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Seven more missions. He’d gone from two to seven in the time it would take someone to sneeze into their open palm. That meant seven more chances of people trying to kill him, trying harder than they’d ever tried at anything in their lives, and his chances of survival had folded exponentially. He’d been slumped near the mess hall for most of the morning, watching Milo pour over crates of produce and flip through paperwork with the tenacity of someone tearing off mattress tags, and only now stood, stretched, and began making his way towards the airstrip.
“Yossarian,” Milo shouted, spotting him and waving him over.
Yossarian shook his head and kept walking, digging in his front pocket for another cigarette. Milo gestured insistently, then hurried to catch up with him.
“I need your opinion on something; you know how papayas- “
“No, I don’t know how papayas.” he snapped.
“Well then here’s a science lesson for you- “
“Milo- “
“Unripe fruit has different enzymes than ripened fruit… “
Yossarian tuned him out as they walked, tried focusing on the sounds of the world instead. Men shouting and laughing, the wind, a few birds here and there. He wondered what kind they were. If he listened hard enough he thought he could hear the waves some distance away.
“And so eating even a small quantity can set off a reaction,” Milo was saying, “but the benefits- “
Yossarian sighed, stopped and turned to face him. “Listen, I can’t do this right now. I’m supposed to be getting ready to go get killed.”
“Well we can talk when you get back.”
He dug his thumb into the filter of his cigarette, titled his head back a bit to exhale. “Yeah?”
“How many missions do you have left?” Milo asked, hands folded politely behind his back and head tipped to one side like a skink.
“Too many. A million.”
“I’m serious.”
“Seven.”
“Seven’s not so bad.”
“Seven’s a hell of a lot worse than two. I had TWO. I had TWO LEFT,” he insisted.
“And I firmly believe that your situation is what you make of it! The missions go up from twenty-five to thirty; I see five more chances to do the right thing, support your friends and countrymen. If someone hands you a lemon- “
“I’ve got to get out of here”, Yossarian muttered, running a sweaty palm through his hair and shoving past him with a clip to the shoulder.
“You know what your problem is?” he called after him haughtily.
Yossarian’s list of what people had determined his problem was threatened to run longer than his own list of emergency medical maladies. Bad attitude, too much time in the sun, no pride in your country, no pride in yourself, selfishness, promiscuousness, time with the wrong people, time in the wrong places, psychoses, neuroses, not taking anything seriously, taking everything literally, violent impulses, not loosening up, not straightening up, being a crybaby,
“What’s my problem Milo?” He asked, hoping it could beat Appleby’s latest theory that his problem was spending too much time near open bodies of water.
“You need a decent meal.”
Yossarian was so taken aback by this that he only stared.
“Let me treat you to dinner,” Milo continued, “not in front of the others you understand, it’ll be easy enough to use the mess after hours. Just tell me your perfect, ideal meal and I’ll make it for you.”
Yossarian was sure he was joking. “Anything I want?”
Milo nodded eagerly, “anything at all; my treat.”
Yossarian considered. He didn’t think about food the way most of the others did, didn’t have what Clevinger would call ‘a refined palate’ and was happy to eat the slurry they were served as the most militant of mess hall supporters. He tried to remember the last meal he had truly enjoyed, thinking it would have been the last time he ate at a restaurant, or maybe the last time they’d celebrated a holiday, but when would that have been?
“Seared scallops with fresh butter?” Milo suggested, “lamb with mint jelly? Tarte tatin? I just got a shipment of pears in from a gentleman in Belgium.”
Yossarian shook his head; “I don’t really like any of those things.”
“Then what do you like?”
“Come on Milo, you don’t actually think eating dinner is going to fix anything for me.”
“A good dinner,” he stressed, “pick your poison. If you could have any gourmet meal in the world what would it be?”
“Hamburgers with everything on them”, he laughed, “onions and pickles and coleslaw and french fries. And fried tomatoes, and soft pretzels with mustard, and coke floats, and cotton candy.”
