Chris Lynch - Kill Switch

“Got any rooms free, Matt?” Jarrod says.

“A couple. What’s up, something wrong with The Shining ?”

“We just need to move on now,” I say, cutting Jarrod off before he can be more helpful.

Matt looks back and forth from one of us to the other and back again with a sly, knowing lip curl. “I get a lot of that here. No problem. Where’s my pal?”

“He’s in the car.”

“He okay with stairs?”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay with stairs?” Da says, walking in, bleary but with us. He is limping noticeably.

“No reason, pal,” Matt says, though he is probably counting about five reasons in his head.

We follow him through the front door, then he lets us all in the entrance next door. We tromp up the dark and curved stairway that is no struggle even for Da because the stairs are uncommonly short. It’s almost like floating up to the next level.

“Most people here are singles, ha-ha,” he tells us quite unnecessarily, “but I do have one double room. You want three singles?”

“We’ll take a double,” I say quickly, not wanting even a hint of another ramble by Da to happen. I shudder at the thought of his taking off here like he did in the relative safety of the woodsy campus.

“One double, one single, then.”

“Oh, just the double,” Jarrod says. “I’m gonna drive back to my place.”

Da snaps right to attention. I gasp. “Jarrod, oh, no, you can’t.”

“Right,” Da says, “you can’t.”

“I have to be there,” Jarrod says. “I have to. There are things to do. Those guys will sure be gone when I get there, then we can just go back like it all never-”

“No-no,” Da says with finality. “Oh no, no, no. That cannot happen. You are a good boy, and have been wonderful to us, but you are going to have to be wonderful to us for at least a little while more.”

Jarrod, in his endearing way, takes this as an invitation. As appreciation.

“Oh, really, nice and all, but thanks. I honestly do need to, you know, physically be back there at night. It’s my job and everything so it’s the least-”

“Really, no,” Da says. In his special-serious voice.

“Jeez, even I got a chill off that one,” Matt says with a laugh. “The elder statesman can get quite the snarl on when he wants to, huh?”

Jarrod sees less of the humor. He looks like he wants to cry.

“Easy, Da,” I say, putting a hand on his hand.

He turns on me, eyes reddish. He pushes me away and approaches Jarrod to make his point a little clearer. Jarrod might just piss himself, and if the place didn’t already smell like this when we got here, I might have guessed he’d already commenced.

Before Da can snort in his face, I grab him.

Really hard, really meaning it, I grab my grandfather’s arm and yank him forcefully in my direction.

He is shocked as his piercing eyes rush up to mine.

“Oh no,” he says to me. “Oh, no, no, no.” He turns away again.

I yank him even harder. “Oh no yourself, Da. No, and no, and no. You leave him alone now.”

He bites his lower lip and wrinkles his nose in a most threatening snarly dog fashion.

I stare, scared witless, but keeping that to myself.

He holds ground.

I hold ground.

Then I make my move.

I bring both hands up to my face, filling almost all the space between us.

“Shush,” I say calmly, all eight fingers waving in the water between us. “Octo-shush.”

I walk past him, frozen there, because waiting for his response would be weak. Showing I cared what he thought now would be weak.

Jeez, I wonder what he’s thinking.

“Listen, Jarrod,” I say, “you have to understand how it complicates things to have you go back. We will work something out, don’t worry.”

Two heavy hands thump on my shoulder, and I see Jarrod’s eyes go B-movie horror wide.

“That’s my boy,” Da says in my ear. He kisses my cheek. “We’re knocking that ridiculous fear thing right out of you. Now once we throttle that foolish compassion malarkey, you’ll be the complete package. And I can go in peace.”

It feels like what international peace talks must feel like, or trade negotiations, or big business deals. Jarrod, Matt, Da, and I sit around the folding card table that is the centerpiece of my room. The place is not bad at all, if you thought to consider what one of these dodgy hideaways might be like. There is a picture of Mount Kilimanjaro on one wall, the pyramids of Egypt on the opposite one. They look like they came free with the Sunday paper, but they are framed, from the dollar shop, making the investment modest but thoughtful. The window opposite the dark, planky gumwood door has the dusty plastic rose I saw from the street. There is a lot of little-engine-that-could about that rose and the spirit of the place.

There is no clock and no calendar, and no wonder. Please check all weapons and any sense of time passing at the front desk, to be collected on checkout.

There is so much smoke in the air, it has replaced my need for solid food for a couple of days. Matt’s on cigar while the other two are at the Camels.

“So, you are going to study philosophy,” Matt says.

“I am,” I say, sideways, waiting for the punch line. There is always a punch line to philosophy.

“I studied philosophy,” Matt says both proudly and whimsically.

I try to guess if that was actually the punch line and not actually true. I decide it is the punch line either way.

“Boston University. Time of my life. I was headed for magna cum laude, too. Till I got arrested and thrown out for training my ferret, Colin, to contaminate selected biomed labs. Damn, those were fun times.”

Da exhales.

“So you were a terrorist?”

Uh-oh.

“Da…?”

Matt waves me down. It’s cool.

“Sir, you flatter me,” Matt says. “I was a prankster. I was a rapscallion.” He waves his cigar in a theatrical way. “But I was pretty good at it. And Colin was excellent. He was really the brains of the operation.”

“It is all diversion,” Da says. “Terrorism. Nobody knows what’s really happening. Everything you see? In the news? That’s what they want you to see. Killing and blowing up stuff? Who cares? We don’t care. We wanted you to think the great threats were coming down out of the sky or rumbling right at you in a truck. Who cares? People die, a hundred, a thousand. Means absolutely nothing. Chumps, you are all chumps. Know what we have done? We have taken all you little babies, we have turned on the TV, turned it on loud and made it all fast and splashy and crashy, and plopped you damn babies on the floor to just sit there stupid and watch it, all day long. Idiots. Babies. You keep falling for it, so they keep broadcasting it. Watch the show, babies, watch the show.”

Matt looks altogether impressed.

“I love this guy,” Matt says. “I really do.”

“He’s very lovable,” Jarrod says, hiding his skinny self behind his cigarette.

For his part, Da is showing a rapidly decelerating interest in being lovable.

“You were a terrorist?” he challenges Matt.

“Ah, actually you are the one who said that…”

No matter. “You don’t even know who a terrorist is or what the terror is about. You all like explosions and blood and noise. It all works because you are all morons . Morons blow up other morons for the fear and amusement of yet other morons, while the adults go about the real business of ordering and reordering the world.”

“Reordering,” Matt says, and he is saying his bit about as pleasantly as you could say this stuff. “You mean killing as many people as possible who do not agree with your ideology.”

“Ha,” Da says, as if Matt has dropped right into his carefully constructed tiger trap. “Just shows you. You don’t get the new world at all. With the diabolical twenty-four-hour news cycles and all that hounding us all the time, might as well make it work for you. Only a dope kills ’em all. Killing, my friend, is yesterday’s news. Killing is old-fashioned. Maiming is where it’s at.”