Keating

Clutch hummed tunelessly, rapping pale knuckles against the black speckled formica. “Y’know Tony? He’s a twin, too. He’s rare, though. An identical boy. His brother’s name is Matt. Matt’s quiet, like you, not impulsive at all.” She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and began texting as she talked. “They used to do this thing where’d they’d both apply to two jobs full-time, but then they’d switch off shifts and each go to each job, without telling anyone. Said it kept them from getting bored. They still sort of do it, but now they work part-time, and they tell people. So they’ll apply to the same job and they might actually be in the same place at the same time. But Matt’s not here today.”

“How do you know all this,” I asked, confused. “Did you work here?”
“Us? Nuh-uh. We used to come here every single day, though. For lunch, or after school. Now it’s maybe five times a week. Which is a lot, but it doesn’t add up quite the same way, so it feels like much less. She watched her phone, and LG Rumor, on the table, waiting for a response.
“Why? Why did you come here?”

“It was safe here. No obligations, no parents, no molesters. Just Eddie, Edna, Yugo, the twins, and us. That sounds weird, saying ‘the twins and us.’ We are the twins. Anyway, it was safe here. Yugo- he’s our cousin- worked here to pay for college, so we’d come in and he’d always go ‘What’s shakin’, bacons? Have you both arrived, or am I seeing double today?” In retrospect, it was really sweet, in a goofy way, but I hated it at the time. I was so embarrassed. I sort of miss it now. I think he stopped because we live with him now, so he knows what our day-to-day life is like, doesn’t have to check in. Yugo and his boyfriend, Gabriel. Yugo’s in med school, and Gabriel’s a cop. He’s a nice guy, Gabriel, and a redhead, but he bleaches it so he looks like a fox’s tail. Red on bottom and white on top. Well, white-blonde. And he spikes it up. Very fox-like. Hey.”

She glanced up at Tony as he put the plates before us and grinned. “Sorry kids, it seems I’ve misplaced the cough syrup. Won’t be but a mo’!”
Clutch gave him the finger. There was grime under her nails. “Just because you shagged my cousin in college doesn’t mean I’ll tip for bad service!” She stuffed a fry in her mouth and chewed sulkily.

“Know what I hate? Besides when someone does something nice that you can’t appreciate.”
“What?”
“When you’re writing something and you’re talking about, like, frantic masturbation or whatever and people around you just flip the shit. It’s like ‘you’re such a fuckass, why don’t you just go suck a fuck?’ How does one suck a fuck, exactly?” Tony gave us our drinks with a funny look on his face, and I realized I’d been too wrapped up in listening to Clutch to eat. She drank cherry soda through a child’s crazy straw, tapping her grey skate shoes against the booth, I could hear it. “You should eat.” I took a bite of my sandwich, and Clutch glanced warily at hers, and poked it. She poked it again before picking it up and cramming as much of it into her mouth as she could. Her phone vibrated loudly against the table, and I wondered whom she was talking to. She glanced at the caller ID and smiled before taking the call.
“Hi Mordecai-face. You and Ghost should come visit us, we’re at Edna’s. What? Well fuck you, too, then. Tell him I’m sorry or something. Well, I don’t believe his face. Yeah, poss. What time?” She glanced at the clock on the wall to her left, then at me. “Hopefully, yeah, but I haven’t asked him yet. Yeah. Love you too, kbye.” And she snapped her phone shut, putting it in her pocket and picking up her sandwich.
“Ask me what?”

“Huh?” Through a mouthful of bread and meat.
“You looked at me and said ‘I haven’t asked him yet.’ Asked me what?”
She cocked her head and looked across the gradually filling restaurant to the window, watching it as though it were a mildly interesting television program. “If you want to spend the night. You could in our room with me, or in the guest room. You’re still a girl when you’re naked, but it’d almost be easier to treat you like a bio-male. But we can’t do that. We don’t know you well enough to respect you like that. Anyway, we’ll provide you with Pjs and blankies and stuff. You should stay, I’d like that.”

And the room spun slowly. “Would you? Like it, I mean. For all your disrespect, would you like it?”
She nodded, completely serious. “Yes, I’d like it if you slept over.” She nodded toward my plate. “Your fries will get cold,” so we ate. Tony reappeared from time to time, refilling our glasses for free, he said, because “Yugo would kill me if I thought to do otherwise.” The last time he appeared, he asked if he could get us the bill.

