Bowling for Turkeys

What Bites You in the Ass

MILO ENJOYED Misty Parcival so much.

She was smart and funny, and she loved Julia almost as much as she loved Daisy and Butch, and she thought Milo was brilliant , which Milo loved hearing even if he knew it wasn’t true.

They talked creativity and schedules and how sometimes you had to let your dragon ride you; for instance, when you had an idea for something that had nothing to do with your deadlines or your plans and just insisted on being heard. And how sometimes you had to ride your dragon, like when your boss said, “Milo, I need this in a week. For God’s sake could you get your head out of the clouds and help us out here?” (That last one had only happened once or twice, and since it had turned out that Milo’s wandering off usually helped him create really amazing art for the thing he needed to do, Angela had learned to trust his dragon as much as he did.)

And then Misty fed him cookies.

The day, spent under a temporary awning and a sunny October sky, would have been nearly perfect if it hadn’t been for what Garth and his friend Doug were doing while they sat and chatted, sometimes worked, and chatted some more.

The second time Garth asked Milo if he was sure he didn’t have a security system, Milo got a little chill. If he didn’t have one, but Garth thought he had one, did that mean….

No. Stuart wouldn’t do that, would he?

Would he?

Milo resisted the temptation to text Stuart and ask him, mostly because the only texts he could wrap his head around to post read something like Stuart you controlling bastard, did you bug my house ?

He wasn’t sure he was ready for that confrontation—or even if it was healthy. At this point, Stuart was already doing things like washing Milo’s old clothes with peanut butter—probably to make Milo throw them away. Milo was suddenly wondering if, in his rather dreamy approach to the world, he hadn’t missed some other things Stuart had done that he didn’t know about.

Unexpectedly he got a frisson of fear up his spine, and he thought of Mari.

Mari he could text.

Guess what?

Chicken butts.

He smiled at her usual return, because it was such a high school thing to say.

Also, I think Stuart washed my old shirts with peanut butter to make me throw them away while I was gone from the house yesterday.

His phone buzzed in his hand, and Misty Parcival glanced up at him from her computer.

“My friend,” he said, standing up to take the conversation to the middle of the yard. Julia followed him, her squeaky in her mouth indicating that any motion in this direction should be accompanied by throwing, and Misty waved him on with a smile.

“What in the hell?” Mari asked as he accepted the call.

“Well, I showed up to walk Julia wearing my old art-club shirt—”

“The one you wore before your growth spurt?” she asked.

Milo grunted and looked happily at the long-sleeved blue henley he’d thrown on when he’d gone inside to change. “Yeah. What can I say? It was on top.”

“But why ? You haven’t worn that thing since—”

“Yeah, I know, but you and I designed them, so I kept it. But it was on top, and so were these skinny jeans from our first year of college, and I put them on, and they smelled like peanut butter.”

“You hate peanut butter,” she said blankly.

“Yeah. I didn’t put it together until Garth and I were walking, but… well, there’s no reason for these clothes to be on top. I didn’t even wear them when I sort of boycotted laundry for a month, but suddenly they’re on top of my folded clothes, and they smell like peanut butter, and―”

“Stuart.”

Yeah, Mari always had been quicker on the uptake than Milo.

“So, my friend Garth—”

“Hot guy, giant dog,” she said to prove she’d been listening.

“Yeah. He took me to his client’s house. She’s nice. She has dogs. Julia and her dogs get along. Anyway, he and his buddy went back to check my house out and….” He didn’t know how to say this. “He’s asked me twice if I have a security system. And the only reason he would ask me that is―”

“If you have a security system you don’t know about,” she muttered. “Oh God, Milo . What are you going to do?”

Milo grunted. “Well, I’m going to wait until Garth comes back and gives me the whole damage report, and then I’m going to plan .”

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “But there will be one by the time we leave Misty’s house tonight.” He swallowed. “I’d come to your house, but I can’t bring Julia. Honey, you just have too many—”

“Cats,” she replied glumly. “Although this last week I’ve had a guy too, so that might be awkward.”

“Georgie?” he asked, hoping.

“Yeah.” She sighed happily. “He’s…. God, Milo. He’s as dumb as I am, but he helps with all the cats, and at night when we’re watching TV, he’s surrounded by them. They all sit on the two of us and….” She grunted. “It’s weird. I never put that as a thing I should want in a guy, but it should have been the one thing I put on the list. Forget handsome, forget rich—does he love my cats like I do. It’s the only requirement necessary.”

“But he can’t be a freeloader,” Milo said, in case she had forgotten.

Mari made a protesting sound in her throat. “He lives with his parents,” she admitted. “Mostly because they’re all trying to afford his sister’s upkeep in the place. I guess I got a better deal than they did—or maybe Serena’s Medicare pays more.” She grunted. “Which reminds me, I got a letter from that place I should look at.”

