Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

They were dizzy and excited, wearing trouble as a scent, and they made for the next light that burned, which was the Yangtzee River, where they had a boyfriend installed: Lawrence Wang, its lone son and heir.

He was taking orders on the phone. He was feeding orders back to the wordless scowling father in the kitchen. He was keeping one eye trained on the small television ledged above the waiting area, which mutely showed the prices, the tote and the bursts of pelting action from a dog meeting. He watched it through the fag smoke of a Consulate wedged in the corner of his mouth. He kept the phone tucked beneath his chin.

‘Chips or fried rice?’ he said, and the door exploded, the bould ones burst in.

‘What’s cookin’, Lala?’ enquired Dee, putting bruised elbows and a swell of young chest on the counter before him.

‘What’s happenin’, Babycakes?’ enquired Donna, shipping in alongside.

‘Half an hour,’ Lawrence Wang told the phone.

He replaced the receiver. He stubbed out his cigarette. He lit his hardest glare.

‘The two of ye can go park it somewhere else now, d’ye hear me?’

‘Lala,’ said Dee, ‘would you do us a twirl there and give us a gander at them pert little buns?’

‘I never seen a young fella fill a pair of Farahs like it,’ said Donna, and she let her eyes turn in to meet one another.

Lawrence Wang glanced anxiously over his shoulder. He could rehearse the brush-off all he wanted but he could never bring it out when it was needed.

‘Swear to God,’ he whispered, ‘if he catches ye in here again! This is the busy time and I wouldn’t mind but ye were told.’

‘Busy alright,’ said Dee, swivelling her gaze around the empty take-away.

‘Dancing room only at the Yangtzee River,’ said Donna, and she waltzed herself to the far wall, where the menu was pinned.

Lawrence looked past them. He gazed with great adolescent suffering into the cold eight o’clock street, to the dwindling terraces across the way, the voodoo hills beyond. The village so quickly ran out of itself: it turned into rough ground, rose to the hills and dark sky. The ground was taking wounds up there. He didn’t need to see Donna and Dee this evening. He had notions himself and they’d only give a charge and impetus to them. He had great self-awareness for a young fella. He knew full well that he was after falling in with a bad crowd — sometimes two is plenty enough to be a crowd.

‘Are ye orderin’ something now or are ye coolin’ heels?’ he said.

Dee raised the back of her hand to her forehead, fluttered her lids and performed an MGM swoon.

‘Lawrence,’ she said. ‘There’s a tremendous coldness about you tonight, darling.’

Donna clutched violently at her abdomen, as though shot, and she slithered down the far wall.

‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Oh what a sublime corpse!’

‘Jesus, can’t ye keep quiet? He’ll be out!’

But it was already too late. The swing door from the kitchen creaked an entrance: Mr Wang appeared. He hissed a string of dangerous Cantonese at his son, who nodded apology and compliance.

‘Howya this weather, Mr Wang?’ called Dee. ‘Shockin’ draw in the evenings.’

‘Why she on floor?’ Mr Wang furiously observed her sister.

‘I’m shot, Johnny! I’m all shot up!’ cried Donna.

‘I’d chance the sweet ‘n’ sour,’ said Dee, ‘if the chicken had wings.’

‘If the chicken wasn’t 16-to-1 at Shelbourne Park,’ said Donna.

Such cheek was beyond Mr Wang. He could but glare at them and, more meaningfully, at his son. There would be hysterical words later on, inside by the flypaper and the heat of the fryers. He withdrew.

‘Leg it!’ said Lawrence. ‘Lively!’

‘You know what’d shift us?’ said Donna. ‘Toss out the keys of the motor there, would ya?’

Lawrence Wang drove a silvery sports car. Often, on the summer nights, the twins had shared the passenger seat and by long assault on his patience, and by promise of favours to come, they had cajoled him into allowing turns at the wheel. Fast rounds of the industrial estate were performed — they by principle refused to slow down for ramps. One night, with Lawrence Wang reduced to tears, and with Dee on his lap, Donna had driven clear of the estate and onto the dual carriageway, where she performed a near-flawless handbrake turn.

‘Git!’ said Lawrence Wang.

‘Go on, La, one lap of Mondello.’

‘Out! Now!’

Among the fantasies of the village already fallen was that its terrace doors might be left unlocked. That one hadn’t survived the night poor Annie Quinlan came down to her kitchen for a sup of water only to find a hardchaw from Ennis on the floor in front of her, with a tyre iron in his hand. The village by quiet consent then entered the age of security, and its citizens were particularly pleased with their dead bolts, their strobe alarms and their attack dogs when they twitched the curtains of an evening and saw Donna and Dee approaching, with that evil, vivacious, whistling air.

‘Don’t gimme no back talk, sucka!’ Donna roared at the Marian statue in the square, for the twins were reverent devotees of The A-Team.

They aimed toes for Pa Hurley’s garage. It was in the west end, and you’d tell it quick enough because the man himself had painted in red block letters on its gable wall the legend:

PA HURLEY’S GARAGE.

Pa kept late hours. Pa hadn’t much choice in the matter. People wanted their cars back to them quick. All the patience was gone out of people, and sure enough, the twins found him on the premises. He was involved with the nether regions of a mint-green Cortina.

‘Howya, Pa?’ they sang, in a tone that might turn a lesser man to religion, but Pa Hurley was fond of himself and on a good night would think he had the measure of them. Suavely, he slid from beneath the motor, raised himself onto an elbow, regarded them slowly, grazed his eyes from north pole to south, and smirked.

‘How ye keepin’ yereselves?’

‘Ah,’ said Donna, letting sad eyes drift to the hills, ‘there’s nights you’d find yourself with a strange auld longin’.’

Dee picked up a phase tester and twirled it, slowly, then laid its cool steel against her cheek.

‘I’ve a class of a want meself,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t put a finger on it.’

Donna planted herself on the bonnet of a tan Beetle, crossed her legs at the ankles and assumed a Miss Ireland glaze. Dee put the full five ten of herself at a haughty stand in front of Pa Hurley: it was a pose learned from a Joan Jett video, with the heels planted wide and the perky nose in the air. The phase tester was now threateningly gripped.

‘Time you knockin’ off, Bub?’ she said

Pa Hurley rose. He laughed softly. He took some of the oil off his hands with a rag. He looked around him for fear of neighbours. He was forty and drearily married. Each morning, in the bleakest of hours — the one that comes before first light — he woke to a desperate lust for his own youth. It came in bits of old songs and lines from old films and in the remembered music of old girlfriends’ voices. He could never shake these twinges, not even if he put the pillow over his head against them. The twins had caught this yearning in him — something similar had made a moon-gazer of their own poor father — and they played on it.

‘Now listen up, Randy, and listen good,’ said Donna. ‘What say we steal a car and break for the border?’

‘Ve vill make Mexico by dawn,’ said Dee.

‘We will,’ said Pa Hurley. ‘How’re things with ye anyway?’

Always, as soon as he was properly exposed to the twins’ presence, to the hum of their animal vitality, the cheek went out of him. This effect on men wasn’t unusual in their short experience.