He sits next to a sickly weeping fig.
‘Milo,’ Zosia says, apparently not in the least surprised to see him. ‘Are you ordering?’
‘A Sleeman’s, please.’ She’s put on weight; maybe she’s overeating because she misses him. ‘I just thought I’d drop by,’ he calls after her, attracting the attention of pizza eaters. He leans back in an effort to appear relaxed. Shrivelled weeping fig leaves fall into his lap. Zosia and the moustached bartender stand a little too close. The bartender puts his hand on the small of her back and says something that makes her snort. Zosia never laughs, only snorts. She returns with Milo’s beer but doesn’t linger.
‘We splurged on a couple of things,’ a woman in stripes at the next table announces. ‘First we bought a house, then we bought a car, a new car, we didn’t want a used car. We wanted something reliable, you know, we’ll drive it for fifteen years, run it into the ground, that sort of thing. Anyway, now we’re ready.’
For what? Milo would like to know. The man beside her looks as though he never sleeps.
‘I’m doing Pilates,’ the striped woman declares. ‘It’s supposed to help with stress but all that breathing makes me tense.’
Zosia swings by again and ruffles Milo’s hair, which seems a friendly gesture if not fraught with desire. ‘How’s the acting business?’ she asks, her s’s sounding like z’s.
‘I had a commercial audition today,’ he says.
‘Good for you.’ She says good for you to anyone. Pablo admired her for this, felt she was being positive, while Milo knew she was just bored, her engineer brain hungering for electronic circuits.
‘Do you remember Christopher?’ he asks. ‘My neighbour?’
‘The grass cutter.’
‘He got hit by a car today.’
‘Killed?’
‘Don’t know yet.’
‘Poor little boy.’ She used to construct tall towers with Robertson that would eventually tumble. ‘You must build with him.’
The striped woman waves frantically at Zosia. ‘Excuse me, miss, there is no eggplant on this pizza. We specifically requested eggplant.’
Zosia stares at what remains of the pizza.
‘There was no eggplant,’ the striped woman assures her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that before you ate it?’ Zosia inquires.
The sleep-deprived man says, ‘You better not charge us for eggplant.’
‘There was no eggplant,’ the striped woman repeats.
‘We’re not paying for any eggplant,’ the sleepless man insists.
‘Whatever,’ Zosia says, which was her fourth English word. She turns back to Milo. He considers ordering a pizza but he is cash-poor due to Fennel’s advance. ‘You don’t have to order,’ she says.
‘Oh, okay, well, I was just wondering if you’d made any progress on the job front?’
‘Zilch. You?’
‘My agent says I’m experiencing a renaissance as Everyman.’
‘Good for you.’
‘We’d like our bill, please,’ the striped woman says.
‘Make sure you deduct the eggplant,’ the sleepless man adds.
Milo forgot to buy a honey-I-love-you ring. How could he have come all this way and occupied a table for the price of one beer without a ring? Where words have failed, a gesture might have spoken volumes. He shakes a fig leaf out of his hair. ‘You might want to water this tree,’ he says but she is gone.
He knocks softly on the sliding doors. Tanis approaches, groggy, opening the doors only a crack. ‘What is it?’
‘Robertson wanted to give Mrs. Bulgobin a spider plant.’ Milo holds the plant up to the light.
‘Why?’
‘He doesn’t think she likes him.’
‘She doesn’t. Why would he give her a plant? Was this your idea?’
‘Definitely not. He helped me plant the babies.’
‘I see. Well, spider plant, Spider-Man. Don’t you think she might connect the dots?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘That’s your problem, Milo. You don’t think. Good night.’ She slides the doors closed. He wants to call after her but he is way too chicken.
‘Thoughts are circular,’ Pablo says. With the La-Z-Boy in full reclining mode he is able to trace large circles in the air with his arms. ‘You ever noticed that?’
Milo, remote in hand, surfs.
‘You wake up and you think it’s a new day and what happens? Circles.’
An actress straddles an actor on a couch. He fondles her breasts.
‘Which is not necessarily a negative thing,’ Pablo adds. ‘Life is circular. Me and Wallace were doing demolition at the Centre of Circular Wisdom because Sarah Moon Dancer don’t want no square walls there anymore, and she said … ’
Milo cranks the volume, amplifying the actress’s orgasmic moans. Vera stamps on the floor above. ‘Turn that bloody thing down,’ she calls. He does to stop her stomping downstairs.
Pablo adjusts the La-Z-Boy to a sitting position. ‘Sarah Moon Dancer says we have to accept life’s circularity before we can begin our transformational healing.’ The actor rolls the actress onto her back and thrusts into her. ‘Your neighbour was mad about the panties, wasn’t she? I wouldn’t worry about it. Women like it when men steal their panties, they just don’t show it.’
‘Did Maria call?’
‘I left another message.’
‘You can’t stay here.’
