Miranda the Plagiarist

She wanted a better life

Image from garystockbridge617

“I found the letter.” Miranda hovered over me while I leaned back on the couch reading Stephen King’s Billy Summers. She stood between me and the lamp, eclipsing the light, which made it hard to read. Her hands gripped her hips. 

I closed the book with a thunderclap. “What letter?”

“The letter on your computer to Dear Robin.”

“Dear Robin?” I tried to feign ignorance, but my lips quivered, which I’m sure signaled to Miranda that I knew what she was talking about. When I saw the recognition of deception in Miranda’s eyes, I switched tactics. “What were you doing snooping on my computer?”

“Why did you write to an advice columnist about us?” 

“What makes you think the letter was about us?”

“Why would you write an advice columnist if you think we have a problem when you could just ask me?”

This game of question-ping pong was going nowhere. I leaned forward, patted the cushion next to me, and in a moment of unexpected bravery, said, “We have to talk.”

“You don’t say.” Miranda shot me a stink eye. 

“Do you want to tell me about it?” When she didn’t reply, I launched into what upset me. “Your short story. Or should I say, your short stories. The ones I love, the stories that make me feel like I’m in another place, the stories that are part of my adoration for you.” I folded my arms in front of my chest, trying to restrain the fury that clawed inside. I felt steam burning my brain. “They’re plagiarized. I found the originals in short story collections published in the nineteen-forties and fifties. You probably figured that because these anthologies existed in the pre-internet age, nobody would find out. But I did.” I shook my head. “I’m in shock.” 

Miranda sat on the couch silently while my words hung in the air. After a moment, she rested her hand on my thigh.

“Don’t try to deny it. I have the evidence. Your story, ‘Fancy the Penny Arcade,’ in Pinecone Review, the one that won the Kippler Award, is the same as ‘Ferris Wheel Hour,’ published in America’s Best Short Stories of nineteen-forty-three.” I buried my face in my hands. “How could you do this? Of all the things, you’re a plagiarist. I don’t understand how you have the same name as that writer from the nineteen forties, either.”

“It’s not word for word, Henry. I updated the grammar and vocabulary and tweaked the story in other ways, too. I think it’s better now. Don’t you?”

“So, you don’t deny you plagiarized that—and as far as I can tell, everything else you’ve written.”

Miranda kissed my cheek, an act I thought was both out of place and inappropriate. “Of course I don’t deny it. It’s what I do. It’s what I am.”

“What do you mean, it’s what you are?”

Miranda stood. “Coffee or whiskey? What’s your preference, Henry?”

I glanced at my wristwatch. It was 9:17 p.m., well into the whiskey hour. I flexed and unflexed my hand so I’d hopefully loosen the tension and not break the glass. 

Miranda poured two shots for each of us. 

I downed mine in a single swallow. 

So did she.

Miranda dropped a fifty-year-old high school yearbook on the coffee table from a school neither of us had attended: Greenview High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She flipped to the senior class section and tapped on the photo of a girl with long, black hair and a pretty, oval face. The girl wore a plain blouse and a simple chain necklace. Visible in the picture was a hummingbird tattoo on her neck. 

I brought my face to the photo, then looked at the hummingbird tattoo on Miranda’s neck, which I knew well.

They both bore the same tattoo. 

The girl and Miranda shared the same wistful eyes, high cheekbones, turned-up noses, and inquisitive expressions. They could be twins. 

My Miranda grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the daughter of a lawyer and doctor. She’s never set foot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, let alone gone to school there. It was too soon for a hangover, but my head hurt. 

“Who are you?” I’m sure there was a better, less odd question I could ask, especially given that we’ve been married for two years, but that was the only question I could think of. 

“Miranda Jones.” She smiled wryly, her lips unevenly curved. She tapped the yearbook photo again. “Miranda Jones from Tulsa, Oklahoma lived a long time ago. She wrote for various minor publications and even has a collection of her short stories in the local Tulsa libraries. I claimed her life as mine.”

“You plagiarized her life?”

“You could put it that way. Although she never achieved greatness as measured by a best seller or major prize, she had an exciting life creating adventurous stories and bold characters. She could be in any world she imagined. I’ve enjoyed being Miranda the writer, but that ends today.”

“I’m totally confused."

Miranda removed a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. It was a copy of a vintage black and white photograph. "I lost the original.”

I stared at a man wearing a bowler hat atop a horse on a cobblestone street in front of New York City’s Flatiron Building. A thick handlebar mustache covered most of his mouth, and a butterfly tattoo adorned his neck. “I became Bridgton Lowell in nineteen-seventeen. A rather unpleasant sort, a banker who never married. One has to try new things, but they don’t always work out.” Miranda sighed wistfully. “Honestly, Bridgton was a mistake. He was quite dull.”

A lump stuck in my throat. The more I tried to swallow, the larger that lump grew. I made wheezing noises. My vocal cords froze in place.

“But Yvette Lang, wow. I was a part-time hooker and a part-time—and this was her true love—pianist. I’m not talking about a saloon pianist, but I was in an orchestra. I might be that again sometime.” Miranda took my hand. “A pianist, not a hooker.” 

“When did Yvette live?”

“She was born in seventeen-forty-five in Santa Fe. I wish I had a photo of her because Yvette was gorgeous, but—” Miranda shrugged her shoulders. 

“Are you saying that you’re ancient? That you’ve lived for,”—I did quick arithmetic—“for over two hundred and fifty years?”

“It's not that.”

“Then what? What are you talking about?” I was dizzy. Had I not been sitting down, I would have fallen. I wanted to melt into the couch. 

Miranda read my body language. “Lay down, babe.”

I scooched and bent my legs over the couch’s end. Gravity dropped my head into her lap like a boulder falling from a cliff.

She stroked my hair, which made me feel better. The room still spun, but more slowly. “You have an interesting, fulfilling life. You don’t need what I need," Miranda said.

“An airline pilot’s life is not that interesting, believe me. It’s endless hours and days of sameness. The only excitement is in the simulator once every six months when we train for emergencies.”

“Tell me about that.”

“We practice everything from engine failure to onboard fires to inverted flight.”

“That’s exciting.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t disagree. "The simulators are realistic. My heart pumps at double speed, goosebumps pop all over my arms, and sometimes my hair stands on end. When I’m done in the simulator, my shirt is drenched with sweat.”

“Have you ever had a real, in-flight emergency?”

“Once, when I was a first officer, we had a bird strike, lost an engine, and I had to call, ‘mayday.’” Another time somebody’s laptop battery caught fire in the baggage compartment, which precipitated an emergency landing. 

Miranda’s eyes widened. “Your life is not boring, not at all.”

Miranda’s body warmed me, and her strokes comforted me. I drifted between wake and sleep, my eyes fluttering. Our living room smelled sweet, like honey, and an invisible wind chime rang high notes. Where she touched, I tingled with static electricity.

Miranda’s hair color changed from black to blonde, from long to close-cropped, like mine. Her eyebrows thinned and also changed color, as did her eyes, from emerald green to blue, like my own eyes. Her jaws squared, her cheeks puffed, and a butterfly flew onto her neck. The last thing I saw before the lights went out was Miranda wearing a pilot’s uniform.

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