The two Kellys, side by side.  Identical bowl haircuts, identical white shirts and tight black pants.  One with a red armband on her left, the other with a green armband on her right.  Never looking directly at anything for too long, and never at each other.  One right, one left.  One up, one down.  The smirks to signal the ongoing joke: the knowing, bored look, which signals this has all happened before.  And it has.

The games started at 9, so the Kellys arrive at 11:30.  Some people have come and gone.

The Kellys have brought a bottle of champagne.  They have brought an alligator puppet, and they take turns wearing it on their hands, and whichever one is holding the puppet has to make alligator sounds.  The alligator kisses both of The Kellys on the cheek.  It kisses both of them on the mouth.  The alligator offers champagne to the rest of us.

We are playing Scrabble.  We debate “Zen.”  It is a proper noun.  It should not be accepted.  But someone finds it in a dictionary, and someone else seconds.  But it is a proper noun, and I begin to not care because the rules have been compromised.  Adding a “Z” to “en.”  Triple letter.  Thirty points for no effort.  Someone plays “amore,” and I say, “Only English.  Amorous, but no amore.”

The Kellys wait out the game in the kitchen.  We can hear them from the living room: the suction of lips disengaging, aching soft sounds, the occasional guttural alligator squawk, and the pouring of champagne.

People laugh and talk about The Kellys in hushed tones.  Everyone keeps their eyelids heavy, careful not to look surprised by anything the Kellys do.

People line up for the bathroom.  People smoke.  People grab another beer.  The Kellys’ entrance has dislodged something, shifted the air.  They are all aware, and aware of being aware, all watching and winking.

I have three Is, two Es, a U, and a K.  But I refuse to exchange my letters.  I see others do it.  I see others grab a handful of letters at once, thumbing through and picking the best ones.  A team on the other side of the table trades a P for a Q.

Soon teams begin scoring two points at a time.  Teams with three people dwindle to one.  Entire teams disband, saying, “Play something for me” on their way to the kitchen.  They stand outside the kitchen door, straining to hear The Kellys above their own bodies.

Out the kitchen door, cha-cha-ing, a two-person train.

“Chutes,” one Kelly says.

“And ladders,” the other says.

And into the bathroom.  A group of seven plus The Kellys, nine total, in the bathroom, then out in a hustle of smoke.

The alligator is kissing the women.  Chas is hitting on the international students.  The four Vietnamese girls pronounce their names for him.  He has them write them on a napkin.  Jordan keeps walking up to people and saying, “Put a cork in it,” while holding up the cork from the wine bottle.

There is a white ball of fur licking a bottle cap.  I ask who brought a cat: people point to their crotches.

Chas puts his arm around me and tells me he got four numbers.  The napkin he shows me has only the word “AQUADUCT” written on it.

The Kellys again call for Chutes and Ladders.  Someone says he has it.  At his apartment.  Nearby.  Six people leave with him.

Chas asks me, “Hey, Matt. How much do you pay rent?”  He makes another play for the Vietnamese girls, but they all feign yawns.  Chas comes over to me and says he was just kidding, that he wasn’t really interested in those girls.  He is just saving face.  Few people experience true sincerity.  Even fewer sustain it.

There is a web site called Everything You Know Is Wrong.  Every day, their columnists publish new lists with names like, “6 Movies You Didn’t Know Are Remakes,” “5 Companies You Didn’t Know Control American Commerce,” “10 Reasons Conservatives Believe McDonald’s Hamburgler is a Socialist, that You Didn’t Know About,” and “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Abraham Lincoln.”  This gives people ways to dominate conversation.  Even if someone isn’t talking about one of the topics the site has covered, the conversation can be segued until the segue-er is satisfied.  In this way, no matter how much someone knows about something, another person can break in with that one detail the other does not know.

A man in a tweed jacket is drinking Jameson and seems to have a chance with one of the Vietnamese girls.  First he asks how long she has been in the States.  Then he asks her what she knows about American history. Boom.  Abraham Lincoln.

He says, “Some accounts say he carried a bundle of stones every morning to exercise.  Twelve hundred pounds of rocks.  A ton.  Abraham Lincoln was a bad-ass.”

Tammie asks me if I’ve heard anything new about Libya.  I’m not sure what she means, but I say, “No.  It’s crazy, huh?”

She says, “When are these nations going to pay us for liberating them?  If we liberate them, we should get some of that oil, right?”

Tammie has made a reputation for being a Republican, a possibly alienating feat which has somehow made her popular because people invite her to parties to debate with her.

Chas once told me, “There’s something hot about a girl that passionate about that much nonsense.”  Tonight Tammie is wearing her OBAMA acrostic T-shirt, which reads, “One Big Ass Mistake, America.”  At the last party her shirt read, “Make Mexico a State.”  There’s a rumor that Tammie was a liberal at her community college, that she switched for the attention.

I go to my room and turn on the TV.  Two men in ties are debating whether or not we should invade Yemen.  Someone calls in to say that Yemen is a republic.  One of the men says, “Yes.  But is it the right kind?”

I change the channel.  On the new channel, two men in ties are frowning at pictures of jellyfish.

“Now what is the chance this was caused by Man?  Some have said this is a result of one of the recent oil spills.”

“There is just no evidence that is true.  This is another instance of people attaching an agenda to something to regulate oil companies.  Yes, the number of jellyfish is rising.  Yes, jellyfish live in oceans.  Yes, some oil has spilled into oceans.  Boom.  A few nut jobs postulate that jellyfish are evolving to be more resilient.  If this were true, wouldn’t these people be saying the oil actually benefited the ocean life?  But no, you won’t hear that.  I think we need to be careful who we listen to on this subject.”

I wonder how far Chas would get using this factoid about jellyfish.

I call Hannah, although I haven’t talked to her since our last date.  She appears to be more sincere than others, but sometimes that is part of it.  I have spent months in a relationship before I saw the glimpses of insincerity.  Something changes in the face.  I swear I have seen a lump underneath an ex-lover’s skin move from underneath the eye to right above the lip, like a man moving behind a heavy curtain.  I have not seen this with Hannah yet.

I invite her over, but she says she doesn’t want to play games.

“Me neither,” I say.  “We can watch TV.  I’ve got it on now.  There’s this doctor named Adam Adams.  Doctor Adam Adams.  He’s talking about prostate health.  Hilarious.”

She laughs, but I do not know if she is laughing at what I’ve said, or if she is laughing at me.

People are arriving.  Screams of Chutes and Ladders.  I hear or pretend to hear long M-sounds coming from the bathroom.  I think I hear something break.  Doctor Adam Adams is wearing a green shirt with green pants and green shoes.  The bottle he is holding is green.  Each individual pill is green.  He says, “And all our packaging is good for the earth.  Think green!”

He wants me to be aware that he is aware.  He smiles at the camera, then winks.