“I don’t think I follow, Milo. In all these dreams, where are you?”
“The fog, the Dumpster and the car, the window…” Milo clamped his bony fingers around the scrolls at the edges of his armchair as if it were an electric chair. He stared straight ahead, straight through Dr.
Devore, focusing on ghosts three thousand miles distant, waving from the past like dead men from the ports of a sunken ship.
Devore interrupted him. “Don’t say anymore if you don’t want to, Milo.” Milo froze, then slumped back into the chair. Dr. Devore was standing up, hands on his sacrum, arching back and stretching his neck from side to side. It made a little crackling sound. “Anyway, our hour is about up. This was good, Milo.
This was very good. You shared some of your dreams with me. We talked a little about your sleep problem, and about your sister…”
“I didn’t tell you anything about my sister.”
“Right. We’ve got to get you to relax, you know? I am going to increase your chlorpromazine. Your house parents will give you the tablets in the morning and at night. I’ll talk to them about it. You shouldn’t worry. Just try to do the best you can, you know? And keep track of those dreams for me, will you, Milo?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Dr. Devore stood before Milo, waiting for him to get up. He had set up his psychic vacuum pump again, to suck Milo out of the club chair and get rid of him, Milo thought. Devore needed his beauty sleep.
Milo stood, turned, and walked out the door without saying thank you or goodbye. The waiting room was empty. Milo crossed the waiting room, opened the hall door and shut it again without going through.
He waited thirty seconds, then returned to Dr. Devore’s office door and cupped his ear against it.
He heard Devore part the drapes and open one of the windows; it shuddered and squeaked against the casement. Then he heard the rolltop clack open, and Devore spoke into his tape recorder: “Milo is on the verge of finding out. He would have blurted it out just now if I hadn’t stopped him. It would be most inopportune for him to know everything just now. I think the best course would be to slow him down. The thorazine should help, but we can’t rely on it. This is a tricky business. If he’s too tight, something fatigues inside him and he manifests in spite of himself; if he’s too loose, of course, he changes. Can’t leave him at the home much longer the way things are going. Somebody’s sure to see something, and what happens next may be out of my control. Get Sylvie in there, that’s the only way.
Remember to call Sylvie tonight, now, soon.
“Oh, yes! He said the thing about smell again, but he doesn’t seem to understand what it means-which is good. There’s a little time…God! I’ve got to take a nap. My knees are buckling.”
The machine clicked off. Milo heard Devore stretch and yawn, then the rustle of clothing peeling off, the two chairs scraping the floor as Devore pushed them together. A moment later he was snoring.
The little machine! The box sheathed in perforated black leather hiding inside Dr. Devore’s rolltop with all of Milo’s secrets! Like the totemic soul of a primitive: a pouch, a feather, or a whittled doll secreted in a hollow log, proof against soul-snatching demons and enemies. Only, the demon wasin possession of Milo’s soul.
There was a fake window in the waiting room, drapery with a solid wall behind it, and opposite that, a print of some famous painting, a different one every time Milo visited. Sometimes, in fact, it was different when he left than it had been when he arrived; Devore must have paid someone he never saw to slip in and change it periodically, like a diaper service. Mondrian to Dali, Manet to Munch or an anonymous Byzantine, each with a brass name tag on an ornate frame, while Milo conveyed his soul, via Devore, to the skin-covered box! Just now, it was a Chinese painting of a warrior monkey standing on a cloud in a great, plumed hat, brandishing a cudgel.
Milo tiptoed away from the door, hid behind the drapes and waited. He made quite a perceptible bulge there, but he was relying on Devore’s drowsiness to get by with it. Being caught might not be so bad either. The way they looked at you then, at the home or at school, cross as it was, felt a lot like love.
It was hard to tell how much time had passed, because there was no daylight in there, but it seemed like a long time, and Milo had not had his thorazine. Below his stomach, inside the habitual knot, an older knot was beginning to ache. Aches in aches, Milo stood flush to the wall, breathing dust behind the drapery.
At last, he ventured out. The snoring had stopped. He pressed his ear to the door and heard nothing.
