Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

All the parents he knew with grown children had at least one about whose doubtful prospects they were constantly troubled, and many had two. Milo had this one, and he had Michael.

Irritation mingled with puzzlement as he studied the new messages from Jerry Gaffney of the Gaffney Agency. The first advised him to call his answering machine at home for good news from his nurse and bad news from his son about his first wife. The good news from his nurse was that she was free for dinner that evening to go to a movie with him and that the Belgian patient in the hospital was making a good recovery from the bad dysentery generated by the good antibiotics administered for the bad pneumonia provoked by the salutary removal of a vocal cord in the invasive effort, successful thus far, to save his life. The second fax reported that he had now qualified for the mortgage. Yossarian had no idea what that meant. "How did he even know I was here?" he heard himself thinking out loud.

"Mr. Gaffney knows everything, I think," M2 answered, with faith. "He monitors our fax lines too."

"You pay him for that?"

"Somebody does, I think."

"Who?"

"I've no idea."

"Don't you care?"

"Should I?"

"Can't you find out?"

"I'll have to find out if I can find out."

"I'm surprised you don't want to know."

"Should I want to?"

"M2, Michael calls you Milo. Which name do you prefer?"

Milo's only son turned ill at ease. "I would rather," he said, breathing noisily, "be called Milo, even though that's my father's name. It's my name too, you know. He gave it to me."

"Why haven't you said so?" asked Yossarian, resenting the implication imposed upon him to feel at fault.

"I'm timid, you know. My mother says I'm rabbity. So do my sisters. They keep asking me to change my personality to be strong enough to take over when I have to."

"To be more like your father?"

"They don't think much of my father."

"Who then? Wintergreen?"

"They hate Wintergreen."

"Me?"

"They don't like you either."

"Then who?"

"They can't think of any man who's good enough."

"Let me ask you," said Yossarian, "if you still have your catering company."

"I think we do. It's your company too, you know. Everybody has a share."

The M & M Commercial Catering Company was the oldest continuous catering service in the history of the country, having origins in Milo's labors as a mess officer for his squadron in World War II, wherein he contrived the fruitful and abstruse financial strategies for buying fresh Italian eggs from Sicily in Malta for seven cents apiece and selling them to his mess hall in Pianosa for five cents apiece at a handsome profit that increased the squadron's capital supply, in which everybody had a share, he said, and bettered the quality of life and the standard of living of everyone there, and for buying Scotch whisky for Malta at the source in Sicily, eliminating middlemen.

"M2," said Yossarian, and remembered he had forgotten. He had no wish to hurt him. "What will you want me to call you when you're here with your father? Two Milos may prove one too many, maybe two."

"I'll have to find out."