Mr. Kookarut had been informed by all and sundry that he had no heart and that his personality was as rugged as a Scandinavian backpacker’s sleeping bag and just as misshapen. He would harrumph with indignation at these feeble fleabite comments, check his frog-croak pulse to ensure the smooth working of his ticky-ticker and be on his gin and cherry way.
However, the inevitable steel-grey salmon cloud day came when the drizzle of censure that normally fell from the heavens of his daughter’s lips turned into a horse and pony downpour of admonitions and then into a white water torrent of castigation.
It turned out that the tittle-tattle of the cattle people of the world was true – he had no heart. It came as some surprise to him; – but if his kingfisher-electric-blue-eyed angel daughter – the pineapple of his eye – believed it then it must be true.
He fretted and frowned; he fumed and fussed; he stared oriental daggers at passers-by, who in turn reacted with Eskimo shivers and gulag shudders. Some flung vials of verbal vitriol. Frothing epithets as, “Go get a heart” were the Knesset order of the day.
He didn’t know what to do when suddenly realization dawned on him like a million red dwarf stars rising behind a Cassinian mountain range. This road-to-Damascus moment struck him with all the strength of an aphasiac’s temporal lobe seizure. He could barely hear his thoughts over the jubilant sound of golden-goose harps and silver-tongued trumpets.
He collected his top hat and coat and hightailed his way to the dingy cat-poo, dog-turd part of the city. He trod lightly over the cider-smelling tramps and the glue-sniffing teens, and pirouetted a tutu pirouette round a tepee mound of garbage bags into Teetotaller Tutski’s tatty tattoo shop.
Teetotaller Tutski’s tatty tattoo shop reeked of frat-house defiance, drunken daring, biker-chick fanny, and purple-people love. The Russian-bear-den walls were black with the grime of pierced nipples and studded labia. The ceilings were covered with the muck of disinfected needles, whizzing electricity, and exquisite pain. The floors were strewn with the grunge of gritted teeth, clamped fists, clenched eyes and whooping gasps.
Mr. Kookarut ripped his shirt open and exposed his blank-canvas chest to Tettotaller Tutski. “Make me a heart,” he said, with the delirious wistfulness of a little Barbie girl in her little Barbie world. When the needle pierced his skin he gasped like a pubescent girl in the throes of her first orgasm. And when his motley ink-heart was ready he gazed at it like a young lady scrutinizing her puppy dog fiancé.
Mr. Kookarut was over the moon and flopping giddily on cloud nine. His spirits soared over the boundless empyrean of Christmas day joy and he skipped a light fandango out of Teetotaller Tutski’s Tatty Tattoo shop.
He rushed home to his kingfisher-electric-blue-eyed angel daughter and said to her, “You can’t say I have no heart. I have one right here.”