“Kenya put it on my tab? I don’t really wanna pay right now, because I wanna buy really weird artsy stuff. From the stalls,” she had to speak up over the dinner rush. Tony just sighed and ruffled her hair.
“Stay safe. Say hi to Yugo and Ghost for me. Have fun, Hadyn,” as we collected our coats. Clutch grabbed my hand as she waved to Edna on the way out. Her hand was shaking.
She led me down one sidestreet after another, meandering between the stalls. Clutch glanced at small children with an expression of mixed disgust and disinterest. She stopped outside a coffee shop and answered her phone, “hello, darling. We’re on Hillman Avenue, outside Hillman Liquid Satan Shop. Selling Liquid Satan since 1976.” She leaned forward past the edge of the building and peered sideways through the window. “And they sell decaf. It’s a really boring name, too. They could at least call it Café Beelzebub or something. Where are you? I’m not waiting all night in the cold…yeah, but I bet they sell more Satan than decaf…fine, I’ll wait. Hurry up, though.” Again the phone clicked shut and she turned to me.
“Mordecai and Ghost-face are going to meet us, and then probs drive somewhere. That cool?”

I swallowed thickly and nodded. “And I’ll stay the night, too.” God, my voice sounded so high and weedy, but Clutch just smiled her quiet smile.
“I know.” Something in my chest squirmed and my palms broke out in a cold sweat.
Clutch tensed and stared up the street, frozen and grinning slightly, before sprinting up the sidewalk. Looking ahead as I ran to catch up, I saw Ghost, dressed in white, just before I saw Clutch, in black, threw herself at him. Beside them was a boy- at least, I thought it was a boy. He was paler than Clutch, more androgynously beautiful than Ghost and taller than all of us. As I got closer I realized two things. First, that Clutch was kneeling before her brother, frantically mumbling some kind of apology. Second, that the other boy (Mordecai?) was the gothest thing I’d ever seen: Pale, dressed in flamboyant black, with sharp features outlined in blots of dark, sexless makeup. Metal glinted in his face. As I got closer he smiled at me, exposing the same perfect teeth the others had. Some part of me had expected fangs.
“My poor Ghosty-boy, I’m sorry! I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry I was even gonna feed you but then Mordecai did it first!”
Ghost just laughed at her and straightened, pulling her to her feet. “Stop being a tool and get off the fucking sidewalk.” She hugged him tightly, though he turned to me. “Hadyn, this is our friend Mordecai. Mordecai, this is Hadyn Connelly.”
“Hello there, little boy.” The husky voice was sexless, too.
I know I tried to say something, but all that came out was a squeak and a nervous chuckle.

Clutch giggled and switched to trying to bury herself in Mordecai’s coat. “Mordecai has that effect on basically everyone. It’s because he’s beautiful to everyone, because he looks like a boy and a girl.”
He bent to her, though he must have been at least a foot taller, and spoke to her softly, like a lover. “Is that why? I thought you said it was my height.” His teased black hair obscured her slightly, but his eyes were laughing.
“Yeah, that is too why. Tall people are sexy, and short people aren’t. That’s why my life is so tragic.”

Mordecai laughed, smearing dark lipstick on his teeth. “Silly little kitten, whatever would we do without your insights into humanity?”
“You’d explode.” Ghost stood by throughout this exchange, pouting jealously until Clutch reached back and dragged him forward. “Shut up, Ghost.”
“I didn’t say anything!” A rather weak protest, though a true one.
“You were thinking jealous things. It was stupid. I can’t reach Hadyn from here, will you bring him closer?”

I walked closer to her, and Mordecai. “Is this better?”
She sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Does anyone want to go to the supermarket and lots of horrific shit to eat in the car during our journey to the end of the world? No, allow me to rephrase that: if you want to eat horrific shit in the car during our journey to the end of the world, say so now or forever hold your peace.”
“I do.” Mordecai disentangled himself from the other two with some difficulty. “We still have one of those giant Ziplock bags in the car full of muddy buddies, you know.”
Clutch scratched her nose. “Really? I assumed you’d eaten them all already.”
“Nah,” Ghost interjected. “He couldn’t, remember, ‘cause the van was in the garage. Even though he’s basically the only one who drives it.”

