Free Milosz by Cordelia Strube Page B

receptacle. ‘Good output,’ she says. ‘Keep it up.’ She pushes past the curtain and speaks loudly to the Portuguese crowd. ‘This is trauma ICU . We have limited visits here. He needs to rest now.’
    The Portuguese apologize. Milo hears kissing as they bid adieu to the patient.
    â€˜That goes for you too,’ she says to Milo. One of her eyeballs doesn’t move.
    â€˜I’ll just say goodbye.’
    She holds up two fingers. ‘Two minutes.’
    Christopher continues to stare at the hoops on his leg. Milo ponders the clumsiness of life and death, the endless stumbling and smashing into things. The circularity of it.
    â€˜I don’t know what you’re doing here, Milo, but whatever it is, you don’t have to do it. Are they all right? You didn’t tell them?’
    â€˜No.’
    The limping nurse returns to check Christopher’s chest tube.
    â€˜What’s that for?’ Milo asks.
    â€˜His lung collapsed. Broken rib. Off you go. You can see him tomorrow.’
    â€˜I’ll bring you some fresh fruit,’ Milo says but Christopher is once again freed of consciousness.
    The agency people and the clients sit behind a table, sipping bottled water. Milo starts removing his shirt before he is asked. The casting director with the cowlicked hair and the scarlet-nailed woman with the sharply cornered glasses hover.
    â€˜What’s shakin’, Milo?’ asks a fleshy-lipped man in a leather jacket who Milo assumes must be the director. ‘So, what have you been up to?’
    Milo loathes show-biz folks’ uninterested, insincere questions. ‘Well,’ he begins, ‘I got up this morning, ate some toast with marmalade, had a dump, got on the subway and visited a friend who got smashed by a car, then I scooted over to see you guys.’
    â€˜Super, do you think you can run around for us again?’
    â€˜Absolutely.’ He starts to run, so fast he bashes into the wall. The people sitting at the table chuckle. Trained to respond to laughs, Milo runs faster and hits the wall harder.
    â€˜Whoa, boy,’ the fleshy-lipped director says. ‘Do you know the song “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”?’
    â€˜One of my faves.’
    â€˜Do you think you can sing it while you’re running?’
    â€˜No prob.’ Milo resumes running, belting out, ‘Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.’
    The table-sitters respond favourably and he wishes they’d attended Waiting for Godot .
    â€˜Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall,’ he hollers, ‘ninety-eight bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall.’
    â€˜Super,’ the director says. ‘Now take a swig for us.’ He hands a beer bottle to Milo. ‘Drink it like you’ve been in the desert for a week.’
    Milo grabs the bottle and gulps so feverishly that the beer – actually ginger ale – spills onto his breasts and gut. His audience roars. Milo rubs the ginger ale over his breasts and gut, making primordial noises, further delighting the table-sitters.
    â€˜Super,’ the director says. ‘Do you lift weights?’
    â€˜Do I look like I lift weights?’ More laughs. He can do no wrong.
    â€˜See those dumbbells over there?’ the director says. ‘Could you lie on the floor and lift them, do a kind of a bench-press thing, singing the beer song at the same time?’
    It occurs to Milo that they might be hot to trot because no one else could withstand this degree of humiliation. But what does he care, the actor who can’t act? It’s all clumsy and relentless, this stumbling and smashing into things – a fucking obstacle course terminating in a crab walk to the crematorium. He drops to the floor and rolls onto his back, belting the