“That’s me, right over there. The one with the retro and super-cool awning.” I point to the row home where I grew up, pretending not to have heard the words exceptionally beautiful come out of his mouth.
Chuck makes a U-turn and pulls up right in front of Mom’s home of shit.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have referenced Poison, right? Fuck Bret Michaels. Fuck that guy. So dumb to quote him. And that song, of all songs! But I’ve gone this far, so maybe would you like to have dinner with me sometime? Maybe? I promise I will not talk dirty to you.”
Wow, I think.
A man who is concerned about how I feel—aware that I might actually have preferences. Kind of nice, for a change. And flattering too—I mean, I get asked out on the first day I’m officially on the market. And by a guy who publicly sings Bon Jovi with his adorable nephew.
“Just forget it.” He waves his hand in the air, maybe trying to swat away what he just said. “It was really stupid of me to think—”
“Um, this has been a weird night for me, so I’m just going to be honest. I actually find you very attractive, and you seem like an amazing uncle, which is cool. I’d probably sleep with you just so I could steal your Too Fast for Love original vinyl and then feel guilty and ask you out for a meal or something afterward to make you feel better about losing such an amazing rock artifact. We might even make it a regular thing, who knows? But I just left my husband—like yesterday. I’m back in South Jersey for the first time in years, and I’m now forced to deal with my incredibly fucked-up mother. I’m not in the best shape emotionally. I should probably tattoo the word trap on my forehead for the well-being of nice honest men like yourself. Then I find out about Mr. Vernon being beaten with a baseball bat, and—”
“I loved Mr. Vernon. That was a real shame, what happened to him.”
“You were in his class?”
“One of the best experiences of my life. I’ll never forget it. He gave us these cards on the last day of school. ‘Official Member of the Human Race,’ it says. Did he do that for your class too? I can actually quote the whole card by memory, because I’ve been carrying it in my wallet—I have it on me now, in fact—and I read it at least once a day just to remind myself that . . . well, anyway, I loved Mr. Vernon. Loved him like a father. Best teacher ever.”
I fight an urge to wrap my arms around Chuck’s neck.
I’m blinking back tears.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“You think that’s weird, right? Still carrying that old card Mr. Vernon gave everyone at the end of high school? Dorky, I know, but that class—and, well, that card got me through a really tough time in my life. Why am I telling you—I’ve never even told Danielle about—I’m such an asshole. Why would you even care about any of this?”
“I really have to go, Chuck,” I say.
“Yeah, I’m a douche.” He smacks himself in the head. “Who quotes ‘Talk Dirty to Me’ as a pickup line the first time he meets a woman? Ridiculous! Not even a shirtless Bret Michaels in his prime could get away with that!”
He’s sweating.
It’s like he’s fifteen.
I think of Jason Malta, and suddenly I’m smelling Drakkar Noir in my mind.
I’m tempted to believe in good men again.
Just a tiny bit.
His still having that card Mr. Vernon gave us on the last day of school, our shared love of Mötley Crüe, those bright eyes . . . it all seems like some sort of undeniable sign—maybe even like the beginning of something—but it’s all happened much too quickly, and I need time to think, process, and catch my breath.
“Good night, Chuck,” I say, and then walk up the steps of my mother’s home.
Inside I find Mom asleep in front of the Buy from Home Network.
An attractive middle-aged man sporting a sharkskin suit and a widow’s peak is encouraging viewers to build a crystal menagerie piece by piece as lights shine and sparkle off various glass animals—panda bears and giraffes and wolves and pelicans and starfish and so many other alluring shapes that easily persuade people like my mother to spend what little savings they have, only to stick the knickknacks on shelves to collect dust until their owner dies and the menagerie gets sold at a fraction of the purchase price or thrown away by uninterested daughters like me.
My mother looks like a passed-out-drunk-on-its-back rhinoceros in a pink sweat suit—tree-trunk-thick neck, giant belly, stubby arms and legs.
There is junk stacked everywhere around us.
And I think about how that nun I met on the airplane used the word quest in the letter she wrote me.
Like I’m a modern female version of Don Quixote.
Quest.
I’m going to write that crazy nun, I think.
Why not?
I’m not afraid of windmills.
