Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [87]
Many of his demands were precipitated by outside stimuli.
Neither was he surprised that these movies continued to have this same attraction despite their persistently static endings. When the demand rose in Milo’s mind, he simply answered the call. It was what he did. And when the need to watch one of these films struck, it was difficult for Milo to do anything else.
Already saddled with placebo, he had little choice.
Swiping his credit card, Milo paid the one-dollar rental fee and extracted the film from the tray along the bottom of the machine. He then returned to the hotel desk, where he asked the young woman who had just processed his bill moments ago if he could return to the same room for a couple of hours.
“You want to check back in?” she asked.
“No, I just want to keep my room for a couple more hours. I didn’t need to check out until noon, so I just want to keep using the room. I’ll still be out well before checkout time. Probably before ten.”
“So you want to undo your checkout? Use the same room you stayed in last night for a while? Is that right?”
“Yes,” Milo said.
“So you can watch that movie?” the woman asked, pointing at the DVD case under Milo’s arm. The amused but friendly grin that had formed on the corners of her mouth, in combination with her slight southern drawl, made Milo feel at ease.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Would that be all right?”
“Then why did you check out in the first place?”
Milo thought for a moment about lying, telling the woman that an early-morning meeting with a client had been pushed back until after lunch and he needed to kill some time, but he did not want to lie when it was not necessary. So he answered as honestly as possible. “I didn’t know you had Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I saw it as I was walking out and decided that I just had to watch it. It’s a classic, you know.”
The use of the word decided made his explanation not entirely true, Milo knew, since he decided nothing when it came to his demands. Some unseen force always determined his next course of action, and he simply answered as best he could. Still, this answer was closer to honesty than even he had expected.
“Yeah, I like it too,” the woman answered, still smiling. “I had to watch it in a film class a few years ago. In college. But its ending is so sad. It seems like a rotten way to start the day.”
“I know,” Milo said, relaxing a bit. Despite her beauty, the woman behind the counter seemed surprisingly down to earth. “But the rest of the movie is so good. Whenever I watch it, I try to imagine a different ending for Butch and Sundance, and sometimes, I secretly hope that it might happen. That if I watch it often enough, it might actually change someday. It never does, of course, but there’s always hoping. Right?”
Milo was stunned by the level of honesty in his statement. He wasn’t sure if he had ever been so honest about any of the demands placed on him with Christine, but he doubted it.
“Yeah. It would be nice if Butch and Sundance could live. I know they were bank robbers, but still. Not every thief is a bad guy. Right? Some are downright angels.”
“I’m not sure if Butch and Sundance are angels,” Milo said. “But they’re all right in my book. They deserved a better fate, I think.”
“All because of that stupid kid,” she said, leaning in closer, almost conspiratorially. “Right? The one that sees the brand on their stolen horse, I mean. You know?”
Milo knew. What he didn’t tell this woman, whose name, according to the gold badge on her chest, was Lily, was that he had screamed at this boy dozens of times, urging him, to mind your own goddamn business and leave Butch and Sundance’s horses alone. It was