Love The One You’re With

 

As Jennifer watched Evan pour sugar into his tea, she knew something was wrong. The person sitting across the table from her was not the same man with whom she had been having an affair with for the past year. He looked the same, but was not the same.

​While had she suspected that there was something different about Evan, she had ignored her intuition until now.

​But not now.

​Evan was drinking tea. He never drank tea. Always wanted coffee instead and yet now…now here he was drinking something he had professed to hate.

​This was just the latest.

Evan had been doing things, if not everything, many things completely out of character. For instance, Jennier was a homebody while Evan liked to go out.​ Lately, however, he had been giving in to her wants so willingly that he had her thinking that maybe there was hope for him after all.

​So, it was not any one thing that had made Jennifer suspicious but the culmination of them not adding up.

​“You look a million miles away,” he said seeing her million-mile gaze.

​“I just feel lucky to be with you,” she said.

​“You don’t sound very enthused.”

​“You know how it is.”

“Evan…” she tried.

​“Yes?”

​“What would happen if I called you at home right now?”

​He looked at her for a long moment before placing his tea on the table.

​“Why would you want to do a thing like that when you know very well that I’m not there?”​

​That was when she knew.

​“Evan, is there someone at home?” she asked picking up her phone.

​“Jennifer…what is it you expect to find?” he asked earnestly.

​“I don’t know, maybe the truth.”

​“Please put the phone down,” he said.

​She did so.

​“Who are you?”

​“Evan Markum.”

​“No, you’re not,” she said.

​“Yes, I am. Just not the one you’ve known up to now.”

​“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

​“No, you don’t but please allow me to explain.”

​Evan hesitated not knowing where to begin.

​Jennifer waited quietly, this had better be good or she wasplanning to scream loud enough to break glass.

​“Very recently a company came into existence named DOPPLEGANGER.”

​Jennifer told him that she had never heard of it.

​“You won’t because it’s kept on the qt and markets to a very select clientele.”

​“And what kind of clientele is that, the sick and depraved?” she demanded.

​“There’s no need for that kind of talk. And no, not to the depraved but to those who can afford it.”

​“Evan, what are you even talking about?”

​“Like I said, I am Evan Markum. But not the original,” hesaid.

​“What are you, a robot?”

​How long had this been going on and had she really been sleeping with bolts and springs?

​“Not a robot but a replicant.”

​A replicant? Jennifer’s mind went spinning into the void. This was not possible it was like the plot of a science fiction movie.

​“Doppelganger markets replicants, ones specified to the customers, specific needs for any occasion.”

​God, he sounded like an advertisement for the place, Jennifer thought sourly.

​“For example,” he continued, “a wife wants to go to a showing of the Jefferson’s, Movin’ On Up Tour, but the husband wants to go to a football game. Doppelganger can provide the replicant required and all problems are solved.”

​“So, the purpose is to allow men to get away with underhanded things and make the women in their lives look foolish?” Jennifer said spitefully.

​“No one is trying to make anyone look foolish, especially not you. Jennifer, tell me…how far did you think your relationship with the other Evan was going to go?” he asked.

​Jennifer, tears burning her eyes, said that she had not thought about it.

​A defensive answer that even she did not believe.

​“Yes, you have. You love me and want to marry me.”

​“Not you,” she whispered, “you’re not Evan.”

​“I may have not been born from a mother the way he was but I come from the same cells.”

​Jennifer could not accept this. Any of it. There was no way to prepare for something such as this. It was not like it came with a set of instructions.

​“The relationship with the other Evan was going to come to an end sooner rather than later and you both knew it. Evan has a wife and you knew that when the two of you came together. Neither of you intended for it to happen, but it did. The two of you fell in love but each of you knew in your hearts that it could not last and to think so was to lie to yourselves. Men say all of the time that they will leave their wives for the other woman. Sometimes they do, but this isn’t one of those times.”

​Jennifer’s turned her back, tears flowing freely.

​“Please don’t cry. It’s not all bad, I’m not the Evan you believed I was but I’m actually better. I have all of Evan’s memories and like him, I love you. Unlike him though, I can actually be here. That’s why I was created, so that I could give you what you wanted when he no longer could.”

​Evan came close behind Jennifer, placing his hands upon her shoulders, not sure that she would not shake him off and fly into a rage.

​“When I told you I’m the same as Evan, I am. Except for this. The one thing that makes me different from him is that his love for his wife was not implanted in me. The only one that I love is you. Through me, you can have the lifetime of love from the man who cannot be here to give it to you himself.”

​Jennifer gazed out of the window toward the street, the line from an old song running through her mind.

​‘If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.’

​She turned and put her arms around him.