Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

He checked his resources: five dollars and eleven cents, minus the coffee. Why had he blown through the hundred so fast? If only he’d put some aside he could get a room, or even leave town. Instead, he’d pissed it away on scratch tickets and booze and — he’d squared accounts with Gomez.

He paid for the coffee and walked three blocks to the Mediterranean Hotel, the roach trap where Gomez lived. Gomez could afford a room because he received SSI “crazy checks,” as he called them. Kermit wasn’t sure if Gomez was crazy or not, but he was decidedly weird. For a while he had wandered around town pointing a television remote control unit at the passing cars and people and screaming that he couldn’t change the channel. They sent him to Bridgewater for observation after that, but he was back in a month, although without the remote.

Kermit had paid Gomez a visit on the day of his “accident.” He had owed his friend twenty dollars for some time and was glad for the opportunity to finally pay it back. When Gomez had inquired about the crutches, Kermit told him the whole story. He was quite proud of himself at the time.

He entered the small room and was immediately blinded. Walls and ceiling were lined with aluminum foil, which bounced the light from the bare bulb pitilessly into his eyes. Even the window was covered. Gomez sat in an armchair that leaked stuffing, smoking a cigarette.

“What’s this?” Kermit gestured at the walls.

“Protection,” Gomez said, lighting a fresh cigarette from the old.

“From what?”

“The rays, man.”

“What rays?”

“Jeez, Froggie, don’t you watch the news, read the papers? Rays. Radio waves, television waves, shortwaves, microwaves, X-rays, cosmic rays. Guy on the tube says we’re all swimming in an ocean of electronic waves.” He inhaled deeply, reducing a quarter of the cigarette to ash. “Not me. Uh-uh. I stay in as much as I can. The tinfoil keeps the rays out. You ever seen what a microwave does to a piece of meat? Well, we’re meat.”

“Yeah, sure. Look, I need a place to stay. Just for a few days. I was wondering if maybe—”

“Cops?” said Gomez, visibly alarmed.

“No, nothing like that. Couple of guys are looking for me. No big deal. How about it?”

Gomez squinted through the haze of cigarette smoke. “Where are your crutches, by the way?”

“Ah, that’s history. Deal fell through.”

Gomez smoked furiously for a minute as he considered his friend’s answer.

“Deal fell through, or something went wrong?”

Kermit shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then, because he was not a practiced liar and because he needed to talk to someone about his problem, he told Gomez what had transpired.

“So that’s it, and now I need a place to hole up until things cool off a little. What do you say?”

Gomez shook his head vigorously. “I don’t think so, Froggie. I mean, I don’t feel comfortable with guests, you know? This is a small space. Someone else is here, it feels like they’re using up the air. I have trouble breathing. Uh-uh. No can do.”

Kermit noted the overflowing ashtrays and was about to suggest that there would be more air to breathe if Gomez simply stopped smoking. But he didn’t want to offend his friend, and besides he sensed it would be futile: the sudden fear in the room was as palpable as the cigarette smoke.

After a few more minutes of small talk, Kermit returned to the street, hair and clothes reeking of tobacco. It was dark now and snowing harder. Light from the stores spilled out onto the snowy sidewalks and for a moment the scene reminded him of the town he’d grown up in. Not for the first time he wondered what his life would have been like had he stayed there, gone to work for his father, maybe met a girl.

A bus ground by, filling his nose with diesel fumes. Kermit snapped to and turned his mind to the problem at hand. He felt exposed on the street and there was no way he could return to the shelter. He decided to seek help from the smartest person he knew, the Professor.

The Professor’s tent consisted of several blue tarps stretched over an old tent frame and held down at the edges by cinder blocks. It was located roughly in the middle of eighty acres of woods behind the municipal airport, land that had so far escaped development and sometimes served as shelter for the homeless.

Kermit came prepared with an offering, a bottle of Night Train, which had used up the last of his money. He explained his predicament and fell silent. There was only one seat, a weathered barber chair that served the Professor as both chair and bed. Kermit had to remain standing, the alternative being to sit on the damp ground.