Hal and Mario on liars, in the dark — "Jesus, Boo, I don’t remember any…"
‘Jesus, Boo, I don’t remember any of that.’ ‘And he said we’d get Indian Rub-Burns down both arms if we didn’t pretend how we didn’t know what she was talking about if and when she asked us about the bark on the phone when she got home? ‘The Indian Rub-Burns I remember far too well.’ ‘We were supposed to shrug and look at her like she was minus cards from her deck, or else?’ ‘Orin lied with a really pathological intensity, growing up, is what I’ve been remembering.’
Context
Pre-dawn, 12 November, the brothers across the dark room — the book's memory-contrast scene, in two exchanges. Mario reproduces Orin's phone-bark prank in perfect detail and Hal, the certified eidetic, draws a blank on everything but the threatened punishment; then Mario defines his own gift twice: phenomenal and curated for joy, keeping what he liked and what made him laugh. One brother's memory holds the story, the other's holds the pain — and what Hal calls his own activity is "remembering" as prosecution. (Mario's Rub-Burns line lacks a closing quote-mark in print too — both this line and Hal's "bathed it" line, in the original and the 30th-anniversary printings alike. Quoted as written stands.)