Milosz (19 page)

‘Then why are you doing this?' Milo asks.

‘I've always wanted to step on the boards,' Number One says. ‘A childhood dream. You know what they say, better late than never.'

‘So you can just take time off market-consulting to be a Nazi?' The boots feel tight but Milo doesn't admit this, fearing that the harried wardrobe woman will alert the queens, who will send him back to junk removal.

‘The fact of the matter is,' Number One says, ‘I pick and choose my clients, make my own sched. Are you an actor full-time?'

‘Yes,' Milo asserts while recognizing the absurdity of such a statement. Does being an unemployed bad actor full-time qualify as being an actor full-time?

‘Have I seen you in anything?'

Milo takes a handful of Smarties from the catering table. ‘I did a Canadian Tire ad a while back.'

‘Cool. My agent's setting me up with some ad agency contacts.'

‘Very good,' Milo says, which makes him think of Zosia and her positivity. She wore an amber ring from the Baltic Sea her mother gave her. When she missed her mother she turned the ring inward and held the amber against her cheek. Now her mother is ‘really sick.' What can this possibly mean: cancer, a stroke, heart failure?

‘The fact of the matter is,' Number One says, ‘I've got the acting bug bad.

I'd like to do some theatre. The real stuff. I'm taking acting workshops. Pretty intense.'

Number One's costume and helmet fit perfectly. On first meeting, he made it clear that he'd been on set the longest of the guards. He warned Milo to watch out for Guard Number Eight who, according to Number One, made a pass at him.

Milo's helmet fits loosely. A glum wardrobe assistant lined the rim with felt but still the helmet slides down his forehead. Even in tight boots and a loose Nazi helmet, the sight of himself in a full-length mirror startled Milo. They'd buzzed off most of his hair. In uniform he looked like just another Nazi out to torch homes and murder women and children. He saw himself riding a tank into Gus's village, rounding up the Jews, marching them to the pit and ordering them to remove their clothes. When the prop master put a rifle into Milo's hands, he levelled it at his reflection and had to say, ‘You talking to me?'

Prisoner Number Ten, in tattered stripes, grabs a handful of mixed nuts. ‘Does anybody have the time? They made me take off my watch.'

‘They made everybody take off their watch,' Number One says. ‘It's a period picture.'

‘Does anyone know what happened to Guard Number Twelve?' Milo asks.

‘They didn't tell you?' the Prisoner asks.

‘What?'

‘Heart attack,' Number One says. ‘Keeled over right in the middle of a march.'

‘A nice guy too,' the Prisoner says. ‘He kept asking if he was hurting me.'

‘Did they try to revive him?' Milo asks.

‘Oh yeah, all that jazz.'

‘You saw it?'

‘We all saw it. It held up shooting.'

Milo tries to visualize Number Twelve dying of a heart attack but all he can picture are actors dying in movies. ‘What was it like seeing somebody really … die like that?'

The Prisoner chews nuts. ‘Depressing.'

‘I thought he was faking it,' Number One says. ‘Trying to get upgraded. Only three of us have lines.'

‘Are these his boots?'

The Prisoner looks closely at the boots. ‘What size are they?'

‘Ten.'

‘Possibly. He wasn't paricularly large.'

How apt. Milo had an English prof who frequently said
how apt
when Milo did poorly on assignments. How apt that the headless body is walking around in a dead man's boots.

He calls Tanis during lunch. When he phoned from home she didn't answer, thanks, no doubt, to caller
ID
. ‘It's me,' he says, expecting her to hang up. A gaping wound of a pause festers between them. ‘I am so very sorry about everything,' he says. ‘I was just trying to help him. He was so happy in the debris hut. You should have seen him, he was ecstatic building that thing and I knew if I forced him to go home he would start screaming or bolt or something.'

Why won't she speak?

‘And I … you see … well, I keep thinking about that orca at Sea World killing his trainer. He's going crazy in the tank. I mean, imagine being a whale in a tank. That would be like us being trapped in a bathtub. I mean, whales don't normally kill humans, but there he is, banging around in the tank, turning psycho. Do you know what Jacques Cousteau said about dolphins in tanks? He said watching dolphins in tanks is like watching humans in solitary confinement.'

‘What's your point?'

‘I'm scared that, locked up, Robertson might turn violent and hurt you.' He can't say that, in solitary confinement, the boy is bound to go insane.

‘He would never hurt me. Please don't interfere.' She hangs up. Once again Milo is suspended in time and space, unable to touch what matters to him most. In a dead man's boots.

During his first big scene, he takes his frustration out on Prisoner Number Six with the butt of his rifle. ‘That hurts,' the fallen man in stripes protests. The fight coordinator demonstrates again how Milo is supposed to fake the blows, allowing the prisoner to react. ‘He
acts
the hurt, get it?' the coordinator demands. ‘You
act
the blow, can you do that? Act?' His disdain for Milo causes his jowls to twitch. ‘Got it?'

‘I thought I might whistle in this scene.'

‘What?'

‘Whistle. You know, it's just another day's work for a Nazi, all this killing and torturing. I thought my character might whistle while he works. Could you ask the director if he thinks that's a good idea?' Milo is hoping to attract the director's attention, get upgraded and therefore move up the pay scale. He hasn't met the director, has only seen him in the distance making theatrical gestures and kissing the dogs.

‘It might be an interesting juxtaposition,' Milo elaborates, ‘a Nazi guard whistling a happy tune while he's sending people to their deaths. It's just a thought.'

‘No thoughts,' the fight coordinator says.

