Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [11]
Edith paused for a moment, longer than she was probably aware, and Milo knew by the look in her eyes that Edith was recalling something specific from her past, a treasured moment between a husband now dead and a son now absent.
“Anyway,” she finally said, “Ed would advise Tony to make all his mistakes before the age of thirty, because after that, they really start to mean something. So just think of this as a bump in a long road, my dear. You’re still young. You’ll be fine.”
Milo didn’t have the heart to tell his elderly friend that he had turned thirty-three in February.
chapter 3
When Milo pulled his moped into the driveway of Arthur Friedman, an ever-so-slight sense of relief washed over him. The ride to his client’s house had been a difficult one, and he was happy to still be in one piece. It had required all of his concentration just to keep the moped on the road. But if his plan worked, conflagration would soon be ousted from his head. The demand would at last be satisfied.
Arthur Friedman was one of Milo’s longest-standing clients, a seventy-eight-year old Jewish lifelong bachelor whom Milo had met while working as a nurse in a nearby rehab hospital. He was also the only client who paid for Milo’s services without the assistance of a family member, hiring him just prior to Milo’s departure from the hospital, and for that reason, Milo was grateful to have him as a client.
There was no pretense with Arthur Friedman.
Milo chained his moped to a lamppost on the edge of the driveway and removed a small white paper bag from a nylon pouch behind the seat. Though he owned a car, he loved to take his moped out on days when his appointments were local enough to keep him off the highways, even in the middle of winter. He found the ride in the open air exhilarating and refreshing, despite Christine’s opinion on the matter. Ever since he had bought the machine at a garage sale three years ago, she had been coaxing him to get rid of it. “It’s dangerous,” she would complain, and for a while, Milo found her concern touching, until last year when she suggested that the couple use their tax refund to purchase Milo “a real motorcycle.”
“But how is that safer than my moped?” he had asked, genuinely confused.
“I dunno,” she said. “It’s bigger. It just seems safer.”
It took Milo a moment to put the pieces together, but he soon realized that his wife’s concern over his moped had nothing to do with safety. Christine was a woman who sent out thank-you cards the day that she received a gift, judged others on the promptness of their thank-you cards, and spent almost an hour each morning in front of the mirror. To her, image was important, and Milo tried not to begrudge her this sentiment. Image was also important to him, though he had never managed to master the right wardrobe, hairstyle, or mode of transportation. Instead, his focus remained on concealing those oddities that made him different from others, the demands that ruled his life, and for that reason, he didn’t see himself as being very different than his image-conscious wife.
But still, the idea that his moped might be undesirable or embarrassing did not sit well with him. Concern over demands like the one that conflagration was currently imposing on him was one thing. Unease about the image that a moped projected seemed entirely different.
Milo knocked on Arthur Friedman’s front door, waited for the man to shout “Come in!” and then walked through an entry-way that led to the kitchen.
Conflagration.
It was becoming even more insistent now, as if the traitorous corner of his brain from which these commands were issued knew how close Milo was to finally answering its call. This wasn’t the first time that the demands had grown more adamant and painful as the hour of reckoning drew near, but it never failed to unnerve him.
Though he knew that these demands emanated from somewhere in his own mind—he had been living