Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [32]
Now Milo was feeling the same anxiety that had consumed him at the onset of their first dinner, and he wondered how he might deal with it this time. Calling his wife and asking her on a date seemed like both the easiest and most difficult thing that he could ever do, so in hopes of avoiding it for one more night, he chose to sit on his futon, watch tape number two, and look for clues as to Freckles’s identity instead.
The screen was black for about ten seconds, and when it resumed, her face filled it. The picture was wobbly, indicating that she was holding the camera this time, and her clothing had changed, though Milo realized that shouldn’t have been a surprise. A week or a month could have passed without him being able to tell.
It appeared that she was wearing blue and yellow flannel pajamas, the kind that always seemed uncomfortably warm to men but just right for a woman. She was sitting on a bed. Her bed, Milo guessed, based on appearances. White and yellow pillows were piled against a headboard behind her. She looked much better. Not as tired or worn out as she had previously.
Milo found surprising relief in her renewed appearance.
Hi. I know it’s been a few days, but I’ve been in a bit of a funk and haven’t had much to say. Actually, I don’t know how these people do it, recording their thoughts every day. I just don’t think I’m going to have enough ideas and stories to make this interesting. But today I saw something that I thought I should share. I was in the supermarket parking lot after work, pushing my carriage back to my car, and this man was getting out of his truck and coming toward me. He was wearing a black knit cap and a leather jacket and boots, with one of those ridiculous barb wire tattoos on his wrist, like some kind of mean-ass biker dude, except he was driving a pickup. Just as he passes me, another man, an old guy in a silver minivan, starts shouting at the biker.
“Hey! You’re parked in a handicapped spot!” the old guy says. But louder than that, and angrier. Really pissed off. His van is in the lane with its blinker flashing, waiting to pull into the space where the biker dude had parked. So Biker Dude flips the old guy off and just goes into the store. Doesn’t even bother to look back. Doesn’t even flinch. Then I watch as the old guy puts the van in park right in the middle of the lane, jumps out, goes to the back of the van, and opens the hatch. That’s when I see his wife in the passenger seat, or who I assume was his wife, just sitting there, waiting. An older lady with gray hair and the kind of fuzzy sweater that my grandmother used to wear. She’s just sitting there, not a worry in the world. We make eye contact for a second and she smiles at me, like what’s about to happen is completely normal. Then the old guy comes back around the van with a tire iron in his hand. He walks over to Biker Dude’s pickup and puts the tire iron right through the windshield. Bam! Just like that. Then he walks back over to his van, gets in, and drives away. Like nothing happened.
It was unbelievable.
Freckles stopped for a moment and shook her head, and in those few seconds, Milo knew that she was envisioning the scene all over again. Reliving it in her mind. The biker. The old man. The wife. The tire iron. He found himself doing the same. Visualizing the moment. Seeing it through Freckles’s eyes.
She was right. It was unbelievable.
The whole scene was surreal. I couldn’t believe what the old guy had done, but that asshole deserved it. I give the old guy a lot of credit. It’s one of those things that I wish I had the guts to do myself. God, that old guy had balls.
But you know what? It’s the old guy’s wife who I can’t stop thinking about. She just sat there, watching her husband bash in another guy’s windshield. The kind of guy who could’ve kicked her husband’s ass twice over. But she just sat there and didn’t say a word.