“What kind of cotton candy?” Milo asked, not even blinking. Yossarian was surprised he hadn’t pulled out a little notepad like someone at a crime scene.
“The blue kind.”
He nodded, “anything else?”
“No”, he said slowly, “but what are you- “
“Give me one week”, he instructed, pacing back and forth and thinking hard. “It won’t be easy, but you’ll hear from me just as soon as everything’s ready.”
“And don’t worry,” he added when Yossarian didn’t say anything, “you’ll make it through this mission and come right back. You won’t have to miss a thing.” He patted him on the shoulder and returned to his crates.
-
Yossarian didn’t die on his twenty-fourth mission, nor on his twenty-fifth, and he couldn’t help wondering if Milo had something to do with it. If anyone could have arranged his living an extra seven days to attend a private dinner it would be him, and not seeing him around was only making him more wary. He asked the others if they knew where he might have gone, but none of them cared, and when he asked the people who did care they didn’t know.
The week crept on, and by the end of it he’d almost forgotten the arrangement. Dunbar marked it up to his being teased, the others thought he was the one doing the teasing, and he was fed up with being ignored. He thought the story would garner some interest or jealousy or even suspicion, but his latest pitch to Clevinger had failed on that front so he packed it in. They had a few days off soon enough, and his thoughts were back to leave hours, then mission hours, then leaving altogether and never seeing Milo again. He figured the next time they talked they’d have a repeat of the papayas conversation and that would be that.
But he hadn’t quite gotten it out of his head, so when someone he didn't know came around that night to catch him outside his tent and tell him that his services were requested, he didn’t even think to feel afraid, only sighed and pulled his jacket back on.
-
Milo had laid a starched table cloth over one of the benches in the desolate and now-locked mess hall and piled it with everything Yossarian had asked for. Plates of fried food made to look elegant with soup spoons and china plates and butter dishes and ramekins of sauces and fluted glasses and after-dinner coffee cups. A centerpiece of cotton candy towered atop paper sticks in a vase meant for flowers, shining in blue technicolor.
“Now”, Milo said, pacing around to his side of the table as Yossarian stared, “my biggest challenge, besides choosing between mustards of course, was what to make our aperitif, or aperitivo,” he raised his eyebrows and laughed like this was a joke instead of a statement. “I decided on a dry champagne, nothing fancy, but excellently kept.”
“It’s probably different than what you’re used to,” he continued as Yossarian picked up three different forks and inspected them like a novice dentist. “Do you like champagne?” He took the bottle off ice and uncorked it with a clumsy flourish.
“Haven’t had any in a long time”, he admitted, leaning forward to catch it in his glass as Milo poured at a tilt. “Aren’t you supposed to serve it with cake or something?”
“The aperitif is for the start of a meal; it’s not sweet.”
“Well how many kinds of champagne are there?”
“More than you’d imagine.” He poured some for himself, somehow measuring it out in his head.
“So, what, three?”
“Guess again.”
“More than three?” He swished his glass around just to watch the bubbles pinprick the sides.
“And this is the real thing, straight from its namesake.”
Yossarian took a sip, made a face, took another.
The hamburgers were delicious; medium-rare, dripping with ketchup and sugary caramelized onions and more fresh lettuce than he’d seen in a year. He couldn’t make himself savor it and polished one off in a few bites before snatching up a second. “Where did you get all of this?” He asked, fascinated, lifting up the bun just to look at everything Milo had managed to cram onto it. He picked up a gherkin and crunched it between thumb and forefinger, so crisp it made a sound like ice.
