Death Claims by Joseph Hansen

Remember me? Twenty wrong choices in as many years. I never had anything but questions. You had answers." 
    "I've run out. I'm ready for yours." 
    "He looks like Rod. That was all there was to it. I was shocked you'd be so simple." 
    "He's a good human being. He's a grownup." 
    "That was always your formula for me." Her smile, her headshake were rueful. "I never followed it." 
    "Until Sylvia." Miss Levy was plain and thirty-five, a college librarian, nothing like the handsome, coltish boy-girls Madge — a clever and successful designer, not of her life, but of textiles and wall-coverings — had pursued from one calamity to the next through a wreckage of years. None of them had been worth her time, certainly not her grief. Most had simply used her. It had pained Dave to witness. "How is Sylvia?" 
    "Wonderful." Madge glowed. "It was good advice, Davey, even if it did take two decades of disaster to make me accept it. I'm grateful." 
    He shrugged. "Other people's problems are easy." 
    "All right. Let me try at yours." She tasted the margarita, set it down, looked grave. "Yes, he's a good human being. Yes, he's a grownup. As are you. But when you found each other, you were both in deep trouble. Not used to loneliness. Not able to cope. You'd had Rod. All your adult life. He'd had Jean-Paul. He's shown me photographs of Jean-Paul.'' In magazines, newspapers, souvenir programs, French, English, Italian, yellowing at the edges. Dave knew them. In a cardboard carton in a closet. More than once he'd started to throw them out. Madge said, "He was underweight, with beautiful square shoulders. Like you." She reached across to brush the fall of straight hair off his forehead. He liked her touch, cool, dry. "Blond like you, blue-eyed." She took the hand back and her smile regretted. "It couldn't have been a sadder coincidence." 
    "People have to look like somebody," he said. 
    She frowned, picked up her glass, studied him across its circle of salt. "Why don't you want to go home and sleep with him tonight?" 
    "For the same reason he didn't want to come up here and have dinner with me.'' 
    She nodded, tasted the drink, set it down. "Because he can't be Rod. Because you can't be Jean-Paul." 
    "I guess we both figured it out about the same time." With a finger he turned the little block of ice in his glass and watched the straw-yellow whiskey curl around it. "Not very quick. Not very bright." 
    "You could try loving each other. Under your real identities. You're both worth loving." 
    "You've told me. Who's going to tell him?" 
    "You are. Tonight. When you get home." 
    "Home?" he said. "Where's that?"

7
    A VERY SMALL girl opened the door. It was a heavy door and it took her backward with it a few steps before she remembered to let the knob go. Her yellow flannel sleepers were printed with drawings of the comic-strip dog Snoopy. A rubber band tugged her taffy hair into a topknot, but some strands had got away and were damp. She was rosy from scrubbing. She clutched a plastic duck. 
    "I had my bath," she said. "Now Daddy's going to read to me about snakes." 
    "That sounds like fun," Dave said. 
    Back of her, in a long sunken living room where gentle lamplight glowed on glossy new Mediterranean furniture, a pair of older children, six, eight, sat on deep gold wall-to-wall carpet and watched television. Winchesters crackled. Orange Indians tumbled from purple horses. A young woman came between him and the action. She wore splashed denims, but starchy white was what she was used to. She moved like a nurse. She was blonde as the child, her eyes were Delft blue like the child's — but not childish. Armed. 
    "Dr. De Kalb," Dave said. 
    "He doesn't see patients at home." One hand eased the child backward, the other began to close the door. "If you'll call the office tomorrow morning and make an appointment — " 
    "I'm not a patient. I'm from Medallion Life." 
    "Thank you." Her smile flicked on and flicked off. "We have all