Milosz Read Free

pillaging, the slaughter of priests. Gustaw remade himself in Canada, became Gus and atheist, learned English and, with much practice, removed all traces of Polish from his accent, even mastering the ‘th’ sound. Reborn as a Canadian, he married a bubbly Canadian girl and then argued her to death. Milo remembers the soft hairs on her forearms, the smell of Bailey’s Irish Cream on her breath and the ragged sound of her sobs, but little else, except the arguing.
    Pablo stumbles through the front door.
    â€˜I thought you had to go to the dentist,’ Milo says.
    â€˜I been already,’ Pablo mumbles through gauze.
    â€˜Did he say it was okay for you to work?’
    â€˜He don’t know shit.’ He pulls a piece of gauze out of his mouth, sees blood on it and shoves it back in. ‘That hijo de puta charge me two hundred bucks, can you believe that?’
    â€˜What the fuck are you doing here?’ Wallace demands, clutching his sledgehammer. Any furniture too big for the truck gets demolished in seconds.
    â€˜I need cash,’ Pablo says.
    â€˜No fucking slacking, asswipe, you read me?’
    â€˜ Sí, sí .’
    Pablo, although short, can lift entire couches. He spends hours bodybuilding and comes to cause destruction wearing a bodybuilding belt. For this reason, Milo leaves the heavy lifting to the boys. Upstairs he empties a closet of a mildewed fake fur coat and a wedding dress covered in plastic, several pairs of high-heeled shoes moulded to the shape of a small foot, boxes of obsolete PC technology, exercise equipment and numerous garbage bags filled and labelled. Presumably the evictees had intended to take the bags of summer clothes and winter hats/gloves but had, at the last moment, realized they had nowhere to store them.
    â€˜Milo,’ Pablo calls. ‘Check this out.’ He beckons Milo to a pink and blue room undisturbed by the evacuation. ‘This is a baby’s room, man.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜Nothing’s been used, man. Everything’s, like, still wrapped up. There’s never been no baby here.’
    Milo looks at basket of baby toys wrapped in cellophane. ‘What’s your point?’
    â€˜They couldn’t have no bambinos . They got the house and the nursery but no babies. That’s sad, man. They just left everything.’
    â€˜What else are they supposed to do with it?’
    The upstairs back room of Milo’s house was intended for a baby. His parents referred to it as the baby’s room . But after repeated miscarriages the baby’s room became the back room again, and Milo’s parents stopped exchanging the smallest of tender gestures. From the age of four, Milo never saw them sit in the same room at the same time, although they continued to share a bed, and argue. He’d block his ears with his teddy bears until Mrs. Cauldershot, with hands like sandpaper, yanked them away from him. ‘Best to keep busy,’ she told him. ‘Sitting around never helped anybody.’ Which is probably true. Milo has done more sitting around than keeping busy and look where it’s got him, en route to becoming a fire hazard. But then wasn’t Gustaw mercilessly busy? Isn’t it possible he walked into the storm to stop being busy, to inhale the brisk air, to die?
    The bubbly Canadian girl died of a heart attack at forty-two.
    â€˜Wakey, wakey,’ Pablo says, ‘you don’t want the boss man on your back. We got fleas. He wants us to pull up the hall carpet.’ Pablo tucks his track pants into his socks and starts ripping up broadloom with an X-acto knife. Just the mention of fleas starts Milo scratching. He too tucks his pants into his socks.
    â€˜We got to get poison to spray on these suckers,’ Pablo says. ‘If I bring bugs to my girlfriend’s, she’ll kill me.’
    Pablo’s girlfriend is always about to kill him. Milo has difficulty understanding what Pablo gets