Christopher is no longer in Trauma
ICU
. After chasing several nurses and waiting patiently until one of them finally agreed to look up Mr. Wedderspoon on the computer, Milo located him on the geriatric floor. Apparently there are no beds available on the orthopedic floor. He is in a ward with the demented and incontinent. ‘Doesn't his insurance cover a semi-­private room?' Milo asked yet another uninterested nurse staring at a monitor.

‘He's on the waiting list,' she said.

The moist old men have their
TV
s on but don't appear to be watching them. A frighteningly thin patient in a plaid bathrobe curses his bowel as he repeatedly shuffles to and from the toilet. Christopher seems unconscious, although not comfortably sleeping. Beneath his newly crooked nose is an unfamiliar scowl. The splint and the external fixator are still on his legs, the catheter continues to leak fluid, but the chest tube has been removed. Milo sets a carton of frozen yogourt on the table and checks the phone. He dials his home number and immediately hangs up when Vera answers. He pulls a chair close to the bed and waits.

‘You again,' Christopher murmurs. This is what Mrs. Cauldershot used to say.

‘How are you?'

‘Never been better.'

‘I had your phone hooked up.'

‘Why?'

‘In case you want to call somebody. And somebody might want to call you.'

‘Ah.'

‘So you still can't get out of bed?'

‘I ran a couple of Ks this morning.'

‘Have they given you a prognosis?'

‘Minimum of eight weeks before I can bear weight.'

‘Jesus Christ.'

‘
He
doesn't care.'

‘I brought some frozen yogourt. I'm afraid it's melting.' He removes the lid and hands the carton and a plastic spoon to Christopher. To his surprise, Christopher begins to eat the yogourt, slowly, delicately, like Robertson.

‘How's my family?' he asks.

Milo intended to confess his crime and despicable lack of remorse, and inform Christopher of Tanis's bizarre behaviour and imprisonment of Robert­son. But seeing Christopher, increasingly frail, has stalled him.

‘That's what gets me through,' Christopher says, ‘knowing they're going about their days, ignorant of this hell. I see them eating dinner, playing cards. She always lets him win, he's a lousy loser.'

‘How long since you've talked to her?'

‘Since I left. Ten fun-filled days. She doesn't return my calls.'

‘If you call from here, she won't know who it is.'

Christopher puts the frozen yogourt back on the table.

‘They miss you,' Milo says, ‘and you miss them.'

‘She doesn't miss me.'

‘She does.'

‘Did she say that?' For the first time he stares directly at Milo, his blue eyes looking surreal against his bruised skin. ‘Look, Milo, I know you mean well, even though you want to fuck my wife. But I'm so tired. Indescribably tired. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm only keeping it up so my employer's insurer deposits disability cheques into the bank account that supports my family. Otherwise, this learning-to-walk again business, who needs it? What happened to your hair?'

‘I got a part in a Nazi concentration-camp flick.'

‘How thrilling.'

‘Robertson needs you.'

‘I hit him, and I'll hit him again. He doesn't need that.' Christopher covers his face with his hands the way Tanis does.

‘My father used to hit me. It's not the end of the world.'

‘Isn't it?'

‘I survived.'

‘I don't know who I am around him anymore. I can't trust myself. Or him.'

‘He's only eleven.'

‘Then he's twelve, thirteen, eighteen. It doesn't get easier. Most parents end up doing more not less. The kids have no friends, don't go to college.'

‘I don't have friends,' Milo offers. ‘And I barely made it through college.'

‘Don't expect him to be something he's not. Try imagining being overwhelmed by sensory data, unable to prioritize or edit sounds, textures, visual details.'

‘But Robertson's calm a lot of the time.'

‘When he's able to create a local coherence. That's what his patterned behaviours are all about.'

‘Well, whatever he's doing works for him, doesn't it? Most of the time he's fine.'

Christopher drops his head back on the pillow and stares at the ceiling while Milo sits in squirmy silence wanting to plead Robertson's case but not knowing how.

‘All he can manage,' Christopher says, as though by rote, ‘are simple and immediate tasks. He needs sameness and predictability. We can't offer that his whole life. I can't.'

‘So you'd put him in an institution?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘You just said you can't look after him his whole life.'

‘His life may be short. It happens.'

Is that why he left, because he was afraid he might put a pillow over the child's face? Is this what he means when he says he doesn't know himself around Robertson, can't trust himself?

Christopher closes his eyes again. ‘I don't know who he is anymore. He scares me. When he loses it, I can barely restrain him. And the social workers are useless. Did you ever meet the last one?'

‘With the dead flowers in her
VW
bug?'

Christopher nods. ‘She used jargon like “benefit finding” and “meaning-based coping processes” and told us to seek “positive-toned emotions” so we could “positively evaluate” our circumstances, “thus minimizing or miti­gating the negative implications.” Tanis beat herself up trying to make sense of this psycho-babble. I wanted the woman out of the house. We always had to leave her alone with Robertson and he'd be wrecked after the therapy or whatever it was.'

‘Was she the one who was supposed to help you discover hope?'

‘She didn't call it hope. It was “a cognitive set based on a reciprocally derived sense of successful agency.” I wrote it all down, showed it to Tanis, told her we were wasting our money. You know what Tanis said? “It's essential to set goals and work towards achieving them.” It was like she'd been body-snatched. I put up with it until Robertson came out crying because he didn't know what was going to happen to him after we die. “What happens to me when you die?” he kept asking. Apparently pointing out that he would be left all alone in the world was part of his therapy. I told the stupid bitch to get out. Tanis was furious with me. She can't see what's happening to him. She's too close.' He stares at the contraptions on his legs. ‘When she was pregnant she made all kinds of plans. I felt lucky to have married someone so together. After Robertson was diagnosed, she kept making plans. When the plans failed she'd make more plans. I don't fit into her plans anymore. Can't.'