"I abhor politics."
"You look so much like him you could be his brother."
"I have no siblings," said Orville. "I am an only child." It was another sore point with the forty-four-year-old hardware-store owner.
The ribbing and kidding and tiresome jokes and comparisons very quickly became unendurable. It was enough for Orville to consider closing down the store he had inherited from his father.
Then the Home Depot hit Spokane, and within six months, Orville Rollo Fletcher was sitting in the modest clapboard home he had also inherited, wondering what sort of future would be the lot of an asthmatic ex-hardware-store owner who had known no other trade.
Everything had changed with the ringing of his home telephone.
"Orville Fletcher?" a soft, confident voice had asked.
"Orville Rollo Fletcher," he had corrected. His father had been Orville August Fletcher. He still received bills in that name. Another quiet indignity.
"I represent the Ixchel Talent Agency."
"I buy nothing from telephone solicitors," he said, starting to replace the receiver.
"No. I'm not selling. I'm buying."
"Excuse me?"
"I understand you look a great deal like Thrush Limburger, the political commentator."
"I would not dignify what that man does with such a description," Orville had said.
"My agency specializes in celebrity doubles."
The soft voice had no need to go any further. Orville sat home a lot and had fallen into the evil habit of watching TV talk shows from Nancy Jessica Rapunzel to Copra Innisfree.
"If it is my wish to join a circus," Orville had said with measured dignity, "I shall contact the Ringling Brothers myself. Good day."
"The pay is phenomenal," the soft voice said quickly.
Orville hesitated. "How do you define phenomenal?"
The soft voice had quoted a figure as substantial in its own way as Orville was in his.
"That is a different matter," said Orville, who had inherited a mortgage to go with the family homestead. "What exactly would I have to do?"
"Practice Thrush Limburger's voice to start."
"I confess I have no such aptitude."
"We'll take care of that for you."
And so the man had. A voice trainer had arrived within two days, bearing a cashier's check that constituted a year's retainer.
It was the work of six weeks before Orville Rollo Fletcher had mastered Thrush Limburger's walk, talk and rich vocabulary.
The soft voice called often. "We should have your first gig soon."
"I prefer a more dignified term, sir. I am a professional."
"But before we send you out, you'll have to submit to a complete medical examination."
"For what purpose?"
"To satisfy our insurers."
"Very well," said Orville, who dreaded the very thought of exposing his excess poundage to a doctor's scrutiny. They were forever trying to get him to cut down on his comfort foods.
A local doctor had performed the examination. It was astonishingly thorough, and included a PET scan.
The results came by Federal Express from the offices of the Ixchel Talent Agency in Hollywood, California.
Despite the fact that he was not anywhere near a chair, Orville Rollo Fletcher sat down very hard when he read the evaluation and saw the dreaded words "Brain tumor."
He was sobbing when the soft voice called him.
"I am going to die," he said in a strangled voice.
"Not if we can help it."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"We have access to the finest medical facilities. Put yourself in our hands and kiss that tumor goodbye."
"Why would you do that for me?"
"Because," said the soft voice, "Thrush Limburger is the hottest thing going, and you're the next best thing. This is an investment in the future."
"I will be only too happy to take you up on your kind offer," Orville had choked out tearfully, taking a hit of Vanceril from his asthma inhaler.
It had involved a plane flight to Jalisco, Mexico, where a waiting car whisked Orville through dusty streets to what looked like an old abortion mill. Inside there was a doctor with a thick accent and an operating room with some of the finest surgical equipment Orville could imagine.
The PET scan results were already in the doctor's hand.
"We can shrink this tumor with radiation, senor," the doctor assured him. "It will be no problem whatsoever."
"I cannot believe my good fortune," Orville said, weeping openly with relief.
They prepped him by shaving his head bald and wheeled him perfectly conscious into the operating room that very afternoon. As he lay there, he saw the jars of specimens on racks, and a dusky nurse reached for one labeled in Latin, Loxodonta Africana.
The doctor stopped her with a sharp order in Spanish, and she took up the one labeled Elephas Maximus instead. She walked it carefully over to the shelf where the surgeon's tools had been laid out.