She says she is sorry, it is just that
she already knows three of me. Sometimes the wrong name slips out, she says.
Sometimes, she says, it seems to her that there are no more new faces. Or at least, she never sees them. Every person she meets is already familiar in a way. Newly familiar or newly strange. She holds onto these; given enough time, she is sure to meet or recall someone almost exactly like the other.
For instance. The woman on the train looks like her old classmate Fran. It is ten years, she says shaking her head, And here again is Fran, still a fifteen years old, only with blonde hair this time. For instance. At the work luncheon last week it dawned on her that Jake, the senior partner, is just like her neighbor’s boyfriend. This is true even though one is Greek and the other Japanese.
There is, she says, the comfort of features in all the right places; the comfort of repeated mannerisms in people spread through her life. These are not like doppelgangers, she says. But. What if the face bank is all used up or. What if they really are doppelgangers.
She hasn’t decided if this is a good thing and reassuring, or dreadfully boring, worrisome.