“You can have a crystal zoo in your cabinet,” the slick man on TV says. “Gaze at your sparkly little friends daily and feel a little less alone.”
“Bastard,” I say.
I stare down at my mom, and then I have another lawn-dart-to-the-eye moment.
I will not become my mother.
I will leave this house and have adventures. Go on quests, even. Hear the universe’s call.
And Mr. Vernon is out there somewhere—most likely alone. He’s probably a mess after what happened. Who wouldn’t be absolutely fucked in the head after being beaten almost to death with a baseball bat by one of his own students?
I need to make sure he continues to do what he was called to do—teach. Who will help the fucked-up kids if he quits?
Save Mr. Vernon.
My three-word quest.
Maybe this is why my marriage failed, why I haven’t been able to accomplish anything in life so far, why I never even attempted to write the novel Mr. Vernon encouraged me to write “when I was ready.” Maybe I was being groomed and conditioned and led to this very mission. By the universe. By God? Whatever you wanna believe in.
And to think I almost killed Khaleesi and Ken with the Colt .45 just last night—how close I was to failing.
Fate.
Greek fucking theater.
I’m living it now.
“Everything suddenly makes so much sense,” I whisper in the glow of my mother’s TV. “It has to.”
PART TWO
NATE VERNON
CHAPTER 6
Albert Camus and I begin the day as we always do, by eating breakfast.
He has once again beaten me by cleaning his bowl in less than thirty seconds, inhaling the food as if he’s afraid I might take it away, which I believe happened to him on a regular basis before we began living together.
As I swallow my last spoonful of Raisin Bran, I look Albert Camus in his one adoring eye, and then I quote him: “‘There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.’ I’m thinking about the first question again. It’s true. To be or not to be.”
Albert Camus cocks his head to one side as if to say, “Pourquoi?”
“‘All great deeds and all great thoughts have ridiculous beginnings.’ Remember when you wrote that, Albert Camus? The Myth of Sisyphus. Remember? Before you were reincarnated as a dog? You also wrote this about the inevitable weariness we all face: ‘It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.’ Do you remember? Did you think about the first question during your fatal car crash? When the wheels skidded across the ice? When the engine wrapped around the tree? Right before you died in your last incarnation? In that last moment of your life, did you regret never
having finished writing The First Man? Did you regret anything? Could you still answer the first question as you left this world?”
Albert Camus cocks his head the other way, lets out a sigh, and then rests his chin on his outstretched paws.
He pretends to be resigned, but secretly he loves it when I quote his former self—I can tell.
In his present incarnation, Albert Camus is a toy poodle with a graying Afro and beard; the rest of his coat’s as black as his eye and nose.
When I look at Albert Camus’s face I sometimes think of the late PBS painter Bob Ross, who was always painting happy little things—happy little trees, happy little mountains, happy little clouds.
The Joy of Painting, his show was called, if I remember correctly.
Was there ever a nicer, more positive person?
Bob Ross—in this wonderfully inclusive way—made us all believe we could paint. I used to watch his show and think he was perhaps the best teacher I had ever seen practicing the art of passing on knowledge.
If I remember correctly, he died of lymphoma in his early fifties, which is five years or so younger than I am right now.
“Why were you reincarnated as a dog that looks like former PBS star Bob Ross, Albert Camus?” I say, and then reach down and sink my fingers into Albert Camus’s Bob Ross Afro. I find his tiny skull within that globe of fur, give Albert Camus a good scratch behind the ears, and he blows air through his nose in appreciation. “Maybe you are here to keep me from reaching any conclusions regarding the first question, Albert Camus. Because I can’t remember the answer anymore. I used to know why I should keep living, but now—well, I have you. We have each other. And maybe someday Mrs. Harper will stop wearing black. What do you think, Albert Camus? Is that our answer?”
He looks up at me lovingly with his one eye, but he offers no reply today.
I spark up a Parliament Light and take a drag, feeling the hollow little recessed filter between my lips.
I try to pretend Albert Camus and I are in a Parisian café in the mid-1950s, smoking and discussing the absurd.
In my fantasy, I am fluent in French.
I tell Albert Camus he will be reincarnated as a dog one day—Vous serez réