There was something deeply wrong with the rhythm.
“First of all,” I said, “why would she have to borrow your phone if you’re both going back to the same home, home, home?”
Todd pulled his ear and thought hard. For the first time in about a decade, Todd took his eyes off the TV. He reveres Malik so much, it hurts to witness. “Okay, well, I’d have to say, my main feedback is ‘phone’ and ‘bold’ for sure don’t rhyme. The white gold thing was nice. But I don’t think she smells like roses. Does she actually smell like roses?”
Malik shrugged. “How should I know.”
“She does,” I admitted. “Like a funeral.”
Then a commercial came on for some crazy Vacca Vale tourism campaign.
We all watched the commercial in silence until it came to an end.
“Such garbage,” commented Malik.
“Vacca Vale: Welcome Home,” scoffed Todd, but he looked sort of emotional to me. “What the hell kinda slogan is that.”
“More like—Vacca Vale: Don’t Touch the Rust,” said Malik.
“Vacca Vale: Excuse Me, Sir, Are You Lost?” I added.
“Vacca Vale: We’ll Clean It Up in the Morning,” said Todd.
We laughed. We warmed. We didn’t know who we were trying to impress.
“Vacca Vale,” joked Malik, “We Used to Make Cars Here!”
“Vacca Vale: Where the Churches Outnumber the Humans.”
“Vacca Vale: Where the Rabbits Outnumber the Churches.”
“Vacca Vale: Where the Soil Is Poisoned.”
“Vacca Vale: At Least You Can Still Fuck Here.”
“I recognize zero of the places they showed,” said Todd. “Do we even have a farmers market? And that garden definitely doesn’t exist.”
A scuttle behind the stove. We turned. More rodents in the walls of the Rabbit Hutch than all the sewers of Vacca Vale. You get used to them, almost feel for them. But a mouse had been banging around in our kitchen for months, and even though I never saw it, I was sick of knowing it was there.
“The trap’ll get it,” said Todd. “Just wait.”
“I put peanut butter in it and everything,” I said. “They love peanut butter.”
“I’m telling you—this generation of mice is advanced,” Malik said. I missed a shot, and the ball rolled toward him in the living room. He picked it up and, from the opposite side of the apartment, sunk the ball through the basket in one try. Annoyed, I retrieved the ball but didn’t shoot again. Just gulped my beer. “They outsmart you at every turn,” continued Malik. “I know a guy from work who had a trap out for months, and you know what happened? One morning, he woke up, tiptoed to the kitchen real quiet, and what did he see? Two mice eating the cheese out of the trap, from the outside, with their little hands. Like without getting smashed. For real. He clapped his hands, and they didn’t even scatter, didn’t give a fuck. He said they ate a whole loaf of bread. Can you believe it?”
“What I can’t believe is that you think this is an interesting story.”
“Fuck you, Jack.”
Malik stood, put down the guitar, and stalked toward the kitchen. “What’s it doing? You think it’s in the stove?”
“Leave it alone,” said Todd. “I don’t want to see it.”
“I do,” said Malik. “I want to shake its fucking hand. Maybe it’s not even a mouse.”
“What else could it be?” I asked.
“I don’t know. A bunny. The tooth fairy. A ghost.”
“The ghost of Woodrow Huxley Zorn the Third,” said Todd. “I’d have a few words for him.”
I stood from the floor and joined Malik in the kitchen. The kitchen is always very clean because Todd scrubs the place to death every night. He’s very particular about the arrangement of everything. Sometimes Malik shifts something just to fuck with him, and then we watch Todd pace the kitchen until he figures out what’s wrong. As he fixes it, he usually blames Blandine. That night, the counter was perfectly blank except for a jar of twigs and white clovers. Blandine was always leaving shit like that around the place. I was surprised Todd hadn’t trashed them yet.
Malik got on his knees and peered into the space between the wall and the stove.
“Do you see it?” asked Todd nervously.
“Nah . . . it’s all . . . I mean, I can see its shit all over the place, but . . .”
A flash of gray on the counter. I spun toward it.
“There it is! Todd, look!” I launched the ball at its body, but the mouse sprinted out of sight, and the ball ricocheted off the wall.
Todd hopped onto the couch, his eyes wide. “Where?”
“There! Near the TV!”
“Where?”
“It’s hiding behind the cabinet right now—watch it!”
Malik took off his basketball shoe. “Todd! Catch!” He pitched the shoe across the room, where it struck Todd hard in the belly and left a streak of brown on his white T-shirt.
“Jesus, Malik!”
“Pick up the shoe, boy!” ordered Malik.
“I don’t want to touch your filthy-ass shoe!”
“Pick it up!”
“Why!”
“So you can kill the mouse!”
“I don’t wanna—”
“Pick it up!”
Todd fumbled, bending to retrieve the neon shoe from the floor. It looked massive in his pale and tiny hands.
“Throw it at the fucker when you see him!” shouted Malik.
“But—”
“Do it!”
“I—”
“Do it!”
“But it’s not—”
“Don’t be a fucking pussy, Todd!”
When the mouse darted from the TV stand toward the couch, Todd pounced like a cat, slamming the shoe over the little guy’s body in one fluid motion. Then again, and again. Then over and over, harder and harder, grunting, until all we could see was a little bloody pulp on the floor. I squinted. Smallest foot I ever saw in a heap of red, twitching.
Silence.
“Damn, bro,” said Malik, finally. “Knew you had it in you somewhere.”
Todd sniffed and looked at us like he was the one who got beaten, his hands shaking. He dropped the shoe to the floor, stood, and backed away a few steps, averting his eyes from the blood. Behind him, a reality show about paranormal activity in rural Ireland flashed on the television. Todd’s face was white and wet.
“It’s just . . .” he began in a weak voice. “It’s a baby.”
Malik pulled a beer from the fridge, cracked it, and walked over to Todd. Clapped him on the back. “Proud of you, son,” said Malik. He placed the beer in Todd’s trembling hands. “You did it for Blandine.”
It’s fair to say that things got a little out of hand from there.
Namesake
According to the internet, it was the year 177 AD in Lyon, France, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Blandine—non-Roman and enslaved—was taken into custody with the Christian who bought her. They tortured Blandine until her resilience exhausted her executioners, who then bound her to a stake in an amphitheater and released an armada of hungry beasts upon her. But the beasts wouldn’t touch Blandine, wouldn’t go near her, not for days. Frustrated by her indestructibility and embarrassed in front of their fans, the executioners removed Blandine from the amphitheater, scourged her, and half roasted her on a grate. They enclosed her charred body in a net, which they then tossed to a wild steer, whose horns impaled her. But she would not die. “I am a Christian, and we commit no wrongdoing,” she is said to have repeated over and over when interrogated.
She was mystifying. She was invincible. She was fifteen years old.
After a week or so of failed attempts, her executioners resorted to a minimalist approach and stabbed her with a dagger. She finally died.
Infatuated by the idea of such a faith, starstruck by a person who existed nearly two thousand years before she did, a young woman formerly known as Tiffany Jean Watkins chose Blandine as her namesake in an effort to transcend the troublesome corporeality into which she was born and achieve untouchability. Blandine of Lyon: patron saint of servant girls, torture victims, and those falsely accused of cannibalism. Tiffany/Blandine found an account of the martyr online in Papyrus font, printed it out at the library, and taped it above her bed.
Six months after Tiffany/Blandine had submitted her court papers, proof of birth, and $210, she discovered that the name Blandine is Latin for “mild,” while Tiffany is Greek for “manifestation of God.”
Pearl