She stole his hand from his pocket - an absconsion of palm - and went to whisk him away, introducing herself in a hurry, “I’m Milan, like the French-Czech author.” But her name was actually Camilla, which was shortened to Mila when she was an infant by her mother who found the sound more soothing to the colicky baby. “Meee-la. . . Meee-la,” Camilla’s mother would coo the abbreviated name as she’d rock the unsatisfied infant because the name Camilla had as much pacification as an upright victorian chair.
Mila introduced herself as Milan because she’d just finished “The Unbearable Lightness of Being;” the book, not the movie, as Mila(n) committed herself to purity of word and refused to see any book-to-film adaptations. So with the flick of a name change, she wrote her own new narrative and detached herself from her name like the retina detaches itself from the eye, both in violent attempts to go blind.
Little did Mila(n) know that her favorite secret movie, the one her family would catch her “accidentally” watching as she “scrolled” through Cable channels, was based on a book. Thorp’s novel “Nothing Lasts Forever” became the movie “Die Hard,” and so Thorp’s Joe Leland became McTiernan’s John McClane. When others would talk about action movies, Mila(n) would wave her hand to shoo away invisible flies and bad taste while announcing, “I prefer Jodorwosky and Svankmajer to any American action movie.” She had a clear idea of the person she wanted to be all the while ignoring the person she was. It was lost on her that liking Jodorowsky and McTiernan were not mutually exclusive, or that people with “taste” were not much fun.
In her post Kundera haze, Mila(n) was feeling dizzy and dazzling in her search to find power in her weakness. She wanted to wreck the boredom of her relationship with drama and agony. So she went to pull her boyfriend into a romantic gallop, hands wet with sweat, hearts connected in an understanding of the arc of romantic comedies. But he slipped his hand from hers, looking both bewildered and annoyed, and huffed “Enough games, Mila. Let’s just get brunch. The line is down 20 people by now.” She hated brunch, but was hungry and out of ideas.
Years later, Mila would finally read “Nothing Lasts Forever” while riding a train to Lithuania. It was darker than the movie adaptation. Joe Leland was actually 25 years John’s senior and was visiting his daughter, not his estranged wife. The terrorists included women who were just as deadly as the men, and Joe’s daughter goes tumbling backward out the window along with Hans. The only other character left alive besides Joe was Sergeant Powell. A true buddy cop book, sans any comical one-liners or love interests. Mila thought back to that day waiting for overpriced eggs in the Eastlake neighborhood of Seattle and realized she’d misread Kundera and should’ve grabbed her own hand and ran that day.
Whoa. Simple and bang. She should have.