Milo’s little frisson of fear—which he’d forgotten in the happy chatter about Georgie the great—suddenly hit him a little harder.

“Mari,” he said, suddenly concerned, “I’ve got to make another phone call. I just wanted to keep you updated and let you know that I’m working on a plan, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “You’ll text me when you have it in hand, won’t you?”

“Of course,” he said.

He rang off and then pulled up the number of Mari’s sister’s care home, his heart hammering in his chest at a thousand beats per minute. Oh shit. Oh hell. He’d sat at his kitchen table while she’d been right there, and he’d done bills, and he hadn’t seen one bill from the place that had started this whole cascade of consequences in the first place, and he’d been such a dreamy, stupid little freak the obvious hadn’t occurred to him.

“Sunshine Adult Care Facility,” came the chirpy voice on the other end of the phone. “What can I do for you?”

By the time the conversation was over, Milo was one harsh, hyperventilated breath away from falling down and weeping on a stranger’s lawn.

“MILO,” GARTH was saying, and Milo realized Misty must have set him back down in her shaded porch. “Milo, c’mon, buddy, you here with me?”

“I… I owe them money ,” he said, trying not to pass out over the amount. “I… they raised the price, and he’s been hiding it for three months and… oh my God, Garth, I could get her sister kicked out because my ex-boyfriend is a douchey creep, and I had no idea !”

Garth nodded, seeming, oddly enough, relieved. “And that answers whether or not you figured that out yet,” he said, and Milo stared at him helplessly.

“He was watching you,” Garth said. He was… he was kneeling at Milo’s feet, holding Milo’s hands, and Milo could only grip them as spots swam in front of his eyes. “He put security cameras around your house, and he caught himself taking mail out of the mailbox.”

Milo let out a small moan, but Garth shook his hands and pulled his attention back.

“Stay with me here, baby. I need to know if he had residence in your house. Cohabitation is one thing, but did he have bills or correspondence or—”

Milo frowned. “No,” he said, this much clear. “His sister sublet his apartment in Sac. He stayed there sometimes when work went late, but all his bills and his correspondence went there.”

“So he had no reason to be checking your mailbox,” Garth said.

“Only to steal my bills from Serena’s care home,” Milo told him bitterly. “I just called them up. I-I had this weird feeling. When Mari came over with Julia, she had all my mail. I sat down and started going through it, and none of those bills were in the pile. They should have been. I should have been a little late on the last one. But Stuart’s been taking all of them. The last three . It’s the only bill I pay by check, you know? Everything else is direct deposit. But there are fees, and she’s about to get evicted, and they need another chunk of money to keep her spot, and I could have it in a month , but I don’t have all of it now , and—”

His voice was rising with panic, and only the warmth of Garth’s hands on his kept him sane.

“Okay. Okay, it’s good that we know this. Look, Milo, you’re sounding a little unhinged right now. Do you mind if I call up the care home? Maybe if somebody explained the situation to them who isn’t losing his shit, they’ll be more receptive to a month’s grace.”

Milo gulped and choked, and then Garth was standing enough to wrap his arm around Milo’s shoulders and pat his back.

“We got you, baby,” he said softly. “I promise. Don’t panic.”

Milo nodded and handed his phone to Garth, who took his turn in the middle of the yard, absently throwing a giant rope to the three big dogs.

“Can I ask?” Misty said from his side. “I hate to be nosy, but you’ve been such a good friend today. I was so excited Garth brought you to me, I didn’t even ask you why you’re here.”

Milo was usually such a private person. Later he would reflect on how raw he must have been, how vulnerable, in these past months, to open himself up to Garth, to Misty, with so little length of acquaintanceship.

The story came pouring out—Mari, Stuart, even Julia and then Garth. He cried a little, while watching Garth talk on his phone, and Misty passed him a tissue.

He turned his head and said, “Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m… I mean, I’m usually sort of a space cowboy, but I’m not usually this much of a mess.”

She gave him a soft smile. “Oh, honey, I’ve got kids your age. You’re fine. Not every relationship is a home run right out of the box. I’m sorry you ended up with this nightmare, but you’ve got to know it’s not your fault, right?”

“Isn’t it, though?” Milo asked. “He… he asked me to ditch my best friend, and I stayed with him.”

She patted his hand, a simple gesture of human contact that made him want to hold on to her hand like he would with Mari. “But you didn’t ditch your friend. And you didn’t incite a confrontation. I know you’re a man, but women have known these things for years, Milo. Abusers start out by isolating their victims so they have nowhere to turn. You never let him do that. In fact you put your foot down when he tried to isolate you further. You didn’t know he was spying on you—why would you think he would? You did nothing more or less than take a person at face value when they said they cared for you. All the bad things that followed are on him , not on you.”

