The two Irishmen: one sat with his head tilted slightly to the left, his fingers tracing the soft contour of his lips, the other with a pointed, firm expression capped by his disheveled hair. She leaned further over the table and whispered, "Well, ought this be fiction or ought this be real?"

Almost immediately, the daydreamer stopped playing with his lips and snapped, "I don't understand the question."

The other hit his brother. "Shut it up, Murphy." They retaliated annoyed glances as the attention focused, again, on the woman across the table. "What do you mean?"

"I'm the writer," she said simply. "There are several hundred different versions of your stories floating around on desks and computer monitors, and I'm the one who is writing most of them."

Murphy spoke. "Connor, d'you hear that? They're writing about us. Heh." He tapped his cigarette to the ashtray. "Two meat packers out of Boston. Must be our dashing good looks, aye?"

She smiled as Connor rolled his eyes. "You're writing about us?" he asked.

"Yes. Although, it isn't just me, and it's not always about your fighting."

"What do they write about us, then?"

"The two have you, collectively, have had seventy-nine ex-lovers with fifty-three bastard children, you've assassinated your father four times, you've made love to individual women eighty-six times, you've made love to each other fifteen times, you've been in ninety-two bar fights, you've met seventeen other fictional characters from twelve other movies and you've hit a body count of one hundred and seven." She folded her small notebook, which contained these statistics.

Murphy and Connor stared at her blankly for several enormously exaggerated moments, the only sounds being the background noise of clinking glasses and muffled laughter in the tavern. After a very long while, Murphy spoke, "So… So I've made love to Connor how many times?"

"What they are writing about you isn't as important as what I'm asking; I want to write about you because I think the two of you are blossoming bits of fiction ready to be brought to the world in good light. What I want to know is how you want to be portrayed. You can be Connor and Murphy, the two meatpacking twins from Boston who have a slight gun fetish."

Connor and Murphy exchanged a subtle smile.

"You can be Connor and Murphy with an extraordinarily shady past with superhuman abilities and multiple lovers."

"The multiple lovers bit doesn't sound so bad," joked Connor.

"Or," she said as she adopted a soft and deep tone, "you could choose to be who you were truly born to be; Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus, playing the parts of imaginary, nonexistent Irish twins in a movie challenging ethics and judgment."

All three were quiet, and two pairs of eyes stared back at her in disbelief.

She drummed her nails lightly on the table and waited for the silence to blow over.

"You truly are the writer," said Murphy.

She nodded.

"And you truly can make us out to be whatever we choose to be?"

She nodded.

Murphy was first to speak. "Well, I want a nine inch cock."

"What the fuck, mate?" exclaimed Connor. "Of all the things in all the world, the first thing you jump for is your pride and joy?"

"And why the fuck not?" asked Murphy with his exuberant, playful smile.

"Because she doesn't want to write about your cock, she wants to know what you want to be."

"I want to be a man with a nine inch knocker."

They watched her stifle a giggle.

"All right, all right, I'm just messing with you," said Murphy stubbing out his cigarette with a boyish grin. He looked to his brother, Connor, as Connor ruffled his hair. "But I don't want to have to make love to my brother and that's that. That whole gay love thing's all too weird for me. Besides, Agent Smecker's got that covered."

Connor and Murphy's eyes squinted in laughter as they toasted to themselves and indulged in their drinks.

"We could do positively anything, Murphy."

"My God, you're right." They turned to the writer. "You can make us do anything."

She nodded. "Aye. What do you want to do?"

Murphy MacManus and Connor MacManus looked at each other for a few brief moments, smiled, and turned back to her. "We want a drink, and to be on our way."

The writer nodded.

Connor and Murphy drained the last of their glasses, nodded to the writer, grabbed their respective coats, and left the tavern together as nothing more than two twin brothers who lived in South Boston.