“As strong as I need to be. Go do your push-ups.”
Milo did a thousand push-ups, and Satan stood over him and drooled something like a dumpling all over his back.
Time passed. Nomads came to the oasis and went away again. Milo dreamed dreams. Heaven and Earth turned. Desert winds blew, wearing things away and burying things, as desert winds do.
—
The first time they performed together in the bazaar, it was Milo who began the show.
First he grabbed three I’M HOT FOR THE DESERT T-shirts from a young shopkeeper’s stall.
“Hey!” cried the shopkeeper, leaping after him.
Within seconds, Milo got the T-shirts spinning up and down in the air, flying like swans.
“Ooh!” said the crowd, circling around.
“Good morning!” Milo called out. “Friends, you will now be treated to a demonstration of highly scientific juggling feats. I heartily recommend that, afterward, you visit this fine gentleman’s stall—what’s your name? Moudi? Visit Moudi’s stall.”
Moudi backed off.
It was a routine show, up to a point. Milo asked the crowd to throw him some things, and they threw him their sandals. Threw him a Frisbee. He juggled these things backward and forward. He juggled three turkeys and a dozen eggs.
“Come on, folks,” he said. “We can do better than this.”
And that’s when someone threw him a baby.
It cried as it came whirling toward him over the front row of spectators.
Milo nearly froze. Like everyone in the crowd, he gasped. But he caught the thing, just as one should always catch a baby, neatly across his forearm, supporting its head with his palm.
But then another baby sailed his way, and another.
Milo had no choice. Reflexively, he caught them all, and before he knew it, he was juggling three wailing infants.
The crowd raised helpless hands in the air, surging forward, then surging back, not wanting to get in his way. The crowd grew then, as the noise drew attention, and people farther down the bazaar came running, saw, and stayed, hardly daring to breathe.
It wasn’t long before Milo—having been a father and a mother and a baby countless times—realized that something was amiss. Something about the babies was too stiff, their cries too much the same…
Dolls.
Some bastard had grabbed a whole display of baby dolls from a stall, and—well, here came the shopkeepers now, gesturing.
One, two, three—Milo tossed them their merchandise.
One, two, three—the crowd caught on.
A moment of disturbed, uncertain silence. And then a blast of relieved applause that went on and on and on.
There was Akram, amazed and relieved like the rest of them.
“Bow out, and let’s go,” Akram said, drawing close.
“But!” Milo protested. “We haven’t even done our tandem act, with the swords and—”
“You can’t do better than what you just did,” Akram said. “Finish at the top of your act, whenever that comes. Now let’s go!”
Milo bowed and collected his pile of coins, and they went and got some tacos, and that was Milo’s debut as a professional juggler.
That night he had a wonderful, awful dream.
Someone in the crowd threw him a woman. It was Suzie.
“Suzie!” he cried, tossing her up in the air and catching her with expert grace.
“It’s no use,” she said to him, and before he could answer, she was pulled from him, just like before. Stretching away. Her hand trailed along his face as she left him.
“No!”
Her fingers grew long, soft and warm on his face, as she vanished across dimensions— Milo awakened. He could still feel softness and warmth on his cheek. Up above him, in the dark, hot breath and wet chewing noises. A long, damp shadow thrust through the tent flap— “Aw, Jesus on a stick, Satan!” Milo screamed, shoving the camel’s head aside, nearly uprooting the tent as he staggered out into the night. Wiping at his face, feeling for the water bucket by starlight, washing away strings of camel drool.
“Milo!” called Akram, emerging from his own tent. “Milo, what’s amiss? Are you sick? Are we besieged?”
Milo, sputtering, explained.
Akram laughed.
“It’s not funny,” said Milo. “He’s making my life hell in his nasty little ways.”
“What’s funny,” said Akram, “is that, one: Yes, he’s nasty. He’s a camel. But, two: You do not see why he pays you all this attention? It is his way of showing that he loves you.”
Milo sat down in the sand. He said nothing. Akram went to buy them some cinnamon rolls.
It was true. He felt the truth of it. He even felt his own heart softening a bit. But…
“Why?” he finally asked, when Akram returned.
Akram shrugged. He handed Milo a roll, and they ate in silence.
“Because you are kind and good to him, despite his faults? Because you were a female camel in some distant life? Who knows these things?”
Satan emerged from the tent. He found Milo and came near, breathing on him.
Milo reached up and patted the beast on his gross, sweaty neck.
Satan made a horrible noise and bit him tenderly on the arm.
—
The next day, Milo and Akram managed to perform together. They threw pretty girls back and forth. They threw apples back and forth and ate them as they threw. They juggled knives and fire, china plates and glass figurines. In a sort of slo-mo dance, they juggled bubbles and balloons.
They hauled coins by the sackful back to their tents.
Time passed.
They juggled buckets full of water one day, a feat of strength and timing. That was Milo’s idea and design. Another time, he figured out how they could juggle rubber balls and let some of the balls bounce on the ground, as if the two of them were a human popcorn machine.
Quickly enough, it became obvious that the student had surpassed his teacher.
Akram did not seem to be the jealous kind. More and more, his book started to be about Milo.
The time Milo juggled three sleeping girls without waking them up.
The time Milo juggled a pile of sunbaked bricks, so that it went from being a pile over here and became a pile over there.
The time—the many times—Milo howled, “Suzie!” in his sleep, but wouldn’t talk about it, and acted like a child if you asked too many questions, and was obviously in denial, and was hiding something…
One evening, Akram came out and stood over Milo, who sat staring at the moon and flexing his fingers in the sand. Satan knelt nearby, sleeping, snoring like a steam engine full of puke.
“Friend,” said Akram, “you need to get out from time to time. Let’s go into town and find some trouble.”
“I’m good,” answered Milo, his voice barely audible.
Akram heaved a sigh. “You can’t just disappear into your work,” he insisted.
Milo roused himself a little.
“It’s not disappearing,” he said. “It’s concentration. It’s how you become great at something. Others think you’re obsessed, and you’re the only one who understands what you’re looking for.”
“Which is what?”
“Perfection.”
“Bullshit, respectfully, my friend. You’re running from something.”