What did he look like dreaming, the little man who harvested Milo’s dreams? Milo turned the knob, degree by degree, soundlessly, until it stopped; then he pulled the door ajar and peeked in.
Impossibly, the room was empty. Devore was gone. The club chair and the cabriole chair were still pushed together in the center of the room to form an odd, uncomfortable bed. Milo strode in and slammed the door behind him, as if to test, to make sure his senses hadn’t fooled him, that Devore was actually absent. Nothing stirred. There was no other way out except the window, which was actually open, but the office was six stories up.
Milo squinted and cocked his head like a cat listening for rats in the wall. However he had managed it, Devore was not there. Maybe, unawares, Milo had dozed standing up, and Devore had simply left through the waiting room. Milo went to the rolltop and pulled it open. The tape recorder was there. He opened it and took out the cassette. It had Milo’s name on it, a cassette all to himself. He put it back in the machine and rewound.
The last rays of sunlight to skirt the top of the building across the street shone through a crystal suspended from the window sash, splashing rainbows on the office wall. As the land breeze breathed it back and forth, the crystal shook and spun, whirling colors about the room. Milo had never before seen Dr. Devore’s crystal or the rainbows. So there was a dance in the old bagface yet!
The prism clacked against the shivering glass. The tape whirred, then stopped. Milo pressed PLAY: “Milo Smith.Smith not his real name. An assigned name. Nobody knows his real name. First name’s probablyMilo, though. Fourteen. Sporadically guilty of many relatively minor offenses such as disorderly conduct, battery against other children, petty thefts, and so on. Frequently truant. Has been under state guardianship in group homes for about seven years. Generally shy and withdrawn, presents as extremely nervous, with many obsessive mannerisms. Plays his cards close to the chest, this one.
“Referred because of violent, disturbing dreams, waking other boys. Also some evidence of self-inflicted wounds. Chronic sleeplessness, nervosity. Looks like a mess, sunken eyes, thin as a rail, reminds me of the old photos of liberated camps at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau. All he needs is the striped pants and a star of David.
“Seemed like he came in, then just waited for the hour to end. But he came in! Why? Something going on here. Okayed chlorpromazine for now. Next week…?”
Milo PAUSED to think that one over. Whyhad he come? Nobody could force him. Nobody could hurt him. He hurt himself so badly already, just squeezing and squeezing to stay in control, that there was nothing worse to threaten Milo with. He stretched out on the two armchairs, cradling the tape recorder in his arms like a teddy bear. Think it over:why?
Outside the window, the street lamps flicked on. Milo had dozed off, he didn’t know for how long, but it was dark. Unusual, dangerous, to sleep so long. Luckily, there had been no dream. There was still a rainbow on the wall-that was a new one! Milo walked to the window and passed his hand in front of the crystal.
That explained it; the crystal was a prop. The rainbow didn’t move. It was somehow painted on the wall, painted no doubt over the real rainbow, the one from the crystal at the rainbow moment, sunset behind the MacCauly Building. Funny he’d never noticed it, but he always sat with his back to that wall, and when he came in or left this room, he always had a lot on his mind, or a lot to keep out of his mind.
PLAY: “…I want to remind myself here that Sylvie has come up with a way of using Zorn’s Lemma for shape- shifting. She finds the maximal element of all the upper bounds of the chains in the shape she’s departing from…”
STOP. REWIND. PLAY: “…shape-shifting…”
REWIND. PLAY: “…shape-shifting…”
STOP.
Below, a car drove by with its windows rolled down and the radio blasting, about a hound dog…The old song faded out of hearing, along with the clatter of a dragging muffler. Then there were voices and honking horns. The theater crowd was arriving. Milo stared up at the rainbow on the wall, dimly aglow in the shadowy light of neon from outside.
PLAY: “…Why do I always think of Sylvie when I think of Milo? Could he be likeus? ”
STOP. REWIND. PLAY: “…Could he be likeus? ”
There was a click, then static, an intentional erasure or else a dumb mistake: the wrong button pressed, the
