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Ford does not knock on his twin’s bedroom door anymore. Stan has been grumbling about the lack of courteousness and on multiple occasions described in no little detail just how close Ford has been cutting it to seeing the very opposite of the eighth wonder of the world, but Ford does not care. If he catches Stan out of his clothes, he just repeats that they will soon have to get used to the other’s body and habits, warts and all, metaphorical and literal, because there will be very limited opportunities for privacy on a sailboat.
Sometimes Stan hits him with a wayward, flying slipper, and he is getting better at the job; Ford’s eyebrow still stings with soreness from the day before.
The door handle clicks and threatens to slip out when Ford pulls it, just as it always does because Stan does not bother to tighten screws he technically does not own anymore.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Ford says as he steps inside like there is a string around his waist that is connected to the door, “that even though you told me not to ‘sci-fuck with the boat’s engine’ because you ‘didn’t get this far to die in a Hindenburg reenactment, only stupid’, I could really use the extra spa–...”
The complete absence of shouted curses trying to drown him out makes Ford pause and look up from the scraggly blueprint in his hands that serves both as a sketch and as a discreet way of offering Stan a second to cover his shame, should Ford for once be walking in on anything unsavory.
Stan is, surprisingly, not inside his room. Ford scoffs before he can stop himself, insulted. Usually when he cannot find Stan right away, his intuition leads him directly to his brother – typically either lounging on the porch in his underwear with a lit cigarette (Ford keeps thinking he has busted the last of Stan’s slow suicide stash, and Stan still manages to end up with death on embers between his lips) or in his bedroom, making bad excuses as to why he is still not cleaning out his closet.
But it does seem that Stan has been doing one of the two things, and another one, Ford was not expecting. On the top of his brother’s old, red quilt filled with burn holes and coffee stains lies an open suitcase, and next to it, a selection of clothes. Ford’s heart swells with a feeling that is both cold and sugary, and he does not really know what to label it. Stan is actually packing. They are going to leave Oregon behind and start a new chapter, and Stan is as committed to it as Ford is.
“Ah shit, Sixer, what are you doing in here?”
Ford forces the sandpaper scratching at his sclera to crawl back inside his tear ducts, clears his throat, and turns around to face his brother with a smile betraying his emotions tugging at his cheeks. Stan is standing in the open door, frowning, dressed in a ghastly, flowery button-down with short sleeves, one hand on the frame, his knuckles paler than his arm. Before Ford can repeat his prepared spiel about the benefits of a motor that is smaller than the bread toaster begging for retirement in the shack’s kitchen, Stan interrupts him, his voice a low, rough, and eerie, “I never meant for you to see this.”
Ford stutters on the first vowel of the alphabet, and Stan sighs and lets go of the door frame, then walks to the bed and zips up the suitcase. “You really put a bullet in my plans here, not gonna lie, but since the cat’s out of the bag, there’s no reason to delay killing it.”
Ford’s stomach does not like the tone of his brother’s voice. “You’re being kind of dramatic about my reaction to you having taken your time to pack up for our trip, don’t you think?”
Stan pauses with his hands on the worn leather, emitting another sigh. “You’re smarter than this. If you wanted to fuck around with me, at least do it in a way that aligns with who you are, or you’re just insulting me.”
Ford really wants the proverbial cat to be kept inside the box. He has no need to check its vitals. “Stanley…” The blueprint crinkled up in one, tense hand, he goes to put the other on his brother’s shoulder tentatively. “What’s the matter with you? Do you have second thoughts about leaving?”
Stan does not shrug Ford’s hand off, but he does not exactly react to it either. “Nah, I’m gonna leave alright. Thought that was pretty clear, I packed my favorite pants after all.”
“Then what?” Ford’s fingers are tense with how badly he wants to dig into the bone of his brother’s arm, force him to turn around, grab both his shoulders, and shake him until his neck snaps. “Is it the kids? You miss them?”
Silence. The blueprint paper is wet with palm sweat now.
“Stanley?”
Five fingers find Ford’s with so much gentleness, they could break them, and softly push them away before Stan turns around to face him, though his eyes are looking stiffly at Ford’s chest. “Look, this isn’t something I’m good at. If this had all,” he gestures broadly with both his hands to underline the word, swirling the from the wrist, “gone according to my plan, we wouldn’t have had this conversation at all. It sucks, okay?” He lets his arms fall down and takes a deep breath. “But no, I don’t miss the kids. They’re nice enough, I’m sure, but how can I miss a pair of people I–”
The ice crystallizing in Ford’s stomach at light speed makes his ears ring with tinnitus drowning out Stan’s words, and his entire body feels like it is splitting into a million, tiny glass shards. He almost chokes. Stan looks at him, pity in his eyes, the same kind that Ford suspects he would show a married couple fighting in a supermarket.
“No,” Ford whispers. “You– you remembered. We got you back. I got you back. I showed you our childhood and you laughed and you–”
Stan shakes his head, and the honey-flavored pity is acidic enough to cause the earth between them to feel like a sinkhole waiting to happen.
