Kill Switch

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.”

Matt is on the brink of being defeated, but clinging on.

“But, man, how could you do all that, for your own purposes, when hundreds, thousands, of folks, people just like yourself, suffer horribly for it?”

Da has been pushed back on his heels now. He looks back and forth between me and Matt, bypassing Jarrod entirely. He smiles suspiciously.

“Is this some kind of famous philosophy quiz-type thing?” he asks.

“Ah, well, Da, it just sounds like a question to me.”

“It is,” Matt says. “It’s just a question.”

“Oh.” Da nods, happy, friendly, like a guy who’s just been given the directions to the party and is damn grateful for them. “In that case, the answer is: Why would I give a rat’s eyelash about a hundred, or a thousand, of me?”

There is a smoky silence descending that threatens to spoil all this great fun, until Jarrod decides it is actually a trick question, “I know this one, the answer is: You are your own brother. Right?”

Da stares him melted. “You know what I did to my brother when the filth-”

“Da,” I say, “come on, you’re being a drag. Smoke a bone with Jarrod and tell one of your funny stories, like about the country you overthrew using nothing but fire ants.”

He whips a look at me, as if now we have gone into dangerous reality. Then he turns back to Matt for the payoff.

“Okay, you want to know where your real terrorism is?”

“Ah, well, sure, that would be good to know.”

I have never seen Da more serious. I have never seen anyone more serious.

“It’s in your food,” he stage-whispers. “I know, because I put it there.”

Jarrod responds to all this levity by frantically breaking out his accessories for mood enhancement. His hands shake, but he is making a heroic job of getting something smokable assembled.

Matt looks, seriously, at Da, at me. He is undoubtedly a man who has seen, if not everything, certainly a telling cross section of everything. He could be harder than he is, I think. And he could be more cynical, for sure.

But he listens. He nods. He goes on about his business.

“You are one hot potato, sir,” Matt says, shaking Da’s hand.

Da takes it in the spirit offered, shakes it. “It’s not the potatoes,” he says, like offering a great and true tip to a select friend at the racetrack. “But beyond next year you’ll want to be careful of pretty much everything else. And, oh, do buy American.”

“You sound like my doctor now,” Matt says, patting a modest belly. “Except for that little American thing at the end there.”

“Source carefully, is what I’m telling you. Watch your eat and drink. You’ll never see it coming. And it’s already too late to try, ’cause it’s in the chain.”

Well, then. Where does a party or a business meeting or whatever go from there? Snacks?

“We don’t have any clothes with us or anything,” Jarrod says. “What are we supposed to do? What if I just went there, maybe grabbed a few things, hurried right back…”

“That site is toxic,” Da says. “Can’t go back. It’s dead. Forget about it.”