‘You need a friend, Milo. I saw this movie about this guy who’s, like, so bottled up inside, you know, like he can’t talk to nobody, and then he meets this waitress who’s, like, totally open. At first he’s, like, “no way am I hanging out with a waitress,” you know, but she’s so totally open … ’
‘They get naked,’ Milo interjects.
‘Not right away. It’s a journey, right?’
‘Circular.’
‘Exactly.’
Milo retreats to a cot in the basement and watches the hamster cage, expecting Puffy to scurry about on the wheel experiencing his circularity, but no, in the dead of night, the nocturnal rodent is asleep. Hanging from hooks above Milo’s head are Gus’s implements for cutting, drilling, sawing, bashing and splitting rock. They have always frightened Milo with their sharp edges and blunt heads. One mistake and off goes a finger, oops, there goes a foot. His father took great care of his tools, sharpened and oiled them on his days off. Milo inhales the toxic stench of oily rags and Varsol in an attempt to get stoned, to forgive and be forgiven – to begin his transformational healing. Another fig leaf drops from his hair.
hey want to see you again,’ his agent says. ‘ASAP. These folks are serious.’
‘They made me run around half-naked.’
‘Whatever you did, chief, do it again. We’re talking serious coin here. Three spots, national. We’re talking serious residuals.’ Stu runs his hand over his bald pate as though checking for growth. ‘Your new look is working for you, seriously.’
‘What new look?’
‘Are you serious? You’ve filled out a bit, you’re looking more mature.’
When Zosia dumped him, Milo stopped seeing a barber and shaving regularly. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting a haircut.’
‘Are you crazy? This look fits a demographic they’re targeting. Go for it. Seriously. Can you sing?’
‘No.’
‘They just want you to be a regular guy singing while you sling back a few.’
‘I can’t sing.’
‘Sure you can.’ Stu rubs his thumb and index finger together to suggest the serious coin awaiting Milo. ‘Three fifteen.’
‘Today?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you, chief. They’re hot to trot.’ His phone rings again. ‘I’ve got to take this one. Let me know how it goes. You look great, seriously.’
The black eyes and swelling make Christopher almost unrecognizable. His nose has been splinted and bandaged. A plastic tube, poking out from his ribs a few inches
below his armpit, drains into a plastic container. His right lower leg is encircled in metal hoops. Wires attached to the hoops pierce his skin, presumably to hold the bone fragments in place. His left upper leg is splinted. A clear tube runs from under the blankets to a receptacle filled with urine, marked with gradations. Christopher doesn’t seem to recognize Milo, or maybe doesn’t want to recognize him. Hooked up to an IV, he is probably disoriented by morphine. The patient in the next bed has numerous visitors who bump against the dividing curtain, speaking loudly in what Milo thinks is Portuguese. He sits on the vinyl chair beside Christopher’s bed, staring at the metal hoops on his leg, unable to imagine his pain. At least he still has both legs. Milo didn’t ask the nurses for a prognosis because they knew he wasn’t a relative. He did inquire if any relatives had been notified. The nurses remained poker-faced, just as they did when he was six and his mother was rushed to emergency. They wouldn’t let him see her. Years later he assumed it was because Annie was already dead and they didn’t want a six-year-old crawling over the corpse. His father even forbade him to go to the crematorium. Milo didn’t know what a crematorium was but he wanted to go. At the funeral, falling temperatures had turned the melted snow to ice. The pallbearers repeatedly lost their footing, causing the coffin to tip and the white flowers to tumble to the ground. Milo wanted to put them back but his father restrained him. The pallbearers tried to retrieve them but each time they managed to put the flowers back another foot would slip, the coffin would tip and they’d have to begin the process all over again. Milo thought it was funny except that his mother was being slammed around in the box and he feared her bones would break. After they pushed her into the hearse, Milo scampered around collecting the remaining flowers, most of them trampled. He put them in a glass of water when he got home but they turned brown and died anyway. Mrs. Cauldershot threw them out. Milo wanted to visit his mother’s grave, to take flowers and sit beside it and talk.
‘There is no grave,’ Gus said.
‘How come?’
‘Because I scattered her ashes at Grandma’s farm, in the orchard. That’s what she wanted.’
‘Can I go to the orchard?’ He knew his grandmother was very ill and found his visits tiresome.
‘Eat your meat.’
Milo hated his father for burning his mother. Chewing on pork, he decided to make a grave for her in the backyard behind her lilac, where no one could see.
‘Milo?’ Christopher mumbles, sounding nasally. ‘What did they do to my nose?’
‘Splinted it.’
‘I can hardly breathe.’
‘There’s probably swelling. Your face is pretty bruised.’
Christopher closes his eyes, clearly exhausted from being trapped inside a fractured body. The Portuguese behind the curtain chortle.
‘Milo?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you fuck my wife?’
‘Of course not, how could you think that?’
‘I have to piss,’ Christopher says.
‘You’re hooked up to a catheter.’
Christopher grunts slightly. ‘Is anything coming out?’
Milo looks at the tube. ‘Nothing yet.’
Christopher winces.
Milo sees yellow. ‘Bingo.’
