“How old are you,” the reporters ask, snapping his picture.

The boy tells them “ten.” He is ten years old.

“What is your name,” they ask, and he says his name’s Elijah but everyone calls him “Vicky,” because when he was three years old he ate an entire bottle of Vicks VapoRub.

“Owoo-woo!” Vicky howls, his neck, like, really hurts, and even though Vicky’s the show, even though Toby Castle has knelt down next to Vicky to apply the wet flour sacks as a makeshift cold compress, it is neither Toby Castle nor Vicky everyone’s interested in; everyone is watching how you, Congressman Wilson, will interact with a wounded black child in your house. It’s like: they know you’ll be awkward, but how awkward, and for a moment all seems to have been forgotten about the aardvark, which is fine with you until Vicky sits up a little.

“Where’s the aardvark,” he says.

He knows what an aardvark is, he says, because he learned about them in school. He is in fifth grade. He wants to see it, he says, and so this boy, you decide, the memory of your door being slammed in his face yesterday still fresh in his mind, is a cunning. Little. Bastard.

Vicky remembers everything. When the aardvark was delivered by FedEx, he says, and “that man” wouldn’t let him see it (you, he is pointing at you), and suddenly the reporters are snapping photos of the boy sitting up on your sofa and pointing at you, and this looks bad, real bad, it’s happening live, and you don’t have the faintest clue what to do, how to get all of these people out of your house until, crossing the threshold, a six-foot-five-inch-tall black man fills the door, graceful as a horse, luggage in tow.

Enter Olioke.

“Everyone out!” shouts Olioke.

“Congressman Olioke!” the reporters cry with delight as he starts shoving them all out the door. “Do you have a comment on the aardvark?” and Olioke, God Bless Olioke—from here on out, you promise yourself, no matter what, you will flat-out, hands-down love Olioke—doesn’t even look at them as he calmly replies:

“I most certainly do not.”

With that, your townhouse is all at once empty except for you, Toby, Olioke, and the bastard child Vicky, who has not moved from your sofa and is now meekly requesting potato chips.

“I’ll take care of him,” Toby says as Olioke puts down his luggage.

“Where is it,” he asks, and you lead Olioke downstairs, into the garage. You unlock the rear of the Tahoe.

You show him what occupies the trunk, the back seat.

Olioke looks at the aardvark. He is calm, and everything Olioke does is always very calm, he speaks plain and clear, never interjects, nor uses slang, nor even conjunctions, and you must admit that you feel better with Olioke standing next to you than you have in twenty-four hours, ever since the aardvark arrived at your front door.

“Possession of this aardvark,” he says, “puts you in danger of breaking federal law because it was illegally poached,” and goes on to explain how he saw the aardvark on TV and knows all about it, it’s why he called your landline—it was safer—and it’s then that you realize Olioke’s voice, that was the voice on the phone!