Free Marvel and a Wonder by Joe Meno

store’s owner, had been smart enough to branch out into other kinds of pets—a few odd mammals like chinchillas, all types of snakes and lizards, some of which were legal, some of which weren’t, and a tortoise which the store claimed was more than a hundred years old.
    The boy stopped by the store whenever he could; he had an interest in getting rich, specifically through the illegal and sometimes forcible breeding of a random selection of exotic pets. He considered himself a regular amateur herpetologist, though no one in the boy’s life but the pet store owner Mr. Peel or Gilby—the distracted, ill-kept, twenty-two-year-old pet store clerk—had any sense of what that particular word meant. The boy had said it once, by accident, as a means of introduction, to a group of girls at a church picnic a few years before, and had spent the rest of the day off in the woods alone, itching mosquito bites on his arm, watching various strangers squint at him and laugh. He thought of that now, that embarrassing moment, two or three years removed, and muttered, “A herpetologist is someone who studies reptiles,” to the empty town, to the sound of the abandoned buildings staring back.
    A little bell rang as Quentin entered the pet store; he walked up to the counter where the clerk, Gilby, was busy inspecting a nudie magazine. The periodical was open to a two-page spread and featured a pair of Asian girls, bound up with silken white ropes. There was no freckle or flaw on the flesh of either one of them, which gave them a phantomed look.
    “What you got today?” Gilby asked without having to look up.
    “Pinkies.”
    “How many?”
    “Three dozen.”
    “You want cash or trade?”
    “Cash.”
    Gilby nodded, still staring down at the slick magazine pages, walked over to the cash register, rang the transaction up, hit the sale button, and stood back as the drawer whirred open. He got three dollars from the till and placed them in Quentin’s hand, eyes still on the entwined women.
    “I don’t usually go for Asian girls, but these two . . .” Gilby confided. “I only wish there was a war over there so I’d be inclined to go visit.”
    “I guess,” the boy said, looking away, then glancing up at Gilby’s face. “What happened to your eye?”
    Gilby sniffed, his long nose twitching, as he placed two fingers below his left eye. It was swollen black and purple, and some of the white of the eye was pink with burst blood vessels. The rest of his face looked equally disheveled; his narrow upper lip was marked with what appeared to be a cold sore of some kind; his pointy chin and sallow cheeks looked like they had not been shaved in days. “Somebody I know doesn’t understand the meaning of a joke.”
    “Who was that?”
    “No one,” he sighed, and then, “My brother.”
    “Walt?”
    “Walt? Shit. Walt’s still in high school. And he ain’t brave enough anyway. No, my older brother, the cocksucker, he’s back in town.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Edward. Everybody calls him Cocksucker. He’s the oldest.”
    “You got an older brother?”
    “Yeah. He just got back yesterday.”
    “Where was he?”
    “I don’t know. Jail. In California. Then he was in Chicago for a while.”
    “How long was he gone for?”
    “I don’t know. Three or four years, I guess.”
    “I didn’t even know you had an older brother.”
    “He comes and goes. My mother don’t let him stay too long. He usually gets himself thrown out after a week or two.”
    “And he’s the one who gave you the black eye?”
    Gilby glanced back down at the two girls forced together, their pale bodies crashing upon each other like some kind of mysterious sea foam. “He don’t look like he’s tough, but he’s mean. You think he’s got a sense of humor but then you find out he don’t. I always end up saying something I wish I hadn’t. And then I get one of these.” He tapped his two fingers below the eye again. “It’s a goddamn shame because we