Nice Mister Custard’s chained to the stove
Sends you his love, hopes you feel better

Helps when you’re coming unglued
Fixes all your problems with food
Hypersensitive to your mood

What a sweet old man
What a sweet old man

Milo’s a friend, he’s lost his mind
He’s never fine, he's a dis-aster

Quiet, ‘cause he’s too scared to speak
Slept out in a box on the street
Doesn’t even know out how to eat

What a broken young man
Broken young man

Your handler’s a very nice guy
And he’ll keep you going through a siege
Your handler’s a very nice guy
And he’ll get anything you need
Wish I could tell him that he’s helping a lot
But it’s kinda hard for me to verbalize
Your handler’s a very nice guy
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, oh no
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

Mordecai was singing in the kitchen. He was doing this because he was alone.

Things had settled down now that “Milo is missing!” wasn’t the crisis of the day. Calliope and Lucy were down for a nap. Maggie and the General were similarly recovering from most of yesterday spent in bird-form burning calories. Hyacinth had gone to the pharmacy seeking out pain medicine in bottles with obvious labels. Erik was playing novelty music in the front yard — the doors were closed but it was still audible. So, really, the singing was self-defence.

He was making an apple pie. No apples. Soda crackers and cider vinegar. They didn’t know if Milo liked soda crackers when he wasn’t feeling well, but there was still half a pack left if he wanted to try them. Mordecai had purchased ginger ale at the first possible moment and it was chilling in the cold box in the basement.

All he had left was the top crust and he was laying it on one strip at a time.

He was just about to explain to his lack-of-audience about Mr. Mustard’s sister Polythene Pam, who worked in a shop, but he lost the rest of the lyric in a scream and dropped a strip of crust on the floor.

Milo was standing in the kitchen doorway like a ghost. He had a shirt on over his nightie and it was buttoned wrong with two extra ones at the bottom. His hair was all smashed up on one side of his head because it had dried that way (they just put a towel on his pillow). He was wearing his broken glasses.

Mordecai couldn’t help remembering that when they took his shirt off, his arms had been covered with the scars of old bite marks. All of Milo’s things had long sleeves, even the nightgown. Ann’s too.

“Milo! What is it?”

Milo wandered over to one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a bowl. He spent some moments staring into another one before selecting a box of noodles. He opened it.

Mordecai didn’t have to see anything more to know that the raw noodles were going to go into the bowl. He was not going to let them go into Milo, with or without milk. He grabbed the man by the shoulders, pulled him back from the counter and turned him around. “Milo. Milo. Look at me. No, no. Look at me.”

He realized belatedly that asking Milo to look at him might not have been the best way to get him to focus, but Milo was already looking at him.

(He was shivering, and far too warm, Mordecai could feel it through the shirt.)

“Hi there,” he said brightly. “Do you know where you are?”

Milo shook his head. He paled and pressed a hand to his mouth.

“No-no, like this.” Mordecai held up fingers. “One for yes, two for no. Remember?”

Milo showed him one.

“Hey. Okay. Are you trying to get ready for work?”

One.

“You don’t have to go to work. You’re not going again until you feel better.”

One.

“Are you hungry?”

Three.

Mordecai had forgotten that “three” was an option. Maybe?

“I’ll fix you something. You don’t have to have it if you don’t want it. Let’s sit you.”

Dealing with young people in altered states was sort of Mordecai’s thing. One of a few things, anyway. A concussion was a little out of his bailiwick, but it didn’t seem much different.

He handled Milo gently, removed his broken glasses, got him to sit, made reasonably certain he was going to stay sitting, and then did a supply run. He came back with ice and ginger ale and a blanket from his own bed. He also threw some more wood in the oven — though this would make the oven too warm for the pie, it would make the kitchen nicer for Milo.

He put the blanket around Milo and he poured the ginger ale over the ice. The jelly-glass had a smiling orange on it.

I guess this is a marmalade glass, thought Mordecai, considering it.

He put the glass in Milo’s hands, both of them. He had reserved half the ginger ale in case this half went on the floor. Milo seemed to be able to manage it. He drank, then he blinked and he looked at the glass.

“Do you like that?” Mordecai asked him. He knew Milo had to, Auntie Enora didn’t make mistakes like that. But simple questions asked kindly were a good way of keeping a mind from veering off into the stratosphere.

Milo sat holding the glass in both hands.

“Oh, no. Wait.” Mordecai gently removed the glass and set it on the table. Milo retrieved the glass with an irritated expression and drank again.

“Okay, that’s a ‘one’ on the ginger ale,” Mordecai said. He was going to have to guess what else Milo might like. He tried toast and tomato soup. Ann liked that, and it wasn’t too difficult.

Milo started crying.

Mordecai turned him away from the table and refocused him. “Are you sad?” This only seemed stupid. Happy and frustrated were also possible when someone was like this.

One.

“You don’t like toast and tomato soup?”

Three.

He’d asked too much at once. He simplified the question, “Do you like tomato soup?”

One.

“Do you like toast?”

Two. Also, he shook his head and cried harder. He put his face in his hands.

Mordecai removed the toast. He put it in the sink, so Milo couldn’t see it even if he looked. Then he sat next to Milo, pulled down his hands and held them. “It’s okay. It helps to cry. I know this is awful but you’ll feel better soon. Just do what you need.” With anyone else he would’ve asked if they wanted to talk about it, but Milo didn’t have that option.

