Who Is Brian Quinn?

Imaginary Sister - Imaginary Girlfriend - Imaginary Therapist

Cody's twin sisters looked nothing alike. Dolores was tall and lanky with small rounded breasts. Moony was shorter and squatter, more voluptuous. Dolores had straight reddish hair while Moony had raven black curls that bounced when she walked. They both suspected their brother Cody was insane though neither gave it much thought.

In years prior each had had disturbing semi-romantic encounters with Cody's childhood friend, Beardsley, though neither would admit it to the other. The truth was they both found him sickeningly repulsive yet somehow they were attracted to his indecipherable wit and womanly fingers. And so they made a habit of bad mouthing their brother's friend, endeavoring to outdo each other with harsh and insulting descriptions of his appearance and hygienic habits.

Another little detail is that Moony is imaginary. Not real. Just a figment of Dolores' imagination. So just keep that in mind.

"You know he keeps a banana in his pants because he has nothing down there. A terrible accident at birth. A botched circumcision," reported Dolores.

"And how do you know?" burbled Moony, looking up from her needlework. She seemed to be eternally making a long black woolen sock she refused to finish. She simply could not make her fingers give up on the thing. It sat beside her in a pile. Uncoiled it ran to nearly twelve feet long.

"I could smell it," said Dolores.

"What, the banana?"

"Yes. Rotting away down there. In his pants."

"Disgusting."

"Yes," agreed Dolores.

They also suspected that their mother was insane, though neither of them gave it much thought. She had taken to going out at night. Probably seeing Old Man Cooley at the wharf whose wooden leg and disquieting tattoos had always fascinated her. She had brought him home for dinner once. It had been a trying experience for them all. He smelled of blubber and his table manners were atrocious. He'd sat there gnawing on a leg of lamb for near on a half hour, breaking the bones and sucking the marrow out noisily.

"If father were here he'd never let Cody go around with that awful Beardsley," remarked Moony.

"I think he would," said Dolores. "I think he'd be tickled that our little Cody is a maniac and goes around with a disgusting cretin like Beardsley."

Moony frowned. "You know what our Cody needs. A girlfriend. I mean he's practically middle aged."

"No he's not," quipped Dolores. She hated to think that her younger brother might be getting old. She preferred to think of him as a toddling infant, it made her more comfortable with her own situation living at home with her mother and frumpy sister at the age of thirty. And really, Cody acted much like a child for the most part. She knew her love life was pathetic, a fact she ignored. In the past there had been several offers made by attractive young suitors but she had never been able to commit herself to any of them. She suspected that Beardsley had ruined her. At times just thinking about his soft womanly hands moving along her thin legs and lower back kept her up all night.

"Besides," replied Dolores. "He has a girlfriend."

"He most certainly does not," cried Moony. "Unless you count Esmeralda, which I most certainly will not." She stamped her foot and busily continued her knitting.

Since childhood Cody had also fostered an imaginary companion named Esmeralda. Apparently of Hispanic persuasion she accompanied him first to the playground where she selflessly pushed him on the swings and then as he got older she would go with him to the theatre where she would hold his hand and explain the more complicated aspects of the plot to him in her broken English. "You know," he would tell his sister, Dolores. "Esmeralda looks up to you. Both of you." Cody had always treated Moony his imaginary sister with equal alacrity as he did his real sister, Dolores. "She finds you both extremely fascinating and if you wouldn't mind she'd love to accompany the two of you on one of your little adventures you're always talking about."