Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [59]
“Don’t I always, Pete?”
“You must certainly do, Milo. Ain’t that the truth.”
A second later, Jenny slid a beer in front of Milo. “How you doing?” she asked, taking a moment to look him in the eye. Though Milo had never discussed the trouble in his marriage with anyone in the bar, it seemed as if Jenny knew something was wrong.
“I’m good. Thanks. In a rush tonight, though. Got to get home soon.”
“Whenever you’re ready, then.”
Milo’s need to sing karaoke had actually begun in a bowling alley several years ago. Having stopped in on a Saturday night to fulfill the pressing need to bowl a strike, Milo had noticed that a DJ had set up a karaoke machine in the alley’s adjacent bar and was inviting patrons to perform on the small dance floor. Through the glass door that theoretically separated the bowlers from the drunks, Milo could see and hear a threesome, a guy and two girls, all young and drunk, singing “Love Shack” to a small and inattentive audience of drinkers at the bar.
Milo had managed to bowl his strike in the first frame and was finishing his game when the thought of singing first entered his mind. Though he had never sung karaoke before and had never felt the desire to do so, the idea quickly lodged itself in his mind, where it began to take hold. The thought grew into a possibility, and the possibility blossomed into a genuine demand. By the time he had returned his rental shoes and collected his deposit, the need to sing had consumed him, a flashing, incessant beacon that droned out all other thought. It wasn’t a genuine desire to perform or the sudden need for applause. Rather, it was a demanding insistence, an assertion of unknown origin, the building of pressure not unlike the strain exerted on him by his other demands. Based on experience, Milo knew that he could leave the bowling alley and head home without singing, but that the pressure would not alleviate, and would assuredly increase, until he had sung.
A decade before, he might have tried to avoid singing altogether, ignoring the enigmatic demand in his head. But after years of trying to disregard these demands, he now knew better. Never in his life had any of them simply faded away. Each and every one had demanded and ultimately received satisfaction.
Karaoke would be no different.
Thankfully, the audience had been as lackluster and disinterested in him as they were in the previous performers. Scanning the DJ’s list, he had chosen George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” singing it out of key and at times terribly out of tempo, unable to keep up with the multiple B sounds in lines containing “B-B-B-Bad.” Despite his poor performance, the pressure lifted as he sang, word by word, until he had reached a state of glorious equilibrium by the end of his performance.
Milo had hoped that karaoke would be a onetime demand, a spur of the moment requirement based more on availability than anything else, but less than a week later he had awoken on a rainy Sunday morning with the need again and was soon frantically searching for a bar or nightclub that offered the service. He had been forced to wait three days before singing at a country-and-western bar in Granby and had thought his head would explode by the time he took the stage with his rendition of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” For months, whenever the need arose, he would scramble to find a bar or nightclub with the next available karaoke night, inventing excuses usually pertaining to clients in order to slip away from Christine, until one day he stumbled upon Jenny’s and her open-mike policy. From then on, whenever the need struck, he would make his way here.
As Milo took the stage, Carmine, Pete, and a rail-thin woman named Rosy at the end of the bar all turned to watch the performance. Though Milo had initially sung a variety of songs to meet the demand,