“I have to get going.”
“Or actually, no. Maybe it doesn’t matter who did it first because neither of us knew til now that the other one did anything. Eve to the Steve, the whole damn way. I love you, kid. We’ve got a connection. A mystical connection. Kismetic timing. How old was yours? Was it two, but looked four? That would be something.”
“It was twenty-five,” I said.
“Ha! I’ll dig the thing up, Billy. You know that, right? I’ll dig it right up.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Smile for chrissakes.”
“I’m smiling,” I said.
“That just isn’t true.”
He made his way toward the shed, and I to my room. As we passed one another, he handed me my lighter.
* * *
Having spent so much energy forming that marbleshell, Blank’s need to replenish its nutrients was paramount and, although never shy about eating in front of me—apart from rear-ejection production, it wasn’t shy about anything, I don’t think—Blank liked to be “awakened” when I opened its nest, and would, as soon as I’d remove the lid, drop whatever it might be doing, close its eyes, and pretend to sleep, so when I heard, upon my return to my room, the munches and glugs of pellet-mastication that were coming through the vents of the PillowNest’s walls, I, so as not to delay Blank’s nourishment, waited on my bed for the noises to cease. I didn’t have to wait long—maybe five minutes—but still I assumed that when I opened the lid both pellets I’d left would be inside Blank, and the thimble empty.
Not so on either score, however. Nor was Blank fake-asleep. Eyes glassy, though wide and anticipatory, it was sitting, cross-legged, next to the thimble, which was nearly half-full, and an untouched pellet.
“Eat the pellet,” I said, pointing to the pellet.
Blank pointed to the other side of the nest, to the spot on which the dead cure had been lying, and whistled, “Fweep,” i.e. the first (stressed) note of the three-note wolf-whistle most readily associated with hard-hatted men (also the last stressed note of that other famous three-note whistle, the one used to communicate, “Hey, I’m right over here”). In our shared, environmentally overdependent, and, admittedly, quite limited language, fweep meant “the thing/s to which I am referring.” In this case, then: “The Curio that slept over last night,” or, more likely, “What about the Curio that slept over last night?”
I responded, “Fwee-oo,” the second (stressed) and third (unstressed) note of the wolf-whistle (also the first and second of the “over here” whistle), which meant “I’m informing you about the thing/s to which you are referring,” and, given that I paired my fwee-oo with a backward thumbing of the air above my shoulder, here meant, I hoped, “The Curio who slept over last night went away,” rather than “The Curio who slept over last night is no longer alive.”
Again, Blank whistled, “Fweep,” though this time without pointing.
I shrugged because I didn’t know what Blank meant.
Blank shrugged back.
I pointed at the pellet, fweeped, drew an arc through the air from the pellet to Blank while fwee-oo-ing, and repeated the latter whistle-gesture combination another few times til Blank picked up the pellet and took a healthy bite. This seemed to me to indicate it wasn’t upset about whatever news it believed I’d conveyed regarding Triple-J’s cure, and I put it in its sleeve while it continued to eat, filled the sleeve’s dropper at the bathroom sink, and left for the bank.
* * *
The weather called for shorts and a lightweight T-shirt, and I was wearing shorts and a midweight T-shirt. My swollen kidneys were still a bit tender, and my lower back yellow and grayish-green, but I probably would have guessed, if I hadn’t known better, that their stomping had happened two or three days before, rather than only the previous evening. On top of all that, the above-average warmth of the exchange with my father out in the yard had felt almost progressive, and Blank was unbroken—maybe even untouched by—that morning’s potentially traumatic events. I was feeling not-bad. Uniformly okay.
When I got to the bank, Lotta Hogg had a customer—an older, shorter gentleman the hum of whose voice, if not quite the words it shaped, carried all the way across the air-conditioned lobby—but she rocked on her heels a little when she saw me, then flashed me a rather full-bodied smile comprising raised shoulders and a two-handed wave. Her enthusiasm was weirdly contagious: contagious inasmuch as it caused me to pull a silly face in response—a squinty kind of duck-mouthed, brow-flexing face I suppose I could have learned from any number of post-Fonz sitcom handsomes, and was, this face, or so I suppose, intended to communicate, with self-assured irony, something like “What? You’re happy I’m here?”—and weirdly so, I say, because I’d never before then, nor have I ever since then, made that face, at least not as far as I’m able to recall (it was a face I’d held in contempt since adolescence), yet there, at the threshold of General TrustGroup’s Wheelatine branch, I made it automatically, unknowingly at first, and didn’t come alert to it til after I caught myself bending my arms to fire on Lotta from over my heart with make-believe pistols, at which point I proceeded—with success, it would seem—to camouflage the face’s chachi provenance by faking a triplet of dry, dramatic sneezes.
