100 Yellow Doors

june 11th, 2020, 10:24 a.m.

"Doppelgänger," said Iman, switching the turn signal on and the gear into reverse as she angled the hatchback towards the sidewalk. "A person who looks exactly like you but isn't related to you in any way at all. It's all over folklore and things."

Beck, still working at a half-frozen breakfast burrito, frowned from the passenger's seat. "Creepy."

"Very creepy," said Iman. The car beeped at her urgently; she sighed and slid it into park, yanking the keys from the engine. The radio between them sputtered and died, and for a minute Iman just sat there, unsure why her heart was pounding so hard within her chest. "Anyway, Fritz thinks it's why I always ended up at Julien's when I traveled, you know? Something about him being tied to me thanks to Rosario, my doppelgänger."

"Was it weird?" Beck asked, in that wary, quivering voice that he'd used in many of their conversations over the last five days—as if he was unsure whether or not he was allowed to ask about that night. He had been back at the bed and breakfast the entire time, sitting with his father and his sister, anxiously awaiting Iman's call.

If only that call had brought good news.

"Seeing your doppelgänger, I mean," clarified Beck. "Was it weird?"

"Weird is grossly understating it, Beck."

"Fair," he said, fumbling around until he found his seatbelt and clicked it loose. "Well? Are you ready?"

Iman let her gaze slip out the window. Everything about this day was the opposite of the night she'd lost Julien. The sun was bright, dousing everything in a liquid, golden heat, the sky cloudless, the air dry. The people strolling by on the baked concrete sidewalks wore tank tops and shorts, sweaty hair kept off necks in high ponytails. Summer. It was Julien's least favorite season—when Iman had announced that she and Beck were planning a summer wedding, Julien had scowled—but had it always been?

Iman's eyes lifted to the red-bricked townhouse in front of her, vines crawling up its siding, its driveway cracked and old.

She reached back for Beck, taking his hand. "Ready as I'll ever be."

And that wasn't very ready at all.

The door gave way with only a bit of bobby pin manipulation, and as Iman stepped into the foyer, pulling Beck with her, their footsteps echoed back at them. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust—the wood floors, the chandelier, the empty hall table Julien had always said he was going to set a picture frame on, but never had. Iman had only been standing there for a minute, and already she felt choked, like her throat was swollen.

"Im?" Beck's hand, ever so subtly shaking, on her shoulder. "Are you sure we should—"

"He didn't have anyone, Beck. No blood relatives. All of his stuff will end up—God, I don't even know where. Donated, probably. We have to do this, and we have to do it now," she said, and though she didn't have time to wait, though she had waited long enough, she still stopped and let herself rest in her husband's arms for a minute. "I have to..."

Beck turned his head, brushing his lips against her cheek. "You take your time, okay? I'm gonna poke around down here. Why don't you head upstairs?"

Iman faced the staircase as if it were a great chasm. Suddenly those sixteen steps up to Julien's catwalk was an insurmountable feat, a shot in the dark, a gruesome nightmare that woke her up at night, sweating and clutching the sheets.

She was not ready. Not ready at all.

Her car keys were still in her pocket. She grabbed them, pivoting. "Beck, I don't think we should—"

But she was alone in the foyer, only the faint sound of dishes and silverware clanking in the kitchen to prove Beck was still there at all.

Iman swept her hair behind her ear. So it was going to be like that.

She climbed the stairs, hands clutched nervously to her chest, blinking the tears back as they rose. She refused to cry; she'd had enough of crying. Crying over her father, crying over Beck, crying over Julien—until all of that, she hadn't known her body could hold so much sorrow. She wasn't empty yet, but she was closer than she wanted to be.

Julien's bedroom was the very first on the landing, and even if this was his DC house and not his San Diego one, Julien's consistently vague decorating taste made it useless to differentiate. He liked grays and navy blues and simple white duvets, minimal throw pillows and wall art. Much of the room's color came from his closet, which, as Iman pushed the door forward and leaned in, struck her like some strange, nonsensical museum painting might. With every glance there was something new to discover, a vibrant jacket she wished he had worn more often, a sharply-torn pair of jeans she guessed was a Pinterest fail, shoes with one long Bible verse written on the outsoles.

Iman sighed and sank to the floor, hugging her chest. The air around her smelled like Julien, sugar and smoke, the sting of his lingering cologne in her nostrils. What she would give to hug him again, just one more time, just to feel his arms around her.

Had she not known it would end this way, one day? She saw the exhaustion in his eyes, even as he grinned at her. Eternity was not eternity without pain—one did not escape it unscathed.

She only hoped he found what he was looking for before he died.

When she sat back on her knees, hands pressing to the floor to settle herself, something soft and cottony fell beneath her palm. Sniffling, Iman lifted it in front of her, letting it unfold. It was a wrinkled black Def Leppard T-shirt, Pyromania, an orange explosion in the eye of a sniper aim.

A laugh bubbled from her chest. She hugged the shirt to her chest, and then, just one more time, she let herself weep.

"Iman?"

She turned, nearly dropping the shirt in all her surprise. Beck was standing at the mouth of the bedroom, and what alarmed Iman more than the fact he'd made it up an unfamiliar set of stairs on his own was the fact he was holding a cat.

It was gray and white, notch-eared, and terribly chubby.

"What are we going to do about him?" Beck asked, blinking.

Ringo mewled pleasantly and turned over in Beck's arms, nuzzling against his chest.

Iman chuckled, wiping the last of her tears from her eyes. "Looks like he's ours now."