Chris Lynch - Kill Switch

I’ll have to watch that.

“What’s the matter anyway? You got him back. You didn’t lose him again, did you?”

“No, I didn’t lose him again. But I did something just as stupid. I forgot to bring his medicines. Without those…” I shake my head, pace some more, grab two fistfuls of my own hair.

“You are a sight, cousin.”

Jarrod watches me as if I am in a pet-shop window. His amusement grows.

“What?” I say.

“I might know somebody.”

I freeze. “What do you mean by that?”

“My guy. In the next town. He claims he can get exactly anything I want.”

“Don’t screw with me here, Jarrod. I am very much on edge.”

“I can see that. I’m sure we can hook up something for your problem as well.”

“Yeah, one medical emergency at a time,” I say. “But thanks, I’ll let you know.”

We wait it out while Da sleeps off his moderately big adventure. By the time he comes into the kitchen, he looks a bit more rested, settled, and at least is dressed in regular outside attire.

“Where can I get a cigarette?” he asks.

“I know just the place,” Jarrod says.

We are off once again in the Subaru, and this time I don’t have to drive. There is a slight indication my cousin is starting to get the hang of low-level responsibility and commitment to a task.

“This is great timing,” he says. “I was fresh out of my own medication and had to make this run today myself.”

Close enough.

“Are we getting medication?” Da says from the back. “For me, too?”

He sounds so weak and lost to me, I want to cover my ears. I want to promise him anything. I want to make him better with my own stupid hands. I turn, see him wringing his own hands feverishly. “Would you like some, Old Boy?”

“I think maybe I need some. I don’t feel well.”

“We’ll take care of you, Da. Just sit back and watch the scenery.”

He does, and the scenery does basically the same granite-trees-granite-trees-flying-by trick for the whole forty-minute ride.

“Are we there yet?” asks a convincingly bored-out-of-his-skull voice. It belongs to Jarrod.

“You are the driver,” I point out. “You tell us.”

“Just about there,” he says as we finally turn off the highway and onto the lead-in road to the town. Five minutes later we are pulling into one of those classic northern New England towns that never wind up on postcards. There is a small steel-colored river running past a couple of hulking and empty factories that must have made shoes or shoelaces or shoehorns or something that somebody else makes even better now. The river has a couple of bridges over it, but neither is covered like in the calendars. They should cover them. They should cover everything else while they are at it.

“Oh yeah,” I say, admiring the ambience.

“You want meds or don’t ya? Don’t be so snooty.”

“Oh yeah,” Da says, recognizing something else. “Bet this town arms more militias in a year than I ever did. And I spent a lot of time in Angola.”

Like in slow motion, Jarrod and I turn to Da, who is poker-faced.

A horn wails at us. I spin and yank the wheel, pulling us out of oncoming traffic. The other driver is wailing even louder.

“Lucky you didn’t kill us,” I shout at Jarrod, shoving his head sideways.

“Even luckier that guy didn’t,” Da says, staring out the back at the other driver, still menacing us with a finger.

We pass several vehicles as we negotiate the main drag, and they all look like they were monster trucks in their playing days. Then we turn off the road, off that road, and then off that one. We park at a modest-looking little shop that appears like it doesn’t want to bother anyone. VENUS EXOTICS, it says in red lettering on a cream-painted window.

“Is this what I think it is?” I ask as Jarrod leads us in.

“Not if you think it’s a bakery,” he says.

“Whoa,” I say as we head straight down the middle of three aisles. The woman behind the counter, dressed in a schoolgirl uniform, waves us through to the back. If that is her uniform, she’s kept it nice for about forty years.

Da keeps muttering behind me as we walk toward the door that says MANAGER. I pull him in front of me and guide him. “Whoa,” he says. “Wow.”

“Jarrod,” the man says when we walk into the office.

They shake hands. Da and I get introduced.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Da says.

“Thank you,” the man, Matt, says.

“I have never seen so many giant rubber penises in one place in my life,” Da marvels.

“Please,” Matt says, “you’re making me blush.”

We have only just met, but I am guessing that is purely impossible to do.

“Anyway…,” I say, catching Jarrod’s eye.

“Yeah, Matt,” Jarrod says. “About business.”

“Right, right, I’ve got your order. I take it your friends are here for something as well. What can we do?”

This is where it gets complicated.

I can just about recall the main couple of medications Da takes daily to almost hold it together. Matt is something of an expert, but he is not 100 percent certain.

“Do you sell cigarettes?” Da asks politely. His hands are starting to tremble from a number of different deprivations.

“Sorry, sir, I do not.”

Something my grandfather always pounded into me, and I always believed it anyway, but now that I am seeing his hard side I am believing it fantastically: Manners beget manners. Don’t start a ruck when you can just say please and get the same result. I suppose it works with a sex-shop black marketeer as well as it does with anybody else.

“Here,” Matt says, sliding a nearly full pack of Camels across his desk.

“You’re a good man,” Da says, smiling pleasantly.

“Keep that to yourself,” Matt says, smiling likewise.

“Entebeyar,” Dad says.

“Huh?” Matt says.

I must break in. “Listen, we have a time thing here. You might not be one hundred percent sure about the medication, but it sounds like the stuff to me. And we are one hundred percent desperate, so we are going to go with your sense on this.”

“How old are you?” Matt says.

“Eighteen,” I say.

“Hmmm.” He nods approvingly. “You’re quite the young commando here, aren’t you? Taking charge and running the show.”

“No, really I’m not. It’s just, circumstances require.”

“Circumstances require !” Da says, jumping up in the air a bit and clapping his hands loud as gunshots. It’s like I have won some kind of talent show or something. “That’s the thing, my boy, the thing, and the thing itself. When circumstances require , what are you capable of?”

He has the whole room staring.

“The man is proud of his grandson,” Jarrod says to Matt.

“So he is, so he is. Wanna buy a Glock, kid?”

“Jeez, no,” I say, physically recoiling.

“Right, another day,” Matt says.

“Hey, if you can’t locate the right stuff,” Jarrod says, “maybe we can just find something off the shelves here to help him out.”

“Jarrod,” I snap. “That is my grandfather.”

“I don’t mind,” Da says.

“Listen, gents, come back in a couple hours, I’ll have you all sorted out,” Matt says.

“Um,” I say, taking charge a little less authoritatively than my new rep might suggest. I lean a bit closer. “About payment… we’re a bit light right now, trying to avoid cash machines…”

He looks right past me. He looks hard and soft at Da as Da tries to coolly not look at the wares on offer everywhere we turn.

Matt shakes his head slightly. “I know that look. I know all about it. Call it a gift, from my uncle.”