Milo nodded and wiped his face on his T-shirt. “You’re really nice,” he said. “But so is Garth. I guess I’ve got certain expectations, now, that Garth’s friends aren’t going to suck.”

She laughed a little. “Garth was supposed to come and fix my back fence for me,” she said. “Three years ago. That was the job. My friend Margie said he was great, and even when he seduced her grandson, he still finished the job.”

Milo sputtered. “Seduced her….”

Misty waved her hand. “The boy was older than Garth, but I gather he was as surprised as Margie to learn he was gay. And Garth hasn’t done anything like that for a while.” Misty gave Milo a conspiratorial look. “He grew up, and he always did have a core of sweetness in him. But see? When you’re young, that’s when you make your heartbreak mistakes. It wasn’t your fault your mistake had a core of rot in him. But don’t worry. You’ve got friends besides your beloved Mari. We’ll sort this out. Mari’s sister won’t suffer. I promise.”

Milo smiled at this sweet woman who had only met him today and tried not to cry some more. “I-I promised Mari it would be all right,” he said on a hiccup. “See, I had money from my family. They suck, but I had their money, and the least I could do was help. But….” He swallowed. “I’m going to have to tell her. I didn’t want her to know. People get weird about money—look at Stuart.”

She snorted. “Honey, I think Stuart was weird to begin with. It’s your money. You get to say what it’s for.”

At that moment Garth stalked over, Milo’s phone in hand. “Okay,” he said, brow furrowed. “I think we’ve reached an understanding. The problem is they need the papers re-signed, which means….” He looked at Milo meaningfully.

“Oh God,” Milo muttered. “I have to tell Mari.”

Garth nodded. Milo took the phone and stood to head for the middle of the yard again, but Misty put her hand on his arm to stop him.

“Honey, you can do this one inside,” she said, and he nodded.

In his head he saw a cartoon, a sweet woman in a flowered sweatshirt and denim leggings, but with a gauzy cape. Cape of Human Kindness, he labeled, and the cartoon got him through her guided tour into her official office, which was so baroque and stilted that he suddenly understood why Doug and Garth were working to transform her porch overhang into an office that the dogs could have access to.

The superhero in his imagination didn’t belong in here, and he hoped she wrote thousands of words so she could be a mild-mannered romance novelist by day and a superhero by night.

And his imagination got him about to there when he sank into the office chair, pulled out his phone, and called.

MARI WAS … well, puzzled.

“You… you’ve been paying part of Serena’s bill?” she asked for the fifth time.

“Well, yes. It’s what I spent my trust dividends on. Or part of them. You know, most of them are being reinvested, and I live on my salary. But, you know, I had the money, and I spent it.”

“But… but Milo. That money was for you ,” she said, her voice wobbling.

“But this was for me,” he tried to explain. “You were so worried—it was eating you alive. And you love your sister so much, and you needed her to be someplace safe. I was worried about you, so, well….”

“You made it better,” she said, like that was what she was having problems with.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.

“No. No. Don’t be sorry you were being kind,” she said firmly. “I’m just—you said she might be evicted because you stopped paying?”

“Oh! No, I didn’t stop paying,” he said. “Not on purpose. Stuart stole my mail.”

“He did what !”

After that the conversation felt much more normal, and Milo explained about getting pictures of his ex going through the mailbox and stealing stuff, and how he’d been so out of it for a couple of months that it hadn’t occurred to him that he hadn’t paid something he normally paid. “They don’t have a mechanism for automatic deposit,” he said plaintively. “They still don’t. I know. I’ve asked.”

“But… but you have to pay three months in a lump sum plus re-enrollment fees—”

“And the cost has gone up because we had to re-enroll her,” he said glumly. “So yeah. I… well, Garth and Misty said they could front me the big chunk of change while I withdraw some more dividends from my investments.”

“But, Milo, that’s your money !”

“But it’s just, you know, sitting in the money place, procreating. We were planning on taking a vacation when we were thirty, remember? And I said I had it covered. How did you think I had it covered? I just need to… I mean, I have an accountant, but I usually only see him once a year.”

“Oh my God,” Mari said, and he could hear the headache in her voice. “ Milo . If you do this, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“You will too,” he told her sharply, because the threat was terrifying. “You show up at my apartment with a dog and literally wade through my trash, and you don’t think that matters to me? Money is… I don’t know. Imaginary. You’re real. And you need your sister to be okay. So I’m sorry this came up. I’m sorry we have to sign papers again. And I’m sorry it makes you squidgy to think of all the money. But I also don’t care.” He paused. “Oh God. Wow. That’s bad. I’m a bad person. I’m a horrible person. Which is why you’ve got to stay my friend. It’s in the bylaws. It came with the dog. You have to stay my friend even if it makes you squidgy, and I’m sorry, but I can’t take it back.”

