Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [127]
“Milo, can you get your nose out of my vagina?” Emma asked in a surprisingly serene voice, offering some assistance by gripping the back of his hair and lifting. Thankfully, his right hand had found and latched on to the jar just before his left hand gained hold of the steering wheel and he yanked his body back to its original position.
“Sorry,” Milo said, cradling the recovered jar in both hands now. “It was—”
“Awkward?” Emma suggested.
“I was going to say unintentional.”
“Great,” Emma said, smiling now. “First guy that close to my vagina in months and he got there by mistake.”
Milo returned the smile, feeling slightly more relaxed despite the awkwardness of the situation. “Sorry. But can you just wait one minute? I’ve got to open these jars, and it has to be me who opens them.”
“Sure,” Emma said, her response lacking even a hint of sarcasm. Though Milo wasn’t certain, he thought he detected understanding and acceptance in that single syllable.
As he opened each of the remaining jars, the pressure of the demand lessened, but his physical reaction to the hiss and pop did not. A shudder, a sigh, and an exhalation of breath that he didn’t even realize he was holding all accompanied each turn of the lid. And each time, Emma could not help but snort or even giggle as his response. Though he would’ve thought that her reaction would engender even more embarrassment and shame in him, the contrary seemed to be taking place. Her amused laughter did not sound mean or judgmental in any way. Simply amused and perhaps even a little affectionate. Oddly enough, Emma’s reactions helped Milo to relax a bit and tell his story with greater ease.
“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else in my life,” he said once all nine jars of jelly had been re-sealed and moved to the backseat. “Sit back and relax, because we won’t be moving anytime soon. This is going to take a while. And I guess I’ll start at the beginning. With the juice boxes and the model airplanes and loquacious. But I think I’ll begin with Jimbo Powers’s birthday party and the balloons first. That red balloon.”
Milo told his story in chronological order, moving from the demands of childhood to those that plagued him as an adult. He described the repeating demands in detail, the pressure seals, the Weebles, the ice cube trays, and the like, explaining their origins when possible and the strategies by which he managed to satisfy them all. He described some of the one-hit wonders that had arisen over the years as well, those demands that would mysteriously appear, never to be seen again. The smashing of lightbulbs. The need to dial 911 from the pay phone inside the New Haven train station. The demand to flush every toilet in the ladies’ room at the now defunct Hartford Civic Center, a demand that had required attendance at three Whalers games and the risk of arrest and imprisonment each time.
He told Emma about Jenny’s bar and the twenty-four-hour bowling alley in Vernon and his recent removal of price tags from Bibles at his local Borders Books and Music. He told her about his need to watch certain movies over and over again and his sincere belief that in time, their endings would change, if only once. He even told her about the image of the U-boat captain that he had assigned to the purveyor of his demands, and how he had come to hate the submariner. He described how he managed to conceal these demands from his friends, his family, and especially his wife, creating a life that revolved around secrecy and subterfuge, and how he had begun to realize that this, more than any boredom that Christine might be feeling, was the primary cause of the demise of their marriage.
“As much as I’d like to think that Christine