“Gesundheit?” the guard said.
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
“I just didn’t know was it sneezes or coughing.”
“A combination,” I said.
“I notice you seem to have forgotten your hanky.”
“I don’t carry a hanky.”
“Not many do. Not anymore. I bet you wish you did, though, right about now. And they coming back, you know. Handkerchiefs, I’m saying.”
“No,” I said.
“You telling me you don’t wish you had a hanky ’bout now?”
“No,” I said. “I meant that I didn’t know they were back.”
“Not back quite yet, but coming back,” he said. “Sooner than you think. Gonna be how it was. Days when a man without a hanky was trash. Like a man without socks. A man without skivvies. A hanky wasn’t optional. A hanky was pants.”
“What happened?” I said.
“World went to hell. Lost all its decency. Gave up on manners. Combination of that, and the meteorical rise of cheap, disposable tissue in the marketplace coincides with the large-scale manufacture of little plastic packets you could carry in either a purse or rear pocket, and coincides also, same exact time, with widespread, overblown fears and anxieties ’bout viral survival rates, bacterial longevities, plus germinal lingerings, not to mention all the greasers with they catchy slang start calling hankies ‘snot rags,’ which offends the very ears, however, admittedly, fun it is to say. Perfect storm. Sank the noble hanky. Used to be a man wanted him some love he’d look for a woman who was crying at a bar or some party, maybe just a bus stop, and he’d take out his hanky, offer it to her. Let her know he sees her. Kindness of strangers. He’d offer his hanky, which carried his essence—the smell of his pocket, laundry detergent, maybe cologne he was that type of fellow—and could be she’d take it, wipe and blow, smelling that essence, and hand him back some of her fluids folded up, often accompanied by a shy apology. And now maybe he’d tell her to keep the hanky, showing her he rich enough to give away hankies, showing her he kind enough to give away hankies to those in need of hankies even though he can’t afford it, or showing her he find her fluids repulsive. Then again, maybe he’d return it to his pocket, order to demonstrate that even though he rich he’s keeping the hanky cause some of her’s on it, or maybe letting her know the first essence-whiff’s free, but the second, if she wants it, is gonna have strings, or could be he’s just showing her that even in her phlegm-spraying, vulnerable state, she doesn’t disgust him. Any way you cut it, there been fluids produced, essences whiffed, disgust overcome or needing overcoming. Any way you cut it, you’ve got ambiguity. Subtlety. Things unsaid between two people. The hallmarks, my friend, of a classy courtship. Obsolescence of the hanky was a blow to society. Dulled a man’s ability, and to some extent his willingness, to read your more artfully interpersonal-type signals the better half the species tend to want to relay. More rapes, I’d wager, since hankies disappeared, and less romance discovered. More child abuse, too. Wasn’t just the theater of dating got changed since the hanky’s disappearance from everyday life, see. Hear everybody always talking ’bout how disgusting it is when they dad lick his thumbs and scrub at they mouths to get off some dried-out juice or milk or other type of organical crusting, but no one think twice about the father’s side of things. How, first of all, who you know likes scrubbing buildup from another person’s mouth? No one, see? It’s at least as nasty to perform that act as to be subject to that act. At least as nasty. And then second, what? Considering how nasty it is to do, just think about how revolted by the buildup the dads are to begin with to feel like they gotta. If men, like the old days, carried hankies, dads’d use they hankies to scrub the buildup, or give they hankies to they children to scrub the buildup, or, even better, they children would be carrying they own hankies, scrub they own buildup, and if they was unawares of the buildup, they dads would tell them, ‘Take out your hankie and scrub your damn face!’ As you know, however, that’s not how it is. Aint how it’s been for a real long while, and dads, they busy, busy as ever, stressed out as ever, and the need to perform this nasty service—I’m telling you it sending a lot them over the top. Was hankies in play like the old days, man, the number of children could’ve been spared beatings? the number of dads could’ve been spared the guilt comes after beating children? which produces further beatings? sometimes of spouses? sometimes of pets? Boggles the mind. I don’t even like to think about it. Makes me depress. But hankies coming back. The youth of today—oh, hold up— Enjoy your lunch, Mr. Baker.”