“If I can apparently play you well enough to trick your weird, demonic ex-whatsitsface that halfway ate your brain, I should damn well be able to put on the act of being myself too, don’t you think?” He sits down on the worn mattress and gestures for Ford to join him with a pat on the quilt. Ford mechanically pushes away an old sweater that did not make the cut and feels the springs creak underneath him. “Look, I’m sorry. I really am. Like I said, I never wanted this mess. You were just supposed to find me gone tomorrow morning, and you could make up a reason that’d let you be angry with me or whatever.”
“Where are you going?” Ford asks, hollow, his glass brain echoing with emptiness.
“Mexico.”
“Why?”
Stan shrugs in the corner of Ford’s vision. “Because it’s hot and cheap, and I found an old picture that seems to suggest I could have a nice life down there.”
“Okay.”
Ford is looking at his hands now, lying lifelessly in his lap, palms up, still holding on to the blueprint that matters so little now. The silence stretches the seconds like a torture bench, and Ford has never felt so painfully alive yet completely comatose before. He wants to be angry. He so badly wants to be angry. He balls the paper up and considers throwing it at a wall, but he cannot let himself do that. Finally, Stan pats his knees and mentions to stand up, but Ford shoots out like a snake and grabs him by the forearm.
“You don’t owe me an explanation. I’m perfectly aware of understanding how, knowing our history yet possessing none of the associated…” Feelings. The lump in his throat refuses the word passage. “Involvement would make you hesitant to accept my offer. I get it. But…”
He looks at Stan, his eyes burning. “Why’d you say yes, then? Why didn’t you turn me down when I asked you to come with me?”
Stan’s eyes flicker over his face for a few seconds, unreadable, before he stands up. As he turns to fully face Ford, his posture straightens to the point of being concave, and the features of his face almost seem to grow to double their size. He reminds Ford of a painted carny back on the pier in New Jersey, only without any rouge or lipstick.
“Ah, it seems we have a customer, ladies and gentlemen! A final, happy soul has made it to the Mystery Shack in the hope of uncovering the secrets and riddles of the universe!” Stan bows all the way down, then back up, both his hands resting on his shirt, grabbing the lapels of an invisible suit jacket. “And it also seems that he knows what he wants! Something so rare and mysterious that it can drive men to war and women to… Whatever the hell women do. What could it be! Luckily at the Mystery Shack, we have all the wonders of the world right at your fingertips!” With his right hand, Stan imitates rummaging inside the jacket, lowering his voice as he hunches over. “And I know just what he wants. He wants closure.”
His face then seems to sink in on itself, like he is a canvas tent that is coming loose at the corners, and his hands still. “But I’m afraid we ran out of that option, son. Sorry about that. Better luck next time.”
Stan brightens a tone and straightens back again, and his laugh is uncomplicated and so normal. “Which is probably for the better. I know I put the scum in ‘scam artist’, but trust me, with the expiration date on that particular stock, keeping it around would have counted as a war crime.” He sighs and shakes his hand. “I was right to throw it out. Should have done that a long time ago, honestly, but there’s no moment like the present, eh?”
Ford’s voice is a hiccup. “But why?”
Stan frowns, and that goddamn pity could kill entire nations. “Everyone loves a happy ending, Ford. But I’ve been the one to sell it to them for too many fucking years, and I’m sick of the aftertaste. You got the Mister Mystery special, the pizzazz and the glitz, and the dreams come true, and I didn’t charge you a single cent because I felt bad. But I also know that if I had had my marbles about me, I wouldn’t have been wrong to refuse you. You wanted closure? After all that shit? Well, that would have cost you.”
Ford gestures to the suitcase, his blood aching. “So what, you think this will make you happy instead?”
Stan smiles, and it does not reach his eyes. “No.” He looks almost serene. “But it’ll keep me busy until I’m bored, and then I’ll find something else to keep me busy, and eventually I’ll be dead, and it won’t be my headache anymore.” He looks at his wrist, whistling. “And since this whole thing is over, I think I can actually catch an earlier departure. When life gives you lemons, I guess.”
Ford does not even want to fight him. He knows he should. He should tackle Stan to the ground and chain him up and try harder to make him remember. It should be possible. It has to be possible. He could replicate some of his memories and engineer them to fit Stan’s point of view, and those that he cannot fix that way, he could…
Stan grabs the handle of the suitcase as easily as a cat, and Ford does not move to stop him.
In the door, Stan pauses, then turns around and Ford hates how the sight of his brother’s face fills him with a warmth that invades all his senses, even though it is so cold.
“Can I give you a piece of advice?”
“If you want to.” Ford hears someone else scoff. “I honestly don’t really care.”
Stan raises his hand and folds the last three fingers into his palm, then clicks his tongue as he imitates shooting a gun aimed at his twin’s forehead.
“You’re not as impossible and mysterious as everyone else seems to assume that you are. You, uh, you know what I mean?”
Ford does not reply, and Stan shrugs and disappears out of the bedroom.
“I don’t.” Ford’s bone marrow creaks like the floorboards in an old, empty house in protest against his words.