“The original?” Jonboat said.
“Of the saying,” said Chad-Kyle. “That’s all I’ve been getting at. It’s much better the original way. With the gaylord. Without the gaylord, it’s kinda pissing through a—”
“Well—”
And then I was on him. I don’t remember having gotten on him. I don’t even remember having picked up the helmet. I do have a memory of holding on to it, my fore- and middle finger hooked through the feed port, and, while in midair (I must have leapt a little), pulling back high and wide to swing, but that memory’s thin, a flash, half-erased. What I remember with clarity is being on him, one knee on his chest, the other on the floor, between his elbow and his ribs, and raising the helmet, both-handed, for a second blow, while rotating it so I could strike with the visor. I remember thinking, as I raised the helmet, that his mess of a face—some teeth were broken, his lips were shredded—was not that hard, that that was too bad, and that I should have initially struck him overhanded, visor-first, and on the crown, when I’d had greater leverage, that maybe the visor would have fractured on his skull, and I remember then thinking that maybe the second blow, the blow I was about to bring down on his nose, should be to his forehead, that maybe the visor would fracture on his forehead, but also thinking that first I’d prefer to cave his nose, to spread it out, and I heard my name being shouted then, “Belt!” and I thought it was the helmet, but it wasn’t the helmet, it was Burroughs who’d shouted, and I thought I should have known that—what inan had ever gotten my name right?—and I turned in his direction, in Burroughs’s direction, saw his jacket was aflap, that there was something in his hand, he’d taken something from his jacket that was black and glossy and he was pointing it down at me and telling me to stop, and I turned away from him, bringing down the helmet as hard as I could, aiming, after all, for forehead—it would be my last chance, I knew; the helmet’s last chance, I knew—and just before the impact, my bangle flared, white-silver and dazzling as a popping flashbulb, and a bolt of excruciation ripped through me, slamming my eyes shut, squeezing them shut, and I felt as though my every muscle, on fire, were attempting to flee, to scream and twitch and wrench and tear free of anything binding, and then I went sideways, and knocked myself out, epileptically flopping around.
* * *
Some number of seconds or minutes later, my eyes came open. I was lying on the floor and sucking hard air, hearing the voice of Burroughs from above—he was seated in Jonboat’s chair behind the desk. “What you remember doesn’t matter,” Burroughs said. And what a horrible thing it was to say, I thought. You don’t say that to people. You’re not supposed to. Especially not when it’s true. You just don’t.
Defensive and indignant, I sat bolt upright, regretted it instantly. Every soft part of me was barely-wet cement, was as stiff and as sore as my biceps and back had been after the dumbbells at Sally the Balls’s. Plus it turned out Burroughs hadn’t been addressing me.
“I want my phone back, now,” said Chad-Kyle. Through his torn-up lips and broken teeth, my sounded like ny, and phone like phthone.
Hands were reaching down to me.
“As soon as you show us you’re ready,” Burroughs told him.
The hands reaching down to me were Valentine’s hands. He took hold of my elbows and pulled me to my feet. Faced me toward the side of the desk, on which I leaned. “Alright?” he said softly. “You’re gonna be alright. We can’t give you aspirin cause it thins the blood and you got concussed, but I’ve been zapped before, all of us have, and you take yourself a walk in the sun, drink some water, and before you know it, the pain—”
“You phthlucking dick,” Chad-Kyle spat at me. He was slumped in the chair I’d formerly occupied, and Duggan was behind him—or perhaps it was Hogan—holding him in place by both of his shoulders. His nose wasn’t spread, nor his forehead marked—I must not have landed the second blow—but his mouth looked like a chewed three-cube wad of Wild Cherry Bubble Yum. He wiped blood and spit from his chin with his handkerchief. The monogram, as Gus had told me, looked crowded. “You psychopapthlic phthlucking pthussy,” he said. “You vlindsided ne, and it’s phthlucking plfathetic. In a pfair pfight, I’d’ve wiped the phthlucking pfloor with you.”
I had never thought of myself as a hardass, nor had I begun to, but Chad-Kyle was, fundamentally, a bleeder—recognizable as such upon first glance—and a scrawny one at that (no fewer than thirty pounds my inferior), so for him to believe that the two of us could even have a fair fight, let alone one from which he’d walk away victorious, was so outlandish as to be almost cute, and that almost-cuteness—even more than the condition in which I’d left his face, even more than all his slurped, Loony-Toonsy bilabials—inspired me, in the wake of his rant; caused me to feel so emboldened and Clydely as to stare, without expression, into his eyes, while slow-motion miming—like both Trip and Magnet had earlier, but better—the manual penetration of not just one but two tight little anuses, after which (i.e. once my hands had fully balled into fists), I Fonzily raised and wagged both thumbs.
“You’re sick,” said Chad-Kyle. “Disturved. You’re disgusting. And you’re all so in trouvle. This is totally illegal.”
“What’s illegal,” Burroughs told him, “is overloading on a priceless Curio that doesn’t belong to you. And when you clobber a man in the side of the head, a well-meaning man who’s just trying to stop you—a well-meaning man who’s a guest in the home of the man to whom that Curio belonged, no less—when you knock a well-meaning man unconscious in the course of committing a property crime he’s trying to prevent—that’s also illegal.”
“The cure’s right there on the glove!”
“That’s a clone.”
“Vullshit! If I did what you said, you’d ve calling the cops. He’d ve calling the cops.”
“We have no time for cops,” Burroughs said. “They come around here, question all the witnesses—it takes a while. Mr. Pellmore-Jason’s got business to attend to. A life to lead. A plane to catch. And Belt here understands all of that. He’d never call the cops and inconvenience this compound.”
“Vullshit, man. Vullshit. You’d sue ne for that cure if I did what you said.”
“The Pellmore-Jasons have never been litigious. They’ve always preferred to take care of matters by talking them through, like we’re doing right now.”
“Yeah right.”
“Should we sue you, do you think? Is that what you’re trying to say? I mean, maybe…”
“Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah right, and what? Fmy fmouth just exfploded? Tell that to the judge.”