This was already the single cutest thing I’d ever witnessed, yet before I even thought to reach down and offer comfort, one of Blank’s welling eyes squeezed out a plump tear, cutening it further. The tear spilled onto the rugburn and puddled, and the pinkened muzzle reddened, visibly swelled. I would not have been surprised to hear a low sizzling or see rising steam, and, for a moment, Blank must have experienced some relief, for its hands ceased to flap, and its posture relaxed. After that moment had passed, however, any cooling effect the tear’s wetness may have had was, it seemed, dramatically reversed by that same tear’s salinity.
Blank’s hands resumed flapping, and its eyes began to gush. The rugburn became increasingly inflamed, and, through trembling lips, which were pursed as if to whistle, my cure began singing its sublime, plaintive painsong.
Something like thirst, or even lust, overcame me. I tried to understand. What more did I want? Shinier tears? Shakier quivering? Richer vibrato? Spazzier hands? I wanted all of those things, but not only those things. I wanted the painsong to sing from my lungs. I wanted Blank’s tears to stream down my face. I wanted its shakes to convulse my own muscles. I wanted to engulf it, to make it a part of me. I wanted to fuse. And I wanted, at last—and for the first time—to crush my cure in my fist and ingest it. Preferably whole. In a long, single swallow.
* * *
—
Though I know how mundane that must seem today, this was still the first half of 1988, and little involving cures was mundane yet. A couple kids, true, had made the nightly news for having gone into overload, but they’d made the nightly news—that seemed to mean that what they’d done was weird. Ghastly, even. It had, at least, seemed that way to me. I’d raised Blank from a marble, and I’d never made it clone, had never fed it formulae (formulae hadn’t been heard of yet; Curios, for that matter, were still branded Botimals; cure overload didn’t even have a name). I had never pinched it, much less punctured it, nor blocked its airways, nor shown it a cat. I’d never pulled any of its limbs from their sockets, nor thrown it down stairs, nor thrown it at a wall. I’d never thrown it.
What I wanted to do made me feel like a monster, yet I didn’t move away. I wasn’t reaching for Blank—I knew I wouldn’t follow through—but I let myself remain there, in that state of total wanting, until the phone rang, and Blank stopped singing.
I lunged across my bed, picked up before the second ring—my father was asleep, still.
“No hyphen,” said Jonboat. “It just—”
“Hold on,” I said. I set the phone down, took the thimble of water from the slot in the PillowNest, and brought it to Blank, which was still on the floor, flapping its hands, looking up at me for guidance. I tapped my mouth with my index finger, then dipped the same finger into the thimble. The cure understood. It dunked its face in, up to the eyes, and as it started to rub the tiny knot on its skull, which had risen on the spot that had smacked the nickel’s rim, I said, “Blank, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” It kept rubbing the spot, kept its face in the thimble. I said, “I’ll never hurt you on purpose again, okay? Kablankey?”
It stopped the rubbing and showed me its palm.
It resumed the rubbing, and I picked up the phone.
“So I was saying no hyphen,” Jonboat said. “It just isn’t needed.”
“You’re right,” I told him. “The hyphen’s implied.”
“You don’t sound like you mean it. You sound all negative.”
“I mean it,” I said.
“I hope so,” said Jonboat. “Cause that hyphen’s an ostrich. Not an ostrich, an aubergine. An ocelot, I mean. Around the shirt’s neck. Dragging us down. Cursing our voyage. I really believe that. Using it’s—what? Inappropriate, right? Not exactly inappropriate, but not quite…I don’t know.”
“It’s pissing through a boner,” I said.
“It’s what? It’s pissing through a boner? You come up with that yourself?”
“Just now,” I said. “Yeah.”
“Nice one!” said Jonboat. “And thanks for the help. Word to the muth, homey. Smellya on the later. Pissing through a boner! You rule, Belt. You rule.”
The compliment rattled me free of my despair, made me like myself a little. I’d even say it buoyed me for a couple of weeks. And when next I looked at Blank, I only wanted to be kind. When its rugburn healed, I would teach it to somersault.
* * *
At a stand beside the bleachers at the baseball season-opener, Jonboat’s driver, Burroughs, was selling the shirts. My father bought two—one for each of us—though only after announcing to Burroughs, and those in line behind us, that I’d “played no small role in designing these garments,” that the catchphrase was, in fact, Magnet-family trademarked, and he was looking forward with great anticipation to toting up our royalties with Jon-Jon Jason over postgame tallboys—“On me!”—at Blimey’s Tavern. He was joking about the royalties. He was, it seemed, proud. He even seemed happy. Laughing it up for the first time in months. Throughout the game, he kept pointing at his chest (he was wearing the shirt), patting my arm, saying, “Nice work, son.”
Jonboat pitched a no-hitter, stole home twice, hit one RBI, and was given the game ball.
On the drive home, my dad tuned to 88.1, community radio, to hear the local sports show. An interviewer said, “We’re live in the dugout with Jonny ‘Jonboat’ Pellmore-Jason and his Washington Mustangs, who Jonboat just led to a ten-to-nada, no-hitter victory over the mighty Twin Groves Eagles. Now, Jonboat, I’m serious here: What gives? In fall you’re a triple-doubling center one day, and the next you’re a golden-armed-quarterback-slash-blitz-a-quarter-nose-tackle. That’s confusing enough. Now it’s spring and you’re telling me you’ve pitched a no-hitter and gotten on base at your every at bat? How do you do it? Is there anything can stop you?”
“I don’t know,” Jonboat said. “I really don’t know. I guess I try to keep my head down and do the necessary work. This is sports. It’s for real. It matters to people. I think others could do the same things I do. Other teams could do the same things we do. The physical machinery, it’s there to be honed. To be made useful. I really believe that. I mean, you saw the Eagles. It’s not like they’re shrimpy. They’ve got legs, arms, and eyes. Brains in their heads. They’ve got the same equipment we Mustangs have. It’s just they’re not willing to put in the work. They’re—I don’t know. I guess…How can I put it? They’re pissing through a boner.”
“Come again, Jonboat?” the interviewer said. “I didn’t quite get that.”