“That’s what Dr. Manx said, but the manual only says that for the first seven days I should cuddle it more than anyone else does. It doesn’t say someone else can’t—”
“Still, though, I think we should play it safe and listen to Dr. Manx.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I think it’s imprinted. I really do. You saw how it looked at me. Did you see how it looked at me?”
“How about I just help you name it,” she said. “It needs a name. Though, actually, I think it needs a bath more than that. That dried-out blue stuff can’t be very comfortable. Looks kind of sticky.”
She was right about the bath. The manual said that was the first thing to do. “How do you think I should wake it?” I said.
“Poke it a little? Maybe blow on its face?”
I blew on its face. It shuddered and gasped and its eyes went wide. Then, reaching out a hand as it had before, it sneezed twice drily.
“It sneezes!” said my mother. “Oh, Belt, it sneezes. That’s just too—oh! That’s just too much. Do it again. Belt, blow on it again.”
I blew on it again, and again it showed its hand to me and said its name twice.
* * *
Next morning, at breakfast, my father fed Kablankey a cube of diced onion dusted in cayenne. This wasn’t, I don’t think, a sadistic act, but rather just a heedless one. He’d slid the onion from between the oily lips of his own “murder omelet,” a dish that neither my mother nor I could ever stomach despite its being his special favorite, which seemed, at times, to make him feel lonely, and regularly left him, perhaps half-jokingly (though no more than half-), lamenting the absence of in-house comrades with whom to share its ostensible pleasures. On top of that, the onion wasn’t—not by a long shot—the most piquant of the omelet’s ingredients; had his aims been cruel, he would have, I’d have thought, excised a sliver of pickled sport pepper, fresh jalapeño, or spicy giardiniera to feed to Kablankey. Then again, though, you never really knew with him. I never knew. He was verging on a three-day ice-fishing weekend, and as soon as his shift at the plant was over, Rick and Jim would pick him up and they’d head for Wisconsin, which meant, above all, that his spirits were high, and high spirits often led him toward the kind of boyish mischief that could, I suppose, as easily be adjudged malicious as playful. He was, in such spirits, no less likely to tickle a baby than heckle a busker (assuming both a baby and a busker were at hand). He might startle a sleeper, or hiss at a cat, swipe a cherry off the top of somebody’s sundae, pitch Amway to Girl Scouts out selling cookies, pitch cookies to Witnesses, Girl Scouts to Mormons, ask a mime what exactly she’s trying to say, challenge a granny to drag-race for pink slips, challenge a banker to pull on his finger, rip a loud fart then accuse you of farting…
He wasn’t easy to read, but whatever the nature of my father’s motivation, I was heedless for sure. When he offered Blank his onion-riding knuckle, I didn’t try to stop him—didn’t even think to. Blank opened wide, received the cube on its tongue, clamped down, sucked, and gave out a strangling noise. After a second, its pupils went pinpoint. Its tail began to thrash.
“Spit it out,” I said. “Spit it out, Kablankey. Spit it.”
Its panicked pulse visibly throbbed in its abdomen. It slapped at its face, left-right-left.
“Spit,” my mom said.
“It won’t,” I said. “It won’t.”
“No, you,” she said, “you.” She made a kind of spitting sound: “Tew. Ptewooie!”
My eyes locked on Blank’s, I mimicked my mother. “Tew. Ptewooie!”
“ə. ə-ə-ə!” Blank said, still flailing and slapping.
“Use this,” said my mother, and pushed a piece of toast at me.
I bit off some crust, spit the crust out.
Kablankey understood. It lowered its head, gobbed the onion on my wrist. Then it locked eyes with me again, and painsang. Given Blank’s age, the song was, of course, bent—way off-key, and a little off-time—but none of us knew that. All of us cooed. Even my father. “Jesus,” he said. “It really is adorable. Who’d believe it? And to think I said it was a placebo, you know?”
“Don’t feed it onions again,” I said. “Don’t even feed it anything.”
“I’m sorry I did that, Billy. I am,” my dad said. “This thing, I gotta tell you—it’s really something. The way it’s singing? I’m kind of having a moment, here. I mean, am I crazy? I really feel like one of those old, cheek-pinching biddies, right now. Some over-kissy granny. I look at that thing, and I just want to, you know—I just want to squeeze it. Eat it right up.”
* * *
By the time Kablankey had ceased to painsing (I’d had it lick a dab of yogurt off a spoon), I knew I’d bring it with me, concealed, to school. If I left it at home, I’d miss it too much, and, after all, this was a Thursday—I had Health instead of Gym—so there’d be no call for me to take off my hoodie.
I went up to my room as if to put Blank away, closed the lid of the PillowNest, then ran back downstairs and out the front door, shouting over my shoulder at my parents, “I’m late!”
Blank couldn’t possibly have been easier to hide. Through all my morning classes, it was so still and quiet, I kept pushing warmth- and breath-seeking fingers under my cuff to make sure it was alive. When, despite feeling warmth, I wasn’t sure I felt breath, I’d get a pass to the bathroom, where I’d pull back my sleeve behind the door of a stall, and say hi til Blank opened its eyes and schwa’d.
Gradually, my sudden-infant-death-fear faded. During lunch, it began giving way to a confidence I hadn’t possessed in at least a couple months, a sense that happy endings weren’t impossible. The other shoe may have yet had to drop, but then again maybe not: maybe Blank’s hatch was the other dropped shoe.
At recess, I waited by the dumpsters for Stevie, trying to determine which of two mutually exclusive scenarios would be more likely to lead to romance—the intimate one in which we’d share a cigarette, or the smooth-move one where, as she came around the corner, she’d witness me lighting two Quills at once—but she arrived before I could come to a decision.
She lit her own Quill, and said, “We’re moving away.”
Still riding the joy wave of Kablankey’s hatch’s potential other-shoeness, still thrilled I got to smoke with the coolest girl I knew, I thought Stevie was speaking about me and her; I thought she was speaking figuratively; I thought she was saying we were moving away, as in from one another, which, given the crooked set of her mouth, the crack in her voice, and the downward-looking eyes, strongly suggested that she wished it were the opposite, i.e. that she wished we were moving closer.