The New Normals Chapter 3
“For what it’s worth… I hadn’t quite intended to kill him,” said Roland, emerging from the silent pause. Kit’s annoyance had died back down to a more manageable level since they’d dealt with the body, but Roland sensed the need to address it nonetheless.
“What exactly had you intended?” retorted Kit archly, a curious eyebrow now raised.
“Just to… grievously harm…” Roland trailed off, as a familiarly sheepish grin surfaced on his face. “Or maim,” Roland salted on top. “I would have probably been content with only maiming him… poor fool should have never fired that weapon.”
Kit looked blankly at Roland, briefly considered arguing, and decided against it. Kit had watched him murder a police officer and rather methodically dispose of his body, but he still struck Kit as an oddly likable person. In fact, Roland didn’t come across as dangerous at all, well-versed in martial arts as he may have been. But he was certainly contentious. Kit was more reluctant to start an argument than anything else. Not in this heat.
“Is Roland your real name?” Kit settled on instead, a little out of breath as they climbed down. “Well — there’s a bit of a story to it actually… how much time do you have?” Roland asked jovially. Kit looked patiently from left to right as if crossing a highway of invisible cars and responded, “Plenty.”
“Well… it involves a Nepalese prison escape and a couple of snow leopards — three actually… Say…. how familiar are you with Equatorial New Guinea’s extradition laws?”
Kit blinked twice and stared blankly. “Not at all,” he responded curtly.
Roland puzzled for a moment over whether to bring Kit up to speed and decided against it. “May be a story best left for another day… why do they call you Kit?”
Kit felt himself growing a little annoyed again but didn’t probe into the matter any further. “Nickname my mom used to call me. I always loved Kit-kats as a kid, don’t care for ’em much now. The name stuck though and I can’t pretend I mind. Never cared for my real name.”
“I love Kit-kats personally,” Roland replied genially to an unsmiling Kit. “It’s a good name,” he continued sternly but approvingly. Kit didn’t need his approval but was glad to have it anyway. “I prefer Heath bars.”
A few minutes passed in silence. The sun was beginning to set.
“So why were you just standing out here in the middle of the desert, anyway?” asked Kit.
“Ah yes,” shot back Roland. For a moment it seemed as though his thought train had pulled into the station and he was going to offer Kit little more explanation than he had for how he’d got his name. “I’ve had this aching suspicion lately… that nothing matters.”
It wasn’t the reply Kit expected. Although, if Kit had grown to realize anything in the last couple of hours, it was that Roland generally defied expectation.
“Well more than a suspicion really. I know that none of it matters. Not really, anyway.”
“What do you mean nothing matters?”
“Did I mince my words?” Roland asked cuttingly, but there was still a friendly smile on his face. “When I say that nothing matters, I mean it. None of it.”
“That’s a pretty sour outlook on life,” Kit thought to himself before deciding to say it out loud. Roland didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the assertion.
“Why do you say that?” asked Roland, as if confused.
“It just seems to me that going around feeling as though everything is meaningless is a sad way to live life.”
Roland paused thoughtfully and seemed to measure his next words.
“I think it’s exciting actually…” Roland trailed off and then trailed back in. “… Not like rollercoaster exciting, but think about it — how many things in life do we get told ‘matter?’ It can’t all matter right?”
Kit wasn’t sure he followed where Roland was going. “I suppose not,” he responded unenthusiastically.
“School matters. Grades matter. College matters. Jobs matter, money matters, taxes matter. Getting a home matters. Finding a wife matters. Raising children and continuing this cycle… don’t ask me why, but it matters. We’re told it all matters and then we die like crass policemen floating in desert oases…”
Kit quickly envisioned the sunken patrolman’s fate.
Roland started again, “Not literally of course — but I’m sure you can appreciate the metaphor. The point being, ‘What if none of it does?’”
“I’m sorry?” asked Kit with an eyebrow dented in cynical confusion.
“We’re told a thousand things matter and then we all turn to dust.”
“So just because we ultimately die means that none of it mattered?” asked Kit, reasserting his voice.
“Precisely! I’m not saying it doesn’t still feel like it matters.”
Kit stared blinkingly at Roland.
“Let’s put it this way… how many billions of people have walked this earth before? How many have walked directly through this very desert? I bet Native Americans used to get told a lot of things matter too. I bet the most primitive tribes within the Amazon have been taught similarly. Same with 18th century Sherpas and 4th century Hindus. I bet in 10,000 BC people were taught that things matter. You know what all of these people have in common?”
“They’re no longer here?”
“Exactly. Dust. Does that mean that none of it mattered?”
“I see what you’re saying…”
“Billions of people are so entrapped in what they think matters that they forget to lead lives whose impact reaches beyond them. Hell… even if you can’t impact the whole world, don’t live at the mercy of what its residents tell you to do. They’re all lost and pretending to be found. Even me.”
Kit took a moment and allowed the words to register.
“Life feels grander without so many of these things we tell ourselves are important. Life is boundless precisely because it doesn’t matter.”
“So what you’re saying is that nothing that turns to dust matters?”
“More or less, but it isn’t quite that simple.”
“Doesn’t it all turn to dust?”
“Things can matter to you without actually mattering. Even dust matters to someone. Think about it — what sorts of things mattered to early humans? Hunting their next meal? Raising their children? Finding shelter? Did any of it really matter?”
“Well yes, because they would have died without it.”
“You’re being too literal. Did caveman XYZ change the course of history? No. So it didn’t actually matter. But each moment of each day probably felt like it mattered to him.”
Neither of them said anything for a couple moments.
“So I try not to let silly little things like laws and taxes and bureaucracy bring me down,”
It was fairly sound reasoning, Kit had to admit.
“Speaking of which — you seemed a tad nervous earlier,”
“When you killed that cop you mean?”
“Yes, but even before that.”
Kit didn’t respond.
“Are you on the run or something?”
Earlier in the day Kit felt as though it was wise to keep this bit to himself, but earlier in the day he hadn’t been an unwitting accomplice to murder.
“Yeah,” Kit replied tersely. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked more about it.
“What for?”
“Card-counting.”
Nonplussed, Roland didn’t ask and Kit didn’t explain; a few more moments passed in silence.
He wasn’t sure if it was the fiercely awkward silence or the sweltering desert heat, or a feeling of vague camaraderie, but Kit launched into unsolicited explanation.
“At least that was the start of it… Had a pretty good thing going for awhile — always was good with numbers. Never too good at saving money though. Said I’d got a raise at work and that we could afford the nicer home, but… the debts piled up. Only way out was headin’ back to the casinos. My wife didn’t know anything was up until the phone calls started coming in. Nasty business, these casinos — real life mobsters that’ll break your legs and threaten your families for messing with their profits.”
“I’m familiar with the type,” Roland responded with the half-amused grin of a self-satisfied socialite struggling to contain a story.
“Not the type that like to be cheated. Felt like if I kept to my system that nothing could go wrong, but — These places, man. Cameras everywhere. Just about every casino on the east coast knows my face now. We weren’t safe anymore. Not from the IRS and not from the casinos. The calls kept coming in and the vans kept driving by and I didn’t have the money to pay — not all they were asking for, anyway… so got in my car and left. Never was much for me back home anyway. Mom passed away and haven’t spoken to my father in a good fifteen years. Still miss my wife a lot though… but it was for the best. She’s blameless without me.”
Roland absorbed what Kit was telling him. He wore a coolheaded, heard-it-all-before expression as he did. Kit was both relieved and disappointed that none of this seemed to come as a surprise. He hadn’t hoped for a congratulations but a little recognition would still have been perfectly welcome.
