“We’ve been over this, son. You cracked your mouth on the edge of the desk, falling down after I, unfortunately, had to bangle-taze you from fear that you were going to kill our well-meaning guest, who you’d just cold-cocked for trying to stop you from dacting that priceless cure that wasn’t yours.”
“You vangle-tazed him! He was trying to kill ne.”
“Being electrocuted,” Burroughs said, “can do some rather strange things to the brain. Cause retrograde amnesia. Déjà vu. Brief, waking dreams. General confusion and emotional disturbances. Like what’s happening here. To you.”
“It really doesn’t make any sense,” said Duggan or Hogan. “The way you’re acting.”
“It’s like: you’re telling my dad he saved your life,” said Valentine, pausing briefly to micro-shrug and -grimace before he continued: “Like you say that Burroughs, here, tazed another man to save your life, but you’re not acting toward Burroughs like someone whose life just got saved by him, you know? You’re not acting very grateful to Burroughs at all.”
“How you’re acting is difficult,” said Duggan or Hogan.
“Vecause that was vefore!” Chad-Kyle said.
“What was before?” Burroughs said.
“That you saved fmy life. Cone on! Now it’s all different. Now you’re phthucking with ne! I renenver what happened.”
“But what you remember doesn’t matter,” Burroughs said. “I told you that already. We’re going in circles.”
“Jonvoat Pfelnore-Jason would never let you do this. I want to see Jonvoat.”
“So does everyone. It’s not gonna happen.”
“Then I want to see Tripfle-J.”
“You’ll never be within sight of him again.”
“Better to forget you ever met Triple-J,” Duggan or Hogan said.
“Probably you should never even say his name again,” said Valentine. “Someone might overhear you, and think you’re making threats even if you aren’t, and then it gets back to us, and your life gets hard. You know how it is.”
“I can’t phlucking velieve this.”
“Which part?” said Hogan/Duggan. “Like you think you’ll get an audience with Mr. Pellmore-Jason?”
“You think you should say Trip’s name again?” said Valentine. “You think you should threaten Mr. Pellmore-Jason’s son?”
“You know that’s not what I fmeant.”
“So what did you mean?” said Hogan/Duggan.
“What exactly,” said Valentine, “don’t you believe?”
“What you guys are saying haffened to me!”
“Well that’s no problem,” Burroughs said. “You don’t have to believe that.”
“Yeah,” said Duggan/Hogan. “You don’t even have to believe we believe it.”
“All you gotta believe is that everyone else will believe we believe it. And they’ll believe he believes it,” said Valentine, nudging me, “and they’ll believe that Mr. Pellmore-Jason and Trip believe it, too. That’s a lot of people who everyone will believe believe it. That’s what? That’s six. That’s six people, and you’re just one. Just one lonely fellow. Lonesome fellow? I’m not sure what the difference is. It’s probably not important. You’re one guy alone, and you’re a spidger, too. There’s also that. We got a photo of your pipe, your little baggie, your little vial of oil—from the scanner, you know? We take photos of everything that goes through the scanner. That kind of thing really compromises you in these United States. So you’re a lonesome, lonely, compromised notary who has problems with drugs, and you’re all alone. No one will believe you, except maybe you, which no one here faults you for, but everyone everywhere else will fault you for, if you challenge the beliefs they believe we believe in front of anyone else. That came out sounding really confusing, huh? All I mean is that, when you leave here today, we hope you feel completely empowered to believe anything you want to believe, because, first of all, we’re all Americans here, and believing anything you want to believe is a big part of believing in yourself, in America, and it’s a great thing to do—we want you to do it. And that brings me to second-of-all. We want you to believe in yourself in America, Brad-Cory, because the other big part of believing in yourself in America is believing in your value—in the value of yourself—and we hope you believe in yourself in America enough to value yourself highly enough that you don’t keep acting in ways that could get yourself really hurt really permanently and really soon if you keep making us feel like we have to convince you to believe in yourself in the way I just described.”
“Do you believe in yourself?” Duggan/Hogan said.
“Okay,” said Chad-Kyle, welling eyes aimed down at his lap.
“ ‘Okay’?” Duggan/Hogan said. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll stofp.”
“Stop what?” said Valentine.
“I’ll stofp acting in ways like however you said. Unfpatriotic. I won’t call the pflolice. I won’t say anything you don’t want ne to say.”
“What if someone asks you about your face?” said Duggan/Hogan.
“I’ll say I knocked this psycho out, and then I fell and hit the desk, after I got zapfed.”
“What will you say if you’re asked why you got zapped?”
“What do you want ne to say?”
“You should say you were acting like an asshole, and you deserved it,” Duggan/Hogan said.
“You could say that,” said Valentine. “Or, if you’re in a different kind of mood, you could kind of turn the thing around, you know? Be stoic about it. Like, sure, you were electrocuted and your face got wrecked, and it was completely humiliating when it happened, but, on later reflection, you’ve come to see that dacting that rare and priceless cure was a unique and beautiful experience you couldn’t have had without facing those consequences, and if you had the chance to do the whole thing over, you’d probably do it exactly the same. All your suffering has been worthwhile.”
“Okay,” said Chad-Kyle. “Then that’s what I’ll say.”
“Do we believe him?” said Burroughs.
“I do,” Duggan/Hogan said.
“I believe him,” said Valentine.
Burroughs pushed Chad-Kyle’s phone across the desk. “I believe him, too,” he said. “Now get him home safe.”