“Hear hear,” said Chaz Jr. “And Chaz agrees, too.”
“I do agree, too. That’s the truth,” said Chaz. “Not to mention Lyle, who agrees, too, also.”
“And I would wager my trousers Triple-J agrees as well. Triple-J!” Lyle shouted to the boy near the slide. “Come on over here, chap! We need your help. You need to vouch for your opinion.”
“What opinion?” Triple-J said.
“Your opinion that this fellow should let us hold his cure.”
“I’m occupied, Lyle-san,” Triple-J said. His voice sounded like someone’s. I couldn’t place whose. I didn’t know any kids.
“Are you beginning without us, Triple-J?” said Lyle. “Don’t begin without us!”
“I’m starting,” Triple-J said. He backed up away from the slide a few yards and sidearmed something from his pocket at it. Probably a rock. The sound of the impact was a flat, raspy click.
I remembered the tract of shallow dings I’d noticed earlier.
“He started without us! Wait a minute, Triple-J. We’ll be there in a minute. Come on, lads, let’s go.”
“Hold up,” said Chaz. “I think first we should ask this kind citizen here to quote us a price for that bugger in his shirt.”
“That’s clever. I like it. You heard the gent, mud. How much’ll you sell it for? I’ve got fifty clams in this very billfold. Will fifty cut the mustard?”
Triple-J whipped something else at the slide. Another raspy click.
“What are you doing to the slide?” I said.
Triple-J ignored the question, or failed to hear it.
“ ‘The slide,’ ” Chaz said. “ ‘The slide,’ the man says.”
“Don’t insult the man, Chaz, for the man will speak nonsense. That is the lesson he means us to take. And take it we shall. That adorable bugger’s worth eighty beans, easy, sure as I’m standing here.”
“One hundred at that, Chaz Jr.,” Bryce said.
“One hundred’s high, Bryce. That’s four new, factory-sealed, LuckTest EmergeRigs—six, by golly, on three-for-two Tuesdays over at A(cute)rements. High odds from six marbles we’d emerge one just as cute.”
“Be reasonable, Chaz. You know that’s not true. You saw how it was sneaking—it had to learn that. It isn’t a baby. It’s at least what, two, even three years old, hey.”
“Bryce is right,” said Lyle. “The price is wrong. And when I think about it sneaking, I just want to—dear! I just want to pin it to a wall with my thumb is what I want. I want to pin it to a wall by the throat and mash…mash its rootin-tootin face in slowly with a twig til it…”
“Pops?”
“Til it pops! Yes, indeed. Til it pops and gushes forth. Now hear me out, mud. Lucre we’ve got. On loot we’re not short. Fifty a chap is two hundred, I say, two-fifty assuming Triple-J pitches in, and we’ll call it a deal, yes, hey, what, word?”
Triple-J’s arm blurred. No raspy click. “Bullseye,” he said.
I said, “What’s your friend doing?”
“He’s starting without us. Word up now, I say, let’s settle our business.”
“My cure’s not for sale.”
“Everything’s for sale.” “All our fathers say so.” “Indubitably.”
“I don’t know your fathers.”
“Very few do.” “If any at all.” “And especially not you.” “Our fathers are beyond you.” “They’re beyond even us.” “Light-years beyond us.” “Not quite as many light-years as they are beyond you, though.” “Let us cease speaking of our fathers at once.” “Yes, enough about our fathers.” “Name us your price.”
“Really, guys,” I said. I stood up to go home, and to get, on my way, a closer look at whatever Triple-J was doing. The four formed a semicircle, blocking my path. I took a step to the right, to get around them, and Chaz kicked my thigh. It was not a strong kick.
He said, “Consider that a warning. Forewarned is fore—”
I pushed him harder than I meant to. He fell on Chaz Jr. and they both hit the SafeSurf. Bryce put his fists up, and I knew he couldn’t hurt me—he could hardly have reached my chin if he’d uppercut—but my cure was vulnerable, there in my shirt, and the pleasure I took in striking Bryce’s forehead with the heel of my palm was greater than I would have liked to admit. His neck bent back, and his hat popped off. Beneath the hat he was yellowly mohawked. He did not look okay. Twice he whimpered, “No,” and his eyes started streaming. He lunged forward anyway. I caught him by the throat and threw him back at the fence, which bounced him to his ass on the gravelly strip. He sat there and wept. Lyle ran away. I looked at what I’d done, knew I needed to fix it. I moved first to Chaz Jr.—after all, he’d done the least—but before I had the chance to extend my hand, something crunched against my temple, stung my left eye shut.
I heard hurried footfalls. My left cheek was cool. I touched it—wet. Blood. Mine. Where was Triple-J? I turned toward the slide. He was crouching before me.
Crouching? Why?
He sweep-kicked my ankles.
I fell on the SafeSurf, cradling my cure, and he jumped on my kidneys—just once—and leapt aside.
“We done?” he said.
The pain was too much for a mere pair of organs. It throbbed all the way to the ends of my extremities.
“Yes,” I gasped. “Done.”
“You sure?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Go home,” he told his friends, “and don’t forget your stupid hats, you stupid bunch of fucking idiots.”
* * *
—
As the remaining three Yachts donned their caps and limped off, Triple-J lit a smoke and perched atop the motorcycle bouncetoy’s sidecar, pressing a whale song out of its spring. “I don’t feel good,” he told me, “about you being hurt.” Then the middle of his chest started blinking bright orange and giving off beeps. He tapped the brightest part with the heel of his palm: one, one-two, one-two, one-two. The beeping continued. “Pain in the fucking dick,” he mumbled, and, lipping his smoke, fished a vitreous pendant up out of his collar. He tapped at the thing with his index finger: one, one-two, one-two, one-two. It ceased to beep, blinked green, went dark.