Clutch nodded. She nodded a lot, and also talked a lot. She never talked about what she was thinking though, and it irritated the hell out of me because I knew that even if she was thinking weird, dreamy, psycho thoughts that they were fascinating, and she wasn’t sharing them with me. I felt a tug at my wrist, and glanced down to find Clutch grabbing my wrist, and towing me across the street to the store, where she stood on the thresh-hold, thinking. “Mordecai,” she murmured, leaning back against him, “I changed my mind, we have shit in the car and if we need more shit than we can buy it, right?”

So we all trooped back out and walked along behind Mordecai until we were back in the parking lot by the van. I got in first, in the passenger seat, while the twins crawled onto the mattress and Mordecai himself went around to the driver’s side.
“Mordecai, where are these muddy buddies? They’re not in the box.” He had barely put the car in gear, so he ignored her to back out of the parking lot. I smiled to myself. He turned back to look over his right shoulder like a good, responsible driver and Clutch responded by touching his lip piercing, very softly. “Mordecai, I was talking to you.”
“I know. Let me drive first, would you? It would be nice to not have to stop in the middle of the parking lot.”

“’kay.” She retracted, like a snake, and lay back on the mattress before leaning over and whispering something Ghost’s ear. He leaned forward, then, and reached past me to rummage in a box next to me, in the door, before pulling out a handful of CDs and passing them to Clutch. She glowered at them, flicking through them, before selecting one. “This one.”
Ghost reached forward and put the CD in the player, turning the volume up. His efforts were rewarded with gloomy, melancholy rock music. Clutch and Mordecai smiled, and he passed her the muddy buddies. I watched. Muddy buddies, I learned, were Chex cereal rolled in chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar. In short, they were delicious and terrible for you.
“Hey Ghost?” Clutch was bored.

“Yeah?”
“C’I have a cigarette?”
“What? No.”
“Why not?” Curious, not annoyed.
“Because they’re bad for you, I don’t have one, and you don’t even smoke.” Definitely annoyed.
“I could start.”
“I would stop you.”

I almost agreed that I, too, would stop her, but then decided against it. Instead, I asked where we were going. Mordecai shrugged.
“We’re going to find a hill so Clutch can look at the stars, because that’s what we always do, which means we’ll probably end up on Lover’s Hill, because we always end up there. Sometimes we just drive and drive and drive, though. We drove to Nevada by accident once.”
My mouth fell open. “How did you manage that?”
Clutch piped up from the back, “we drove all night! Like the Cyndi Lauper song, but actually different.”

Mordecai nodded. “Usually one of them is awake and tells me when to turn around or where to go, but they both fell asleep and I just zoned out and drove. We had to call Yugo and explain why it was 3 AM and we still hadn’t come home.”
“Who is Yugo, and why do you all live with him?”
Mordecai grinned. “Oh, I don’t actually live with him, I just assume responsibility for the twins because I’m an adult and they’re not.”
Ghost shifted. “Mordecai’s lying; he’s the other Keating. Well, not literally, but good enough. We live with Yugo, our cousin, because we don’t live with our parents anymore.”

“Oh. Why not?”
Something hit the back of my seat. Clutch. “Fuck, Hadyn, why are you such a nosy little shit, huh? Tell me this, tell me that. Why don’t you tell us anything? Like how your momma’s a real-estate agent and your daddy’s a doctor. How come you never talk about that? Is it because they don’t love you, either? Are they neglectful? Sucks for you, bitch, at least we got out.”

I couldn’t even say anything to that. They knew things about me, and I didn’t know anything about them. Maybe they were stalking me, or maybe just better connected.
Clutch flopped down on the mattress with a huff. “I hate you, Ghost.”
“Me? Why?”
“You invited Hadyn. I don’t like him anymore.”
“That’s mean.”
“It’s also true. Hey, tranny, wanna know who molested me, too? It was my uncle. I reported it after five years of family gatherings, and that’s why we live with Yugo. Mordecai, stop the car.” The car stopped, and my blood ran cold. I noticed dimly that the car was being flooded with fluorescent light from across the road, but paid it little attention as Clutch got out and stomped around the car. To my astonishment, she passed me, and walked across the road to the 7-Eleven. Ghost followed her, and Mordecai simply pulled the P-break and waited a minute before speaking.
“You really shouldn’t hassle them. I get that you’re a curious guy, and Clutch has a pretty tight fuse. She’s pretty shortly wound. I just mixed my metaphors, didn’t I? Anyway, she’s pretty easy to piss of, but nobody likes a snoop. Ghost will get mad, too, even if it’ll take a little longer.”

