Terry's Double

It's 3:10PM on New Year's Eve. The New Year is 8 hours and 50 minutes away. I don't feel like writing a new blog post, so, as I've done once before, I'm going to steal a post from one of my other blogs. This post was originally published on The Applebee Chronicles. And oh yeah, Happy New Year everybody!

It's half past lunchtime on a Saturday pm. I'm having lunch at the bar. On my right is my neighbor, Alton. Alton has sharp eyes—not much gets past him. You can walk up to me and bump into me and I still don't see you. I don't know where I am sometimes, but it's definitely not here. Not so for Alton.

So we're sitting there and Alton says, "There's your friend Terry." Terry is a bartender and waitress and one of my favorite Applebee-ers.

"Where?" I ask, looking around the room. "I don't see her."

"Coming in the door," says Alton.

I look and sure enough, there's Terry walking toward the front entrance. She's wearing a white shirt, which isn't unusual. It's normal for the wait staff to come to work in "civvies" and change into a uniform after they get to work. I watch her approach the door. But she doesn't come in. Instead, she turns away from the door and takes a few steps, looking down into her pocketbook. She is turned partly toward me and I can still see her face plainly through the large window beside the door. I look away from the window for a few seconds and when I look back I don't see her. Nor do I see her in the room. I figure she's gone into the mall to shop.

Around five pm I get a craving for a burger, so I go back to the restaurant. Terry's there, and I say to her, "Terry! I saw you at lunch today!"

Terry has a "what are you talking about" look on her face. "I just started work," she says.

"Not at work," I say. "I saw you outside earlier, wearing a white shirt."

"No," Terry reiterates, "I just started work."

"But I saw you today. It was lunchtime, about twelve-thirty or one."

"I didn't leave the house today until four," Terry replies.

Okay, mistaken identity is one thing. We've all done it. But I saw that woman very clearly, and Alton saw her, too. It was Terry. Only—it wasn't.

The Germans have a word for it: doppelganger. My dictionary defines doppelganger as a ghostly counterpart of a living person. I asked Terry if she happened to have an identical twin. But no. She has no twin and she was at home until four.

They say everyone has a double. I don't know if that's true. But Terry certainly has one.