Another thing that helped me catch on was that he always called the other me Joseph.
At first I thought the whole thing might be a gag, or maybe a deliberate way of letting off steam against me without violating his always-a-sweet-guy code—like happy husbands cursing in the bathroom—but then came the scrambled eggs.
I’d slept late and when I squinted into the cabin there was Jeff hovering over a plate of yellow fluff and shaking his finger at my empty seat and saying, “Dammit, Joseph, eat your scrambled eggs, I cooked ’em ’specially for you,” and when he crawfished out toward the galley a couple seconds later he was saying, “Now you start on those eggs, Joseph, before I get back.”
I thought for a bit and then I slid into my place and polished them off.
When he floated in with the coffee he gave me another of those glaze-eyed God-fearing looks—but just a mite disappointed, I thought—and said, “Dammit, Joe, you’re perfect! You always clean your plate.”
Apparently when I was there, Joseph just didn’t exist for Jeff. And vice versa. It was sort of eerie, especially with the hum of space in my ears like a seashell and nobody else for five million miles.
Beginning with the scrambled eggs, I discovered that Jeff didn’t exactly idolize Joseph—or even take with him the attitude of “My buddy can do no wrong,” like he did with me. I overheard him criticizing Joseph. Reasonably at first; then I heard him chewing him out—next bullying him.
It made me wistful, that last, thinking how good it would feel to be full-bloodedly cursed to my face once in a while instead of all the sweetness and light. And right there I got the idea for some amateur therapy, Shaula-Deva help me.
I waited for a moment when we were both relaxed and then I said, “Jeff, the trouble with you is you’re too nice. You ought to criticize things more. For a starter, criticize me. Tell me my faults. Go ahead.”