A man ambles across a dark corner dragging a tattered bag and murmuring to himself. He might be an unfortunate soul with a sack of misfortune or he could be mentally deranged and hauling body parts through the streets.

In front of a bar men and women gather smoking cigarettes and littering empty streets with course laughter that echoes strangely in the rain. They might be a merry band searching for reasons to celebrate or thugs who will jump you to pass on a plague of blues.

It's a downtown of unknowns that are paradoxically predictable. It's either a party or a knife fight and it's not easy to tell the difference. It's a place that will welcome you with one hand and steal your wallet with the other.

At midnight in the rain, it feels like home to me but this isn't Lewiston at all. It's downtown Bangor and a place I've roamed before.

All the time we get to forcing comparisons to Lewiston and Auburn, Lewiston and Portland. Crime rates are arranged side-by-side and scrutinized for similarities. But those are just numbers, really. When you get right into the thick of things, the real sister cities here are Lewiston and it's rugged sibling to the north.

Years ago, I took a bus to Bangor and landed at a bar. I spent three nights there and roamed the city between pitchers. Strangers with odd probation conditions put me up on couches. I met new friends who knew the best spots to sleep beneath bridges. There were those trying to get fresh starts after stints in prison and those working real hard to get sent inside.

Half the people I encountered on that trip were troubled sorts who were nonetheless kind to a wandering compatriot. The other half were wretches who wanted to mess me up. A fair enough ratio, I suppose, when you take your chances in a strange place.

A short time later, I came to Lewiston and sought the same type of experience. It was like meeting the same people in the same places and doing the same things. The same ratio of downtrodden integrity and runaway deviance. Street-jà vu. Lewiston and Bangor have always felt to me like identical rooms in the same house.

There are a few tangible reasons for this, of course. Each city has its share of mentally ill who live among the rest of the population but who can never be far from the social services they depend on. Each city has a hefty share of alcoholics and drug abusers who gravitate toward their sources of supply.

Both cities have a history of toil and economic boom and bust. For Lewiston it was the mills, for Bangor, lumber. Each is growing around the edges but the downtowns stay static. Each resides along a river that witnesses its happening and occasionally buries its crimes.

But the similarities between the cities are mostly felt; something in the way the subcultures are distributed or the way the shadows of tenements fall. Or maybe it's just me, something about my own personality that feels at home in Bangor where the streets of similar sized cities — Augusta, Portland, Waterville — seem entirely unique.

Some other observations from the tavern/bus station:

• Bangor is frequently called "BANG-guh," Lewiston is often pronounced "LOY-ston." Both are inexplicable to me.

• Nobody really knows how either city earned its name.

• Stephen King lives in one city, is fascinated with the other.

• An inordinate number of people I befriended in Bangor decades ago have ended up in Lewiston, like me. Magnetic forces at work?

• I know why Lewiston smells like an onion bagel. No idea where Bangor gets the aroma.

I can offer no logical explanation why a pair of cities 85 miles apart seem to share the same soul. Geography being what it is, the two shall never meet but if they did, I know how it would go. The two scrappy brawlers would duke it out in the street. One would pull a switchblade from a back pocket, the other a razor from a boot. They'd knock each other down, beat each other up and the whole world would smell for a time like an onion bagel. Then they'd sling arms around one another and go off as embattled friends into the night in search of beer.

I kind of like to think they'd invite me along.