machine dropped, or just old, stretched tape. Then it resumed: “Now I know something about Milo Smith.I know what he’s doing here, with me. Once he trusted me enough to start describing those dreams of his, it came together for me-the odd inanimate object romances, the animal reveries, the sensations of bodiless flight, his deep terror; and the physical evidences, like fairy dust on the dreamer’s bedclothes in the old folk tales.
“But it’s hardly time for Milo to be told anything. First we have to build up the psychiccontainer. If he were to realize it now, it would blast him to pieces. Sylvie went through the same sort of thing, but Milo’s got the additional problem of this distorted, secret past.
“My approach has been all wrong. I mustn’t precipitate any sudden epiphanies. More chlorpromazine.
Slow, careful work. Test the ground before each step, Devore, or you’ll land the both of you in a dark hole. If the state won’t keep paying, screw them! Call it a charity case. God knows, there’s plenty in itfor me!”
STOP. REWIND. PLAY: “…plenty in itfor me!”
STOP. REWIND. PLAY: “…plenty in itfor me!”
STOP.
“Dr. Devore?”-a voice out in the corridor. “Dr. Devore? Dr. Devore? Security, Dr. Devore! You in there, sir?” A rapping at the outer door. Fumbling for keys.
The knot in the knot in Milo’s belly tightened further. He had to get up to ease the pain. He padded to the office door and peeked into the waiting room. The only light in there was the gray-green light that leaked out the door when he opened it, light through the office window from the lamps and signs on the street and the buildings nearby-and the glow of the wall rainbow reflected in the corner of Milo’s eye.
In the dark of the waiting room Milo saw what must have been an afterimage of the rainbow, as if it were a small animal that had sneaked out ahead of him through the office door.
Except for the rainbow, the waiting room was empty now, but Milo must have been dead-out dozing before, because the painting had been changed again. Someone must have gone in and out of the waiting room without waking him. The monkey warrior was gone. Instead, it was Munch’s screamer on the screaming bridge, the air and river screaming.
He heard the key in the lock. For a moment, Milo had a sense of deja vu, the feeling that the turning key was himself. He shut himself in the office again, his heart pounding. Suddenly, to his astonishment, he heard Dr. Devore’s voice in the waiting room: “No, wait. I’m sorry. I’ll open it for you. I must have fallen asleep.”
The sneak! Everybody wants a piece of me.Milo ran to the open window, swung his feet over the ledge-it was a long way down-and listened. He yanked Devore’s crystal off the sash by the string that held it, and he threw it out the window. A tiny, occasional glint, it plummeted six stories and shattered on a curbstone.
“…plenty in it for me!”
He stared at the rainbow wall-all dark. No rainbow. Probably, it was Milo’s own shadow blocking the window light from shining on it. He heard the hallway door opening. The voice outside went up nearly an octave: “Oh. Sorry, Doctor. I just had to check. I thought I heard somebody in here. I mean, Ithought it was you, but I had to make sure.”
“No problem. I’mglad you checked. It mightnot have been me, after all. I might have been somebody else.”
“Right. Everything okay then, right?”
“Right. And I have a weapon, remember?”
“I remember. I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I do.”
“You’re the doctor.”
The door clicked shut. The inner door opened. Milo jumped.
“Can you fly like that all the time, or was it just some kind of crazy fluke?” The big kid speared one of Milo’s fries-“You mind?”-and shoveled it on in. He was only an inch taller than Milo, if that, but the swagger made it six. He never stopped talking except to swallow. “Because if you can do that whenever you want to, little man, I’ve got a proposition for you.”
They sat in a corner of the big, greasy restaurant. The light there was like bleach, harsh and merciless.
Cadaverous chain smokers sucked coffee and talked to themselves, silently or aloud. With one hand, a lean, gap-toothed Okie was rocking her toddler’s walker, while, with the other, finger by finger, she managed a hot-dog bun oozing green. At the next table, three college students discussed Heidegger over meatloaf. The proprietor, Aristotle Jitsi, sweet-talked a girlfriend on the phone pinched between his ear and shoulder, while he scraped the grill.
