Kill Switch

kind of paradise, a kind of hell.

I wake to every shift in the fabric of the universe. I swear, one time I jump up at the sound of pine needles falling to the ground outside. Da said he slept more soundly last night than he has in memory. Which could mean three days. Still, it sounds good and he does look some kind of refreshed. I think he could probably stay here indefinitely.

Yet we don’t have indefinitely. We don’t have remotely indefinitely.

It is barely light when I get dressed and go out. I head over to the sports hall, where Jarrod and I went and shot baskets in the echoey gym yesterday during my grandfather’s nap. When Jarrod missed and retrieved his twenty-fifth free throw, I wandered off to look over the rest of the building. There was a game room with pinball and darts and foosball. There were vending machines. There was a small gym upstairs. And there was a quaint old-style pay phone booth.

Da confiscated my phone, but there shouldn’t be any reason not to use a landline, right?

So that is where I go, when the day breaks, my mind aches…

She answers her cell phone after four long rings.

“Lucy?”

“Holy macaroni, doofus, where are you?”

“You can’t tell anybody.”

“I don’t want to tell anybody. I just want to hear it myself. All kinds of everybody are looking for you guys. What have you done, ya gimp?”

“I took him.”

“You took him? Dan, that is a pretty flat explanation for somebody who just stole an ill and elderly man. What’s this phone, anyway? I almost didn’t answer when this number came up. Where’s your phone?”

“Da took it off me.”

The following silence is designed to make me listen to my words over again and feel the fool. I do it. This is what she does.

“So you stole the old man, and the old man overpowered you and stole your phone.”

This is the other thing she does really well. She rephrases circumstances and plays them back at you in order to compound your feeling of stupidity.

“Before, I was just a little worried about you. But jeez, Bonnie and Clyde you ain’t.”

“Right, thanks, Luce, I’m glad I made my one call to you. I feel a lot better now. Talk to you soon.”

“Sheesh, you and your thin skin.”

“I don’t have thin skin. Why do people keep saying that?”

“Maybe because you get all teary when somebody criticizes your new haircut.”

“That was not teary, that was hair products stinging my-”

“Where are you, Dan?”

“Entebeyar.”

“You are making things up now. There is no such place as Entebeyar.”

“No, that was not a name. It’s a saying, Da’s been using it, about his work days. NTBR. Not to Be Repeated.”

“So then the two of you are out there playing secret agents. That’s actually very considerate of you, joining up to your grandfather’s dementia. Darn sweet.”

“I half think I am. It has all gotten so surreal, Lucy.”

“Where are you, Daniel?”

“Entebeyar.”

“All right, already.”

“We came to stay with Jarrod. At the college.”

There is that silence again.

“Cousin Jarrod?”

“Yes.”

“You mean, this Jarrod?” She makes a sharp-intake-of-air noise, like either she has just sipped scalding soup, or she’s imitating Jarrod toking up.

“Yes,” I say.

“Brother, I know you haven’t been gone long, but it is still a miracle you remain alive.”

I take a deep breath, pound the pay phone with coins.

“That’s a lot of coins,” she says.

“This is a lot of freaky.”

And to the best of my ability, I tell her.

“Are you on drugs?” she says after a bit. “Dan, sorry, but all signs point to you being on drugs. There’s Jarrod. There’s the fantasy stuff, there’s the poor judgment in running in the first place, there’s the poor judgment in running to Jarrod…

there’s Jarrod…”

“I am not on drugs. I am starting to think I am stuck in somebody else’s hallucination.”

“I still can’t believe it,” she says. “He was always mean, but I wouldn’t think violent or scary to people who were not his family.”

“All I can tell you is, somehow, it seems a little more believable all the time now. He is kind of scary.”

“Dan, then leave him. Or bring him back. Let them deal with him.”

“That’s what you would do?”

“Absolutely.”

“I can’t. I can’t. He’s…”

She knows. Everybody knows. She doesn’t feel the same way about him but she feels that I feel it.

“You are a dope, Danny.”

“Maybe. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Everybody already knows you’re a dope.”

“No, I mean don’t tell anybody that you talked to me. Octo-shush.”

“What is that, now?”

I explain octo-shush.

“When they catch up to you, you are both going in for observation. You know that, don’t you?”

“No. Because they are not catching us. I’ll call you.”

“Okay. Be careful, Dan. Right? Take care of yourself first. Right?”

“See ya soon.”

After I get off the phone with Lucy, I take my slow meander back from the gym. It is a cracker of a late- summer northern feeling. The air is autumn cool, and mist rises everywhere as the sun gets to work, cutting through the trees and landing in shazam slashes over the buildings and grounds. The pine smell is like it’s been pumped out of a cypress-size spray can. You really could spend a lot of time here. It would nice to be able to spend a lot of time here.

When I finally reach the dorms, Jarrod is in our kitchen eating a bowl of Froot Loops the size of my head.

“Seen Da yet?” I ask him.

“No, sir, not yet. Froot Loops?”

“Um, maybe not, thanks.”

“You sure? You need to get your five-a-day.”

The man does make me smile. “You’re a good man, Jarrod. Thank you for this.”

“You kidding? Pleasure’s all mine. I can’t wait for the codger to get up so I can listen to him.”

I take a seat across from him.

“What’s the worst thing he’s told you?”

“Worst? None of them are bad. You mean best?”

“Okay, then?”

“My personal favorite was the one where they set a guy’s face on fire with his own glasses, in the sun in Cyprus.”