Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [15]
While Milo knew that one of the reasons that he visited Arthur Friedman was to read to the old man, he also knew that it was the company that his client also craved. Otherwise Milo would have simply dropped off an audiobook or two each week and been done with it. “I thought I might not be able to read today, so I came prepared.” Milo extracted several sheets of neatly folded paper from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed them over to Friedman, just as conflagration once again flared in his mind. “It’s ‘The Black Cat’ by Edgar Allan Poe. A classic. And it’s a short story, so you can read it in one sitting. I copied it from the Internet and increased the font size. I thought you might be able to read it. I know we’ve tried those books with large type before, but I made this printing even bigger.”
Arthur Friedman unfolded the sheaf of paper and examined the front page. The title of the story was centered in bolded type at the top of the page. The nearly four-thousand-word story filled fifteen sheets of paper, double-sided, with the margins on each page reduced to the narrowest possible. Just to be sure that his client would be able to read the story, Milo had chosen thirty-point font, almost twice the size of a standard book set in large type, making the story look like it had been written for a child.
A legally blind child.
“Look at this,” Arthur Friedman said in near astonishment. “You said that you could make the words larger on the Internet?”
“Sort of,” Milo replied, pleased with his client’s unexpected interest in the topic. He thought that he’d be pulling teeth to get him to read the story. “I could show you how to do it if you want. But it takes up a lot of ink and paper, even for a story this short. But I could show you. That is, if you can pull yourself away from the porn for long enough.”
“Not funny,” he said, his eyes transfixed on the page. “Let’s go into living room and give this a shot, huh?”
“You head on in,” Milo said. “Let me clean up in here and I’ll be along in a second. All right?”
“Sure.”
Milo couldn’t have been more pleased. The old man hadn’t been able to read for almost a decade, and suddenly the words were jumping off the page at him. Though the extreme size of the font made it unrealistic to print longer stories and novels, he thought that he might be able to find shorter pieces like “The Black Cat” for his client to enjoy.
As Arthur Friedman exited the kitchen, Milo turned on the top burner of the stove, watched it glow a fearsome red, and sighed with relief. In the matter of minutes, perhaps less, the viselike grip on his mind would finally be released. The pounding, incessant headache and his inability to concentrate or focus would instantly be washed away in a torrent of relief.
Conflagration was about to be satisfied at last.
chapter 4
When Milo was young, he and his father built model airplanes in their garage, though it was never Milo’s idea to spend hour upon hour in a dusty garage, gluing together bits of wood until they resembled miniature flying machines. Even at his young age, he was fully aware of the toxic chemicals involved in shellacking these fragile models and knew that there were little boys and girls in sweatshops around the world doing similar work for a paltry paycheck, so why emulate them for free?
But it was something that his father had done when he was a boy, so Milo had made allowances, knowing how much it meant to his dad.
The most troublesome part of the process was that Milo was not at all adept at building model airplanes. Lacking attention for detail when it came to things like building, he would often forgo the use of the tweezers, X-Acto knives, and grip pins that littered the workbench and would simply stick the minuscule parts together with his clumsy oversized fingers. As a result, the model would fail to meet his father’s specifications for perfection and would inevitably engender a look of disappointment.
All of this never bothered Milo much,