Kablankey plugged his thimble back in its slit, stood up, reached out and said, “Anks, anks,” so I dropped a clean handkerchief over its head, and once it found its way out from underneath, it throat-cleared and pratfell, and sat where it had stood. It brow-wiped, then grabbed two fistfuls of hankie from the floor of the nest, covered its muzzle, and performed a noisy nose-blow—something I’d never before seen it do—and, as if that weren’t adorable enough, turned to face me in the wake of the nose-blow, and, with Groucho-grade timing, flexed its eyebrows.
“That was great,” I said laughing. “That was so great.”
Blank nose-blew noisily and eyebrow-flexed for minutes, and I laughed and praised it in response for minutes, until, all at once, the new gag had been driven straight into the ground.
I wiped my eyes, sighed, and reached a hand in the nest so Blank would climb on and we could go downstairs and I could warm up some pizza, but, drunk as I was, the angle at which I offered my palm was a little too lazy, a bit too not-flush with the floor of the nest, thus communicating “Gimme” more than “Climb on,” and so, instead of climbing on, Blank, like one making a bed does with blankets, grasped two corners of the twisted-up hankie and snapped it out, so it billowed and flattened, then let it sail down to cover my hand and part of my forearm. And what was this, now? The handkerchief was damp? The handkerchief was damp and the damp part was…green? Wet? Gross. Poor little guy. I must have, when I’d first draped the handkerchief over it, used the one I’d sneezed in; I’d meant to use a clean one, a fresh one from the pack. And I’d been sure that I had. Then again I’d been drunk. Not quite as drunk as I was right then, but I must have been drunker than—
Blank Allen-throat-cleared three times in a row, and wiped at its brow, and throat-cleared again. The handkerchief I’d sneezed in was in my other hand, the hand that wasn’t holding the hankie Blank had given me. I dropped both hankies and lifted Blank out of the nest by the shoulders. I showed it the window, the sun in the window. It sneezed. Not drily. Sneezed on the window. On the glass were dots of matter. Green dots of matter. Nor did the sneeze sound at all like kablankey. It was only one syllable. It sounded like merf.
And just like that, I was no longer drunk.
* * *
The receptionists at the first three animal hospitals I called all thought I was pranking them; two found the “prank” funny, the third did not, they all hung up on me. However, the receptionist at Paws & Wings of Deerbrook Park—although she did laugh, and had to put me on hold to find out whether the vet treated cures—gave me an appointment for three that afternoon.
The only safe way to let a vet examine Blank would be to hide its face behind some kind of mask, but Blank could hardly stand to wear a mask, and the only way to keep it from removing a mask—as I’d learned during our second Halloween together, when we’d gone out trick-or-treating as Robins—was for me to wear a mask that matched its own, but our old Robin masks, which I found in one of my under-bed boxes, concealed less face than I’d remembered it concealing, plus we had a full hour before our appointment, so I, Blank in-sleeve, returned to A(cute)rements and bought a matched set of luchador costumes I’d noticed earlier, in the Discount aisle.
I set Blank on the dash in the A(cute)rements parking lot and unpacked the box containing the costumes. I put on the larger mask (blue with white lightning bolts over the eyes) and showed Blank the smaller one (white with blue lightning bolts). “Anks,” Blank said, and I helped it roll the mask down over its head, put it back in the CureSleeve, closed the CureSleeve, removed my mask, and drove to the vet’s.
We were half an hour early. I chain-smoked Quills in the truck in the lot, and tried my best to reason through my swelling guilt and panic, panic-first.
All we needed was antibiotics. That’s how I started. That’s what I had to keep reminding myself. All we needed was antibiotics because psittacosis, if caught in time, was curable with antibiotics. It said so in the manual, which I double-, then triple-checked in the truck (I’d brought the manual along to do just that):
Illness
BOTIMALS® are hardy robots with rugged immune systems. They are impervious to most illnesses from which human beings suffer, including the common cold. Psittacosis (or Chlamydophila psittici), which is often present in pigeon guano, can infect BOTIMALS®, causing any or all of the following symptoms: scaly skin; a general loss of pluck; misshapen, though firm, rear ejections; and, eventually, death. If your BOTIMAL® shows signs of infection, make an appointment with a qualified veterinarian (one who treats pet birds). The vet will administer a simple blood test and, if the BOTIMAL® is diagnosed with psittacosis, prescribe a course of antibiotics. Until the course of antibiotics has been completed, you should allow your BOTIMAL® an extra two or three hours of sleep per night, cuddle it for an extra hour a day, refrain from putting your mouth on it, and be sure to wash your hands with soap after each cuddling session.
(NOTE: Dust, blasts of air, and sudden exposure to bright light, especially sunlight, can cause some BOTIMALS® to sneeze drily. Many of them seem to delight in it. Sneezing is not a sign of illness in BOTIMALS®, so if yours starts sneezing, don’t be alarmed. Enjoy the show.)
Although, actually, no, it didn’t—it didn’t actually say so. Not explicitly. It didn’t explicitly say that antibiotics would cure psittacosis, but it was—relax, Belt—it was strongly implied. Why would a vet prescribe antibiotics if antibiotics couldn’t do the job?
Nor was there anything in the manual about nasal discharge, let alone green nasal discharge, and there was nothing about having trouble breathing or swallowing (either or both of which, I’d started to fear, were just what Blank’s frequent throat-clearing indicated). On the other hand, the brow-wiping—and maybe, now that I thought about it, also the pratfalls and the reluctance to play any of our more physical games—may have been a sign of what the manual referred to as “a loss of pluck.” What was “a loss of pluck” if not exhaustion, right? And what was falling down and wiping one’s brow if not a signifier of exhaustion?
One way, then, to think about the nasal discharge and perhaps the throat-clears (in the end, maybe the throat-clears would turn out not to be symptoms of anything; would turn out to be just the overused gag I’d previously been assuming they were)—one way to think about the nasal discharge and/or the throat-clears was that they were positive signs. They were positive signs, maybe, inasmuch as maybe what they indicated was that Blank was maybe yet in a very early stage of the infection. Maybe some Curios were able to beat psittacosis on their own, and so it was inadvisable to medicate them before the other symptoms the manual listed (i.e. scaly skin, misshapen ejections) were manifest because antibiotics should never be used unless completely necessary. That was a thing I’d heard. About antibiotics. That they shouldn’t be used unless completely necessary because they were somehow bad for the environment, or they made diseases stronger, something like that. I hadn’t heard it til the 1990s, true, but that didn’t mean the experts weren’t saying it back in the 1980s, when the manual was written. The experts very well may have been saying it back in the 1980s, and, for reasons of public health, the authors of the manual, who’d maybe listened to the experts more closely than I had—maybe the authors of the manual didn’t wish to encourage any unnecessary use of antibiotics, and so maybe they figured that, because green nasal discharge was only a sign that the cure was at an early stage of psittacosis infection (i.e. a stage at which it might fight the infection and recover on its own, without the aid of antibiotics), if green nasal discharge was only a sign that the cure was at an early stage of psittacosis infection—maybe the authors of the manual determined that it was better for the public health not to include in the manual any mention of green nasal discharge (or trouble breathing or swallowing) because the Curio was, while still at the green nasal discharge– (and/or trouble breathing– and/or trouble swallowing–) phase, as likely as not to be able to beat the psittacosis on its own, i.e. without adding more antibiotics into the antibiotic-saturated environment. Maybe I was panicking for nothing. Panicking because I hadn’t been told explicitly, by the authors of the manual, that I shouldn’t panic about green nasal discharge, etc.