A Table For Four

Step 1: Log in. Step 2: connect with your old college love you haven’t seen in ages. Step 3: find out he’s married. Step 4: agree to meet for dinner. Step 5: hear that he’s bringing his wife along and realize that you’re single. Step 5: Cry help and ask a coworker to pretend to be your husband for one evening. Step 6: Find out it is not as easy as it sounds.

“Josh, can I ask you to be my husband?”

I looked up. You don’t hear a proposition like this every day from a coworker.

“Just for tonight,” clarified Darcy, having caught a glimpse of puzzlement in my stare.

I cleared my throat.

“Is that how it’s done these days? A husband for the night?”

“Shut up,” she said. “I need a handsome, smart guy to pretend he’s my husband for a few hours over dinner. Does that make things clear?”

The Lollipop Paper

On the day these twin brothers were born something went wrong. Their charisma–that mysterious substance that makes people charming–wasn’t split equally. In fact, it wasn’t split at all. One ended up with a double portion of it. His brother was born without a single drop of it. One grew up adored by everyone. Another got used to being tolerated at best. One went to politics. Another became a famous writer. One ran for the president of the United States. Another became his second in command.

This fictional memoir written by one of these brothers tells a very personal story of the most unlikely duo to ever occupy the Oval Office.

I’ll never know why what had happened had happened. Not that it makes any difference. What matters is the result. The substance was not split half and half. It was not even split thirty to seventy. Not even ten to ninety. It simply wasn’t split. Jack came out first and got all of it. I came out second and got none.