A nurse with a limp shuffles in and examines the urine receptacle. ‘Good output,’ she says. ‘Keep it up.’ She pushes past the curtain and speaks loudly to the Portuguese crowd. ‘This is trauma ICU. We have limited visits here. He needs to rest now.’
The Portuguese apologize. Milo hears kissing as they bid adieu to the patient.
‘That goes for you too,’ she says to Milo. One of her eyeballs doesn’t move.
‘I’ll just say goodbye.’
She holds up two fingers. ‘Two minutes.’
Christopher continues to stare at the hoops on his leg. Milo ponders the clumsiness of life and death, the endless stumbling and smashing into things. The circularity of it.
‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, Milo, but whatever it is, you don’t have to do it. Are they all right? You didn’t tell them?’
‘No.’
The limping nurse returns to check Christopher’s chest tube.
‘What’s that for?’ Milo asks.
‘His lung collapsed. Broken rib. Off you go. You can see him tomorrow.’
‘I’ll bring you some fresh fruit,’ Milo says but Christopher is once again freed of consciousness.
The agency people and the clients sit behind a table, sipping bottled water. Milo starts removing his shirt before he is asked. The casting director with the cowlicked hair and the scarlet-nailed woman with the sharply cornered glasses hover.
‘What’s shakin’, Milo?’ asks a fleshy-lipped man in a leather jacket who Milo assumes must be the director. ‘So, what have you been up to?’
Milo loathes show-biz folks’ uninterested, insincere questions. ‘Well,’ he begins, ‘I got up this morning, ate some toast with marmalade, had a dump, got on the subway and visited a friend who got smashed by a car, then I scooted over to see you guys.’
‘Super, do you think you can run around for us again?’
‘Absolutely.’ He starts to run, so fast he bashes into the wall. The people sitting at the table chuckle. Trained to respond to laughs, Milo runs faster and hits the wall harder.
‘Whoa, boy,’ the fleshy-lipped director says. ‘Do you know the song “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”?’
‘One of my faves.’
‘Do you think you can sing it while you’re running?’
‘No prob.’ Milo resumes running, belting out, ‘Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.’
The table-sitters respond favourably and he wishes they’d attended Waiting for Godot.
‘Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall,’ he hollers, ‘ninety-eight bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall.’
‘Super,’ the director says. ‘Now take a swig for us.’ He hands a beer bottle to Milo. ‘Drink it like you’ve been in the desert for a week.’
Milo grabs the bottle and gulps so feverishly that the beer – actually ginger ale – spills onto his breasts and gut. His audience roars. Milo rubs the ginger ale over his breasts and gut, making primordial noises, further delighting the table-sitters.
‘Super,’ the director says. ‘Do you lift weights?’
‘Do I look like I lift weights?’ More laughs. He can do no wrong.
‘See those dumbbells over there?’ the director says. ‘Could you lie on the floor and lift them, do a kind of a bench-press thing, singing the beer song at the same time?’
It occurs to Milo that they might be hot to trot because no one else could withstand this degree of humiliation. But what does he care, the actor who can’t act? It’s all clumsy and relentless, this stumbling and smashing into things – a fucking obstacle course terminating in a crab walk to the crematorium. He drops to the floor and rolls onto his back, belting the tune while swinging the dumbbells. He tries swinging one leg up then the other. The table-sitters stand and he feels an ovation pending.
‘Do you want me to jack off as well?’ he yells. The laughter halts, replaced by a quick intake of breath. The table-sitters stand motionless before resuming their seats and sipping their bottled water.
‘You are one wild and crazy guy,’ the director says. ‘Good to meet you. Thanks for coming in.’
The casting director snatches Milo’s shirt off a chair. ‘Upsy-daisy,’ he says.
‘You can dress in the hall,’ the scarlet-nailed woman snipes before turning to the director and muttering, ‘I told you he was unstable.’
And it’s over. Milo’s fifteen minutes of fame.
Pablo, bare-chested, a small mound of muscle, suns in one of the Muskoka chairs. Where there is sun there is the Cuban. In winter he chases the rectangles of sunlight spilling throu
gh windows.
‘Why are you always here?’ Milo demands. ‘You don’t live here. I said you could stay two nights.’
‘Sorry, sir, but I don’t got no place to go with Maria mad at me.’ He only calls Milo sir when he’s being obsequious. ‘I got another twenty for you.’ Milo snatches it from him.
Vera shakes a broom out the back door. ‘What’s that mouse doing in the cellar, Milo?’
‘What mouse?’
‘It got out of the cage and chewed up Wally’s socks.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘You just said “what mouse” like you didn’t know about no mouse,’ Pablo says.
‘It’s a hamster. I’m taking care of it.’
‘Well, you’ve done a bloody poor job of it,’ Vera says. ‘Lord only knows what it will get up to next. The wiring, I expect.’
‘I’ll find it.’
He digs around in the hall closet for Gus’s fishing net, although he hasn’t seen it for years and suspects it’s behind all the other gadgets he can’t bring himself to trash.
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