The big kid wore a bowler hat and a black leather jacket, the overcoat kind favored by suave Italian street toughs, not the motorcycle kind. He had drawstring pants on, loose, with wide vertical stripes, red and white. His shoes were black leather Danskins-a rope walker? A ballet dancer? The ensemble didn’t make much sense. “Well? Can you?”
Milo mopped up ketchup with a crust of his grilled cheese, then didn’t eat it. He pushed the whole plate of French fries toward the big kid. “I don’t know what happened…Thanks, I’m not hungry anymore.”
Milo sneaked a look down at his own clothes. He never knew what he was wearing until he looked:
T-shirt, faded jeans, sneakers, the cowboy belt they gave him last year on his birthday-lassoed Brahma bull buckle.
“You weren’t trying to kill yourself, were you?”
“No.”
“I think you could do it again. I think you’ve got some kind of a talent. I was just walking by, and I saw you whistling down like a dropped bomb. I heard the thud. I just about threw up. Then I ran up, and there you were, folding in your wings. Are they wings? Where did you get them? Do you make ’em?
Your wings and that furry stuff you tucked away somewhere. For aerodynamics, right? Come on! I’m in the show business, little man. I could do something for you. Tell me some stuff…How about a piece of pie?”
Milo got up from the table and looked around for an exit.
“Hey, sit back down. I’m not done with you. Where you going, anyway? I bet you got no place to stay.
Look at you. I can get you a place to stay, no sweat, no charge, but talk to me, little man, talk to me.”
Milo started to walk, but a twinge in his calves stopped him. He didn’t know what to do with his legs anymore. He felt like an unmagnetized compass. Where to go? Not the group home-they’d ship him back to Devore! Outside of that, one place seemed as good as another. He could livehere, talking to himself, breathing cigarettes, eating grease. He could diehere, rocking some toddler in a walker, waiting for his teeth to rot.
“Come back,” the big kid said. “I’ll buy you a piece of pie. I’m rich as Croesus. I’m in the show business.”
Milo sat down. “But I don’t feel like talking. I don’t know what happened, honest. Some guy was after me. He thought I had something he wanted, but I don’t have anything. Do I look like I have anything?”
“What about those wings, boy? Those must be something to have.”
“Do I look like I have any secret pockets on me?” Milo lifted his arms up over his head. “You must have been seeing things. I just landed lucky.”
“No, I don’t think so. Something’s fishy here, little man, but I don’t care. I like you. I live off fishy, anyway. Look at this.” The big kid pulled a card out of his inner vest pocket and spun it across the table in front of Milo: *** MOON* AND* STARS***
Spectacles, Phantasmagoria, Puppets for for Festivals, Conventions, Parties, Theatrical Events, Promotions Of Every Conceivable Variety!!! by S. VERDUCCI, MASTER SHOWMAN (Equidecomposabilization Services Available to Select Clientele) “What’sequidecohoozits? ”
“That’s a sort of code word, little man. People who need it generally know that word; when they see it on my card, they know that I can supply it. It’s a sort of a side line.”
“What does it mean?”
The big kid leaned across the table and spoke to Milo in a low voice. He watched Milo as he spoke, as if to measure Milo’s response, word by word. “Look here, suppose you got two balls, okay? A great big one and a little bitsy one, both of them thick as a brick. Suppose I told you I had a way of taking the bitsy one apart and putting it back together so it was just as big as the great biggy, or making the biggy into a bitsy without adding or taking away a single atom? You reckon that would be handy?”
“That’s what Dede wanted to know!” Milo started in his chair as if he’d touched a high power line. He hadn’t spoken or thought that name for eight years. He coughed, trying to hide his shock, but the big kid hadn’t missed
