Michael Langlois - Bad Radio

“I’m supposed to be the jaded cynical one, remember?”

“Not cynical enough. Why are we trusting him?”

“We’re not, we’re trusting human nature.”

“For the record, just because you’re a million years old doesn’t make you wise. It just makes you old.”

“Don’t talk to your elders that way. And it’s true. As loose ends, we’re expendable. But as allies against something that he doesn’t understand, we’re precious assets.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. But keep a sharp eye out, just in case.”

“I don’t think you know what the word absolutely means.”

Dominic strolled out onto the patio and handed us each a cold beer, something foreign and no doubt excellent. He pulled up a chair and we all sat and drank like civilized people, looking out at the endless blue morning sky and its darker twin reflected in the lake below.

“I’m going to miss this place. Dream house sounds pretty hokey, huh? But I think the dream of this house on this lake is what pushed me to the top. Funny to think that I’m just going to leave it all behind without a fight.”

“You could always stay,” said Anne. “When we’re done, Peter won’t be looking you up for any more work.”

Dominic shook his head and smiled, not without pity, I think. “You and your boyfriend here are a long shot, sweetheart. A hundred to one. A thousand to one. You seem pretty smart, and he’s a hard guy to take in a fight, sure. But Peter has a whole world to himself in that town. And he has something you don’t. There’s something almost like … fate, I guess, hanging off him.

“I’m happy to see you two take a run at it, that’s all to the good for me, but the truth is, I’m just throwing a couple of cats in a wood chipper hoping that their bones will jam the thing up. Odds are, you guys aren’t coming out. At least not the same way you went in. No offense, but the last thing I want to see is one of you knocking on my door with worms falling out your face. Tell you what. You win, I’ll come back and we can all sit together on the patio and have another beer.” He smiled at her and turned his bottle up to the sun, draining the last of it.

I smiled and raised my own bottle in salute. “Thanks for the beer and the confidence.”

“Any time.”

“I hate to be a bad guest, but we’re wiped out. Do you mind if we get some sleep here before we move out?”

“How about breakfast first?”

“I could live with that. I think the last thing I ate was in another time zone.”

“I’ll whip something up, and then you can get some rest while I pack my things. We’ll leave here together.”

Anne and I stayed on the patio while Dominic went inside and began clattering and bustling in the kitchen. We sat for a long time in companionable silence, sipping cold beer and enjoying the early morning sunshine. Deep weariness muffled the tension and fear of the last few days, granting us a comfortable lassitude as we basked.

I nudged her with my beer. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Thanks for helping me get here.”

“I told you I would.”

“You sure you want to follow me into Belmont? You promised to help me find Piotr, and now we have. Job over.”

She smiled a slow, lazy smile. “Again with this? You are so stupid.”

“Ouch, right in the feelings.”

She turned to face me. “Pay attention. I’m not helping you get to this Peter guy, you’re helping me. He killed my grandfather. I’m going to make him pay. End of story.” She relaxed back into her chair, face turned up to the sky. “You of all people should understand that.”

“You have the right, I won’t argue that. But the odds are that this is a one-way trip. No amount of talking and explaining can make you understand what Piotr is like. Patrick would never want you throwing your life away, especially not for him.”

“And you think he’d want you to go in there?”

“That’s different. I think he’d understand why I have to go.”

She patted me on the arm, not ruffled in the slightest. “So do I.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I drank my beer and watched geese touch down amid the silver glitter of the lake’s surface down below. If the silence bothered her, Anne didn’t show it.

Half an hour later, Dominic called us back into the house for a breakfast of pan seared trout, wild rice mixed with tart cranberries, and roasted new potatoes dusted with chipotle powder.

He served us himself, setting plates down in front of us with a flourish. “I know fish isn’t your typical breakfast food, but I just caught these and I figured there was no sense in just letting them go to waste.”

Even if I hadn’t been starving from long hours on the road, it would have been fantastic and we said so. Dominic was self-effacing but obviously pleased at our praise.

We all have different faces that we show to the world, but we often don’t realize just how little control we have over which one we wear at any given time. It made me wonder what Dom saw in us that brought out the genial host in him. Knowing where we were headed, I suspected it was pity.

After we ate he showed us to one of the many guestrooms, and neither one of us corrected his notion that we were a couple. We simply thanked him and went inside.

As soon as the door closed, Anne threw herself onto the bed, fully clothed and on top of the comforter. She didn’t even take her shoes off. She stretched and groaned with pleasure.

“Oh, that feels good. I am so tired of sleeping in the car all the time.” She rolled over on her back and claimed a pillow. “You haven’t even been able to do that. You must be exhausted.”

I kicked off my shoes and lay down next to her. “I’m pretty beat.”

We stared quietly at the ceiling together, contemplating the ornate wooden trim and elaborate ceiling fan as if we were on a blanket at a picnic watching the clouds.

When Anne spoke, her words came out slow and drowsy. “You still trust him?”

“I shouldn’t. But I think we’re safe enough.”

“Okay.”

After a moment of silence, I turned my head to look at her. She was sound asleep. With her eyes closed and her face relaxed there was no sign of the fierce determination that drove her. She looked small and vulnerable.

I brushed a few strands of hair from where they lay against her cheek and thought about the first time I saw her, too bright and lively on my front step, and realized how dead to the world I had been then. For all of her vibrant beauty I had just stood there, unable to see it.

I could see it now.

I wanted to protect her, especially that innocent and fragile part of her that laughed at my terrible jokes and turned up the radio and sang out loud without the slightest bit of embarrassment.

There are some things whose loss you can only feel when you get them back. Being able to stand between something precious and those that would destroy it made me feel alive. Like I mattered. There was a time when doing that was the biggest part of my life.

I joined the Army after Pearl Harbor because we were under attack. The idea of fighting to defend my country drew me like nothing ever had before. I found a sense of purpose that had a rightness to it that changed my life. It was like a key turning in a lock.

Looking back now it was easy to see how that purpose and sense of worth had dwindled away as I slowly outlived everyone that mattered to me.

Before now I had been going through the motions of confronting Piotr out of a sense of duty. I knew in my head that I had to stop him, but I hadn’t felt it in my heart. I just knew that I had to try and that I would likely die in the attempt.

But now I knew that I was going to do more than try. Anne would survive. The world that she loved would survive. I would stand between her and all of the horrors that Piotr could bring to bear, and I would not be moved.