Milo broke into the first genuine smile Yossarian had seen from him. “The meat grinder was the hardest to get ahold of. I needed just the right texture and of course it had to be restaurant-grade, so I called up a friend in the south of France, which is also,” he added, “where I got the cheese. It’s a year-old Emmental.” They moved onto a tour of the rest of the food; Yossarian’s fingers and collar growing spotted with grease as he listened patiently to Milo’s explanation of the intricacies of oil temperature and potato pricing. He poured coke into wine glasses for them and waited until it went flat before expertly scooping ice cream in and pouring the rest slowly. He quizzed Yossarian each time they refilled their plates, about what he thought of Italy (“nice place to visit”) and how he spent his days (“avoiding Italy.”)
“Why is this the dinner you wanted?” he asked, dipping a bite of pretzel into mustard the way one would dunk toast in coffee.
Yossarian liked that he asked so many questions, sometimes it felt like he was the only one who did. “It’s what I liked when I was back in the states; reminds me of going to the beach as a kid.”
“Back home?”
“Something like that.” He speared a fry with a salad fork. “Didn’t you ever eat like this? They must have ten-cent hamburgers in… wherever you’re from.”
“Iowa,” Milo sniffed, “and just because a place has food doesn’t mean it’s good food or well-executed food or patriotic food. We all ate hamburgers, but what values did those hamburgers reflect?”
Yossarian shrugged, took another bite of tomato.
“Exactly,” he stabbed at the table with an index finger, “I’m aiming for quality and quantity in equal parts! Total exchange; not just of goods but of integrity!”
“What does integrity have to do with it?”
“Integrity has everything to do with it.”
Yossarian rested his elbow on the table and tipped his head onto his open palm, smudging sauce on his cheek. “Were you gone the whole week just getting all this for me?”
Milo frowned, annoyed that he wasn’t listening. “Please, that would be ridiculous business management, but of course it was part of it. I promised you a decent meal.”
Yossarian smiled a little and hid it in his champagne glass.
“It was a good challenge,” he admitted thoughtfully, “picking up ingredients in between- well, I won’t say, it’s not ready yet, but next time I could really get you something special if you wanted it.”
“I don’t know enough about food to stop you.”
He laughed at that, “I’ll make you something even better than this. You need to learn to try things.”
Yossarian tried to imagine what he’d make him, but could only picture those weird breads they sometimes had at hotel lobby parties. “How’d you get the cotton candy here?” He asked, reaching out to pull off a piece. He was too impatient to let it melt on his tongue and let it stick unpleasantly to the back of his teeth as he chewed. He hadn’t tasted anything so sweet in a long time.
“Oh I didn’t. Sugar and flavoring are easy enough to come by if you know who to call, so I borrowed a machine and made it here. We should really invest in mass-producing those things though,” he added, gesturing with his own little blue cloud. “If I could get my hands on the patent I could see what makes them tick, and soon every supermarket would be selling the stuff by the boxful.” His eyes got that half-lidded shiny look they did whenever he was plotting. Yossarian took another drink of champagne.
When he didn’t say anything else he cleared the rest of his plate in pensive silence, mopping up stray bits of mustard with dropped fries. He stood and let his napkin fall to the ground when he was finished, then guiltily picked it up and smoothed it back on the table. “Thanks for dinner," he said.
“We could do it together,” Milo hinted just as he turned his back, “you and me, selling meals like this to people all over America, making them feel as good as you do now.”
Yossarian froze, narrowed his eyes, wheeled back around, “so this was a sales pitch.”
Milo shook his head emphatically, “this was a present, a humble offer of ensured happiness. I’m just giving you something to think about.”
“Well you can stop.”
“I care about your future Yossarian. You’re so focused on the day-to-day that you haven’t ever stopped to consider the big picture, but I can see it just fine, and I want to help you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
Yossarian looked at him for a long moment, then sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not going to come work for you. But you were right,” he admitted, “I did need this.”
Milo smirked, “the next time you have a problem, you come straight to me.” He took a sip of champagne, stood, and kissed him firmly on the cheek. “I’ll be seeing you,” he promised.
Yossarian believed him.