“I wasn’t hassling or snooping!” I tried to protest. “I just don’t know anything about them at all and they know everything about me! It’s not fair!”
Mordecai shrugged and glanced at the 7-Eleven. “Life is suffering, kid. They’ll tell you everything you ever cared to know, and more, just let it happen.”
I decided to keep my mouth shut and just watch the twins return from the 7-Eleven with several white plastic bags filled with whatever it is 7-Eleven sells. Porno and condoms, probably, so I was surprised when the smell of food greeted me.
“I am a really, really good person.” Clutch announced to the van as she began passing out food.

“Did you get me something nice, darling?” asked Mordecai.
“Of course I did, Mordecai-face. I even tried to get you the completely disturbing jalapeño cream cheese taquitos that you like, but they were out so I got you Monterey Jack and chicken instead. Which is probably less likely to kill you anyway. And Hadyn gets corn dog rollers, which are basically really crap, 7-Eleven type pigs con blankies, and we got porn, condoms, chicken tenders, and potato wedges. We almost got wings, too, but we were like ‘ah, fuck it.’ Did you know that 7-Eleven classifies Miracle Whip as groceries but not the bean dip? I worry about America sometimes. Oh, and we got soda and a lighter and lighter fluid in case we need to set someone on fire or we get thirsty.” Ghost made a disapproving sound and she glanced at him. “And by ‘set someone on fire’ I meant ‘make a signal fire’. Duh. Because we get lost, you know.”

I had to know. I knew I had just been told not to ask too many questions, but I had to ask, “Do you always eat this much?”
“Huh? Yeah. Usually we eat at real restaurants, but there is always lots of food in my stomach all the time or else I scream and cry, because I do not like being hungry very much. I also do not like it when people touch me, or when they do that quaint smiling thing where you know they are judging you, but are trying to pretend they aren’t. It’s a lie.”

“Move over.” Ghost shifted beside her on the mattress, closer to me. “And for God’s sake, child, stop talking before you go blue in the face.”
Clutch mumbled something that sounded like “but I’m a good talker, Ghost,” as I ate my corndogs and Mordecai started the car again, wiping his hands on his jeans. Clutch poked me in the head and I turned to her.
“What?” She pointed to a switch above my head, and I pressed it, opening the sunroof. She stood up and stuck her head out and laughed like a child.
“Ghost, I can see the stars from here!”
“That isn’t safe!”

“Neither is sex, but when has that ever stopped anyone?”
Ghost just sighed and leaned over me to change the CD again. Placebo .
“Mordecai, drive faster!” Clutch giggled from somewhere above my head as the engine revved louder, and then sat down, motioning to Mordecai that he could slow down again. She stared first at Mordecai, then at me, and last at Ghost.
“We’re late, Ghost. Roberta’s gonna be mad.”
“Late for what? Who’s Roberta? Is this real?”
“She’s gonna be really, really mad. Maybe not. Maybe just a little peeved, maybe nothing at all. But we’re really late. We’re sorry. I’m sorry. Are you sorry, Ghost?”

“Who’s Roberta?? Fine, yes, I’m sorry we’re late. Better now?”
“Yeah, a little, I guess. Mordecai, find us a hill with rolly grass. I do not want to talk to a tree this time.”
“Do you want me to speed up again, since we’re late?”
“Mm, nah, probably wouldn’t make a difference at this point. Just focus on that grass. Ghost, can I braid your hair?” His hair was just long enough for finger-length braids. Before he could answer, or perhaps after if he had not answered verbally, Clutch leaned past me to grab the iPod and the headphones.
She listened quietly as she braided Ghost’s hair. She had started out trying to braid his hair into a Mohawk, tight little cornrow braids, but it wasn’t long enough, so she braided it in a thousand tiny braids instead, ending them with bright beads she pulled from her pockets.

Occasionally she’d pull a marker from her pocket and write something on the wall, or she’d lean closer to Ghost and whisper something, and he’d giggle. So that is how we drove: Mordecai drove, I spied on the twins in the rearview mirror, and they lived in a world completely apart that I could not touch.