Milosz Read Online Free PDF

the doctor ordered.’
    Wallace pushes Milo into the bedroom. ‘I’m not going to make it through this.’
    â€˜Sure you will.’
    Wallace hasn’t seen his mother since she returned to her native English burb years ago. He comes up with annual excuses not to visit her. She lives with her sisters who, according to Wallace, are all a hundred and never shut up.
    â€˜She wants to meet my girlfriend,’ Wallace moans.
    â€˜You don’t have one.’
    â€˜Like I don’t know that.’
    â€˜Just be honest with her.’
    â€˜Are you fucking nuts ? Can you set me up with somebody?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜You know people, like, actresses and stuff. I’ll pay her. She just has to act nice and be polite.’
    â€˜Oh, come on, Wallace.’
    â€˜Waal-leee … ? Your tea’s getting cold. Shall I make us a sanny?’
    Wallace presses his hands together in a pleading gesture. ‘I’ll pay you a bonus.’
    â€˜Waal-leee … ?’
    The bullish Wallace morphs into a small boy with downcast eyes and a timorous gait. ‘Coming, Ma,’ he calls back in a singsong voice Milo has never heard before.
    In the morning, Milo, ducking behind parked cars, follows Tanis and Robert­son to school. A year ago Robertson allowed Tanis to put two fingers on his shoulder as they crossed the street. Now, almost her height, he maintains a distance between them. He says he doesn’t need her to walk him to school, but she insists because it is his last year at the neighbourhood school. Next year he will have to take a bus. She has admitted to Milo that she can’t imagine putting Robertson on a bus, watching the doors close behind him, trying to see through the windows as he searches for a seat. ‘It’ll be rush hour,’ she said. ‘He’s bound to freak.’ They have even considered buying a used car, having sold the Subaru last year to pay off debts.
    Mother and son part half a block from the school so the kids in the yard won’t see her. Tanis keeps waving but Robertson doesn’t look back. Milo hides behind some recycling bins as Tanis retraces her steps. She stares hard at the pavement as she walks. Once she has turned the corner, Milo ambles towards the school, pulling his baseball cap low over his forehead. Posses of children part as Robertson makes his way through the yard. Once his back is turned they make faces or pinch their noses. Robertson stops beside the basketball net. Boys ignore him, jumping up and around him. Robertson says something Milo can’t hear above the racket in the yard. A boy in a hoodie shoves him and flips him the finger before resuming dribbling the ball. A stout man with wiry hair, presumably a teacher, approaches Robertson and leads him into the school. The bell rings and the kids begin to line up outside the doors. The boy in the hoodie continues to shoot hoops until the stout man returns. ‘Billy,’ he says sharply, ‘now.’ Billy misses one more shot before slouching towards the entrance. The man pulls off the boy’s hood, revealing a shock of red hair.
    Now Milo knows who Billy is.
    â€¢â€¢â€¢
    He puts on his suit, the one he wears for corporate-type auditions, hoping to blend in at reception. He carries a busted cell he used as a prop in Waiting for Godot . He received good notices for that performance, although he didn’t really understand the play. The director told him he was an ‘instinctive actor’ and that he shouldn’t get ‘hung up on the words.’ This made sense to Milo because, in university, he played George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – another play he didn’t really understand – and didn’t get hung up on the words but channelled the rage he felt towards Gus into George and let it spew all over Martha. After the show he felt free, cleansed, ready to party. In the morning seething resentments