Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [35]
At the time, Milo suspected that he knew what a rubber was, but he didn’t want to risk being wrong, knowing it was better to feign knowledge than to confirm ignorance. Once, while retrieving a book for his mother from her nightstand, he had spotted a long, penis-shaped slab of silicone peeking out from underneath her pillow, and he guessed that this might have been a rubber. He envisioned a slit on the end in which the man would insert his penis, thus providing it with protection as well as increased length and girth.
Obviously, he had been mistaken.
But without understanding it completely, Milo was too afraid to venture a guess, so he allowed Brian Dean, whose older brother, Michael, would commit suicide later that year, to belittle him to the point of tears. Still, it was better than mistaking your mother’s dildo for a condom.
Milo often thought about Michael Dean, wondering what secrets this seemingly normal and well-liked boy had that caused him to blow his head off with his father’s hunting rifle. Milo had secrets, to be sure, and though they seemed exceedingly strange at times, none of them had been awful enough to cause him to contemplate suicide. Michael Dean’s secrets, Milo thought, must have been terrible.
So Milo found himself attempting to fornicate with his wife just a foot and a half from Skywalker’s (whose name had reverted to Puggles for the evening) water dish and the kitchen garbage can. Though Christine’s insistence on sex had been initially thrilling, the combination of the awkward position, the water dish, and the faint odor of garbage had quickly eliminated any hope for excitement.
In fact, if it had been Milo’s decision, he and Christine would not be having sex at all. He had something more pressing on his mind at the moment.
Breaking ice cubes from their plastic trays was one of those recurring demands by which Milo was occasionally plagued. Thankfully, this demand was easily met so long as there were filled trays in the freezer. This had meant talking Christine out of a refrigerator with an automatic ice maker, which hadn’t been easy, but the need to run a water line under the kitchen floor in order for the appliance to produce ice had convinced her that the convenience wouldn’t be worth the hassle. But when Milo had moved in to the apartment, he had failed to notice a lack of ice cube trays in the freezer. Why the previous tenant would take the ice cube trays when every freezer on the planet was already equipped with them was beyond Milo’s understanding, but when the need to crack the cubes from the trays arose less than two hours before his date with Christine, Milo made a mad dash for the supermarket, where he purchased the trays, along with five extra jars of grape jelly. Once home, he filled the trays with water, decreased the temperature inside the freezer to its lowest setting, and placed them inside.
Milo had actually been exceedingly pleased with the purchase. The trays were the type with an extra-tall ridge around the outer edge, allowing the user to fill the bucket-like containers for each cube as well as add a layer of water over all the cubes. Once frozen, this additional layer of water would form a sheet of ice across the top of the tray, making the cubes infinitely more satisfying to snap out.
However, Christine had arrived before the water had finished freezing, so now he found himself just five feet from the freezer, the water likely frozen, ready to go. Yet instead of popping the cubes from their frozen perches, Milo was forced to engage in a nearly impossible sexual position with his wife. Had they taken the passion to the bedroom, Milo might have been able to silence the demand for a time, but listening to the hum of the refrigerator’s compressor comingling