoon I’d used earlier and stirred the contents of the bowl. “That’s actually all I know of it.” I tapped the spoon against the rim of the bowl and then held it out to Isobel. “Taste this for me, will you?”

She did so, and let out a quiet groan of what sounded like delight. “Oh God, that is so good,” she murmured. “What is it?”

“Ever had chocolate fondue?” I asked, and she shook her head. “Well, actually, you just did.” I dropped the spoon in the sink. “I think it’s ready, judging by your reaction.” I turned the burner off and grabbed a nearby teatowel, wrapping it around my hands so I could lift the bowl out of the saucepan without burning my fingers. “There’s a bowl of fruit on the middle shelf in the refrigerator, if you could grab it for me,” I said as I placed the bowl of chocolate sauce on a chopping board and started hunting around in the kitchen drawers for a couple of metal skewers. “I’ll take the chocolate and the marshmallows into the living room if you take the fruit.”

We spent the rest of the evening enjoying one another’s company, telling stories and listening to classical music on Isobel and Schuyler’s stereo. The fruit, marshmallows and chocolate sauce slowly dwindled until there were only a few blueberries left, along with a small handful of marshmallows.

“So tell me,” I said as the clock on the living room wall ticked over to ten-thirty. “Have you had a good birthday?”

She looked up at me from where she lay on her back, her head in my lap. “The best,” she replied with a smile. “And it’s all thanks to you.” She fished around for a marshmallow and reached up to put it in my mouth.

“Well, I wanted to make it special,” I said once I’d finished my marshmallow. “Especially considering that Saturday marked a month since we started dating. And before you say a word, I didn’t forget. It just made sense in my head to combine our one-month anniversary and your birthday.” I leaned down and kissed her nose. “Happy anniversary, Issie.”