Milo did want to talk about it. He wanted to say, I don’t like bread and water when I’m sick. They only gave us bread and water when we were sick because they didn’t ever want us to pretend. But Ann would never say that and Milo couldn’t. He didn’t know which he was. He was wearing Milo’s shirt but he couldn’t read the chalkboard and that was like Ann. It seemed safer not to say anything, but he was sorry.

Mordecai held him by the shoulders and spoke evenly, “Milo, I don’t know why you don’t like toast right now, but I don’t have to. Whatever it is, it’s okay. It doesn’t even have to make sense. There won’t be any more toast. If you ever want it again, you have to ask. You are safe from toast.”

Milo said, One.

“I’m sorry you can’t talk about it. That must be really hard.”

One.

“Is it a little better?”

One.

“I want to get up for a minute and bring you something to wipe your face. I won’t leave you, but I don’t have to do it right now if you don’t want me to. Is it okay if I bring you something to wipe your face?”

One.

Mordecai found tissues and cleaned Milo up to a certain extent. It was not possible to do anything about his hair with tissue. Milo’s hair was probably going to require some magical intervention.

Milo cried for a little while longer, but not much. He didn’t shut off like he usually did, he slowed and quieted like normal people. He reacted to soft talking and gentle touching like a normal person too. He didn’t freeze up and disengage, he calmed.

Maybe it was damage, maybe it was improvement, maybe it was just weird, but it was easier for Mordecai to deal with in any case. He held and comforted and Milo accepted it — for whatever reason. There were about a dozen crumpled tissues on the kitchen table next to the soup when Milo was done.

Mordecai decided to deal with the soup, “Milo, you don’t have to have that if you don’t want it. Not even if you like it usually. Do you want the soup?”

Two. It had been next to the toast.

Mordecai removed the soup. It could be reheated later. Someone would have it. He inventoried the kitchen and discounted everything that was like toast or soup. Vanilla custard suggested itself and seemed reasonable under the circumstances. He did the quick kind with cornstarch so it wasn’t too much trouble. He had cinnamon and nutmeg out for the pie and he added some of that.

Milo did not object to warm vanilla custard. Upon observation, Milo appeared to like warm vanilla custard. He was also capable of eating it by himself, which Mordecai appreciated. It allowed him to finish his pie.

“You know, food is very close to memory,” the red man opined. He was quite used to filling up the silence for people who couldn’t speak. There was a well of happy nonsense hiding under the floorboards of his cynical nature and he’d yet to find it dry. “The smell, and the taste, and the associations. If you follow the recipe and get it just right, you can go back to good places over and over. Now, mock apple pie and custard are things my mother taught me.”

He dished Milo another couple spoons of custard, as Milo was still conscious and appeared disappointed there wasn’t more custard.

“I may not have had the best parents, Milo, but my mother was excellent in the kitchen. A succession of tiny sweltering kitchens with a bathtub next to the sink, but all very much the same. I don’t mind going back to that kitchen anytime, and I like bringing other people with me.” He smiled.

“But sometimes food just turns on people. I knew someone during the siege who couldn’t eat turkey sandwiches anymore because he was eating one when he heard on the radio his parents had died. The boat they were on went down. No survivors. No more turkey sandwiches, not even for Yule.

“I quite understand about things like that, and it’s really not anybody’s fault. Food isn’t just food, it’s life. I think there are places in every life we don’t need to revisit. Why shouldn’t we go someplace nice instead?”

Milo nodded vaguely, as it seemed something like that might be required. He wondered if this was what bedtime stories were supposed to be like, except he had his shirt on and nobody told him to brush his teeth. This was good too, with the cinnamon and sugar. It smelled good, like he came home and there were going to be cookies.

Please say some more about how some people have parents and it’s okay I’m scared of toast — or sandwiches, I forget — I like that story…

Mordecai dished him some more custard, which he also liked.

“I sort of have to guess what’s a good memory for you,” the red man said. “I think we got lucky with custard. But I’ll make some more of it. You should have good food and good memories, because where you are right now kind of sucks, if you don’t mind my saying.

“It’s okay to be hurt, and tired, and scared… all that stuff. You’ve got lots of people here to help you and take care of you. Sometimes you have to let yourself fall down so you can get back up again… It helps when there’s someone to catch you. I’ve…” He glanced away.

All of this was getting very much like how he used to put people back together during the siege, and it made him feel like a hypocrite. Those people weren’t always there to catch you like they were supposed to.

“I think,” he began, hesitantly. “…we’ve probably both had times when that didn’t happen, but this is different.”

…Even if sometimes he doubted that himself, Milo certainly didn’t need to hear any such insecurity now. I can fake a little optimism for the sake of a friend, Mordecai thought.

“This is a better place and people here are honest with each other,” he said, “even when we shouldn’t be. We’ve got you, Milo, okay?”

Milo nodded. Mordecai very gently caught his head and then took hold of his hand. He formed the fingers into a “one” and held it up.

“Careful. This way. Remember?”

Milo said, One.

Milo had a little bit more custard, and some babbled nonsense about raisins and apple pie, before he decided it was time to put his head on the table to sleep. Mordecai bundled him in the blanket and took him back upstairs. He didn’t ask about it, they just went. Milo obviously thought “one” about sleep.

He also, it turned out, wanted to do it a little strangely.