T22 whispers something in Jackson’s ear and they both get a good laugh.

I find myself going up to T22 and giving him a hug, which he accepts. This makes Jackson laugh some more. It’s not just that I feel great. He knew I would feel great. He knew that this was the right thing to do.

I’m totally screwed, because I know I’ll have to do this again.

Well, I came here to do what I had to do, so now I am going to go.

See you later T22, and Jackson.

“See you later, sister,” I say to Purple Hair Girl, which is ludicrous, but sounds like exactly the right thing to say. I don’t look at her face.

The lanky clerk is tooling one of the miniature prostitutes in the middle of the living room when I leave. Everyone is watching. They actually look really good together, and the girl is cooing softly, which is kind of nice.

Down past the piece of modern art, which impressed me mightily when I came in.

* * * *

I used to be one of the good guys. Me and my twin brother both. People say that identical twins are inseparable, well, that wasn’t the way with us. First of all, we really aren’t that identical. My brother gets in the Naval Academy. I can’t get in, because my grades are worse. But I go to a New England liberal arts school (which one isn’t important) and I do pretty well, and then I go to Marine Corps OCS. And I do tens of thousands of push-ups and run hundreds of miles. I am the best marksman in the class. And I eat the food and scream and yell and fall right asleep at night, not even dreaming. And for once in my life I feel like I belong somewhere. But the closer I got to graduation, I started to get this sense that I was making a big mistake. Kind of like the feeling you get when you get déjà vu. It felt like I’d done this before, and something terrible was about to happen. I don’t know. So the day before graduation, I went to the company officer, and I told him that I quit. And I packed my shit and walked away from the Marines forever.

So I’m like persona non grata in my family, now. And my brother is wearing the dress blues with the silver bars. And I told my Dad that I really had no idea what the hell I wanted to do with my life, and I was telling him the truth. I really didn’t know. But I went to school with some guys who became floor traders. I had no idea what they did. I figured they just bought low and sold high or something like that. I had no idea what they were trading. But my buddy, Brent, he used to wrestle with me in school. So now he’s on the AMEX in New York trading options on something called the Q’s. Nobody knows if this thing is going to take off or not. It took him a few weeks to figure out what an ETF was. Kid kind of looks like Giovanni Ribisi.