When she spoke again, she was in tears—he could hear it, and he couldn’t stop it. “But Milo, why wouldn’t you tell me?”

His throat was thick, and he knew he was crying too. “Because I didn’t want to have this stupid conversation! We’re crying. I hate crying!”

She laugh/cried then, and the sound was disturbingly like a goose honking and then getting it’s bill stoppered. “I hate it too! But… but….” He heard the horror dawning in her voice, and he knew. Knew what was coming next and couldn’t stop it.

“Don’t go there,” he begged, still crying.

“Is this why Stuart left?” she asked.

He managed to make a snorting snot sound—not his finest moment. “It was more… nuanced than that,” he said, and he glanced down at his feet and saw Julia practically nodding at him as though yes, this was how you did something with dignity. It was like she was there to show him how it was done.

“Milo, get it out. Get it all out now, and then I can cry and rage and be pissed and get over it. All at the same time.”

He grunted. “He… he wanted me to not be friends with you,” he said. “From the beginning. He… he said horrible things about you, and I just… I ignored him. I was your friend anyway. I lied to him about where I was going when we met.” He let out a little laugh. “Remember when we drove to the coast and stayed in a hotel for three days?” It had been one of the best times of his life.

“Yes,” she said. “I had to get someone to watch my cats.”

“I told him it was a work conference.” He’d come home and found PrEP in his medicine cabinet and knew why Stuart hadn’t been mad about the sudden notice, but he’d kept quiet about that too. In fact he’d gone on his own prescription, in case Stuart forgot his, but Milo kept his hidden in his briefcase with his tablet.

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

“Because I couldn’t live without you,” he said miserably. “And I couldn’t figure out why he’d hate you so much. You’re perfect. I figured he’d come around—how could he not? I didn’t realize he was a controlling bastard who didn’t like that I had someone else in my life that I loved.”

“An abusive controlling bastard,” she said, her voice low and venomous.

“He cheated on me all the time,” he admitted. “He went on PrEP and didn’t even care that I knew, and then I went on it and hid it from him because I knew I couldn’t trust him.”

“Oh God,” she muttered. “Milo, it’s impossible to be mad at you for this, but do you see that it was wrong?”

“Not really,” he said, “but I will believe you when you say so and try to do better.”

“Augh!”

They were silent for a moment, both of them breathing hard on their end of the telephone line. When she spoke, she kept her voice modulated and calm.

“Okay, so we’re both having amazingly bad days,” she said.

“You have no idea,” he muttered. “Peanut butter, Mari. Peanut butter .”

“Yeah, baby,” she soothed. “It was bad. And the stalking and the cameras in your bedroom—”

He moaned a little because that one hadn’t set in yet.

“So yeah,” she said. “And you will never not be my Milo, and I will never not be your Mari. You believe me, right?”

“Yes,” he said miserably, because he knew a “but” was coming.

“So I’m going to hang up and call Serena’s home, because you’re right, we’ve got to do some paperwork. And you’re going to—oh Lord—try to find a place to live while your new dog-walking buddy is trying to stalk-proof your house. You do have someplace to stay, don’t you?”

“His house,” Milo muttered. “He’s got a guest room.”

“Well, that’s kind,” she said, letting out a breath. “So we’re going to talk in two days. Put it in your phone, Milo. Right now. Two days.”

“Why am I doing this?” he asked while he was doing this.

“Because I’m mad and I’m frustrated and I’m working out all my feels, but I don’t want us to stop talking to each other because it’s awkward now. And I know you. You will let this slide if nobody makes you face it.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, no, don’t be sorry,” she told him. “You… you spend too much time being sorry for shit that’s not yours. And technically you were trying to do a nice thing, even though you were being sneaky because of the unbelievably low threshold you have for emotional discomfort.”

“I’m literally queasy,” he told her, although part of that might have been that he hadn’t eaten. Peanut butter. Blargh.

“So am I,” she said. “So we’re going to talk in two days. And then we’re going to talk in another two. And maybe eventually you’ll see why you should have told me, and I will eventually forgive you for not. But in the meantime, we’re still Milo and Mari, we just gotta be careful of each other, okay?”

“Okay,” he said in a small voice. “Thank you, Mari. For planning to forgive me.”

She sighed. “Thank you , Milo, for trying to take care of me. As mad as I am, I do recognize that this was a very generous thing you did, okay?”

“You needed to know your sister was okay,” he said humbly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Just… remember how Stuart made you feel powerless? How he tried to control you and tell you what you could and could not do?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Not knowing what you were doing—it makes me feel the same way.”

“Oh, Mari….”

Her voice got thick again. “Don’t worry. Two days. We’ll talk. Love you always.”

“Love you back.”

And then she hung up, and he was left, huddling miserably on the giant modern office chair, which was still the most comfortable thing in the entire formal nightmare of a room.