(1327) Doppelganger

When married women get together, one topic is children, and the other is husbands.

My long time friend told a roomful of married matrons that if anyone ever saw her husband walking around with a sweet young thing, do not tell her. I think she was in her late forties then. The group descended on her and every one had a different opinion. I was really amused and did not take part in the free-for-all. It was rather fun to see so many of them arguing with excitement and red faces.

I sat by the window and thought, it was most unlikely I'd see her husband anywhere. Firstly I seldom go out, a writer often lives in the world of thoughts and solitude. Secondly, he is definitely two classes above me economically, we would not go to the same establishment. After all, he owns factories in Vietnam and China.

Life is strange. My husband loves to collect discount coupons and eat at expensive places at reduced prices. One day, he talked me into visiting an out-of-the-way shopping mall in the morning to make use of a soon expiring coupon. We walked into an Italian restaurant and breakfasted on pizza. I did love American pizza as a student, but generally I steered clear of Malaysian pizza. Sometimes one has to compromise to keep the peace in a marriage.

We were seated two tables from the main entrance. After ordering, I excused myself to visit the ladies, walking out of the main entrance. On the way out, it seemed my husband and I were the only patrons. On the way back, I took the side entrance and I saw a middle-aged man with a college-aged girl seated way at the back in a secluded corner. At first glance, he was a spitting image of my old friend's husband.

I did not dare to look again. After all, she had made it clear that she did not want to know. There was not much point confirming my impression, it is best to let sleeping dogs lie. My face must have shown my shock, my husband immediately asked if anything was wrong. I told him my suspicion, and he was curious. After our meal, it was his turn to go to the gent's and he took a good look on the way back. We both saw the guy five years ago, he had his hair then. Now this man looked exactly like him but was bald. We agreed we must have found a doppleganger of the man in question. It could be him, or it could be a stranger that looked like him. And we left it at that. Till today, I did not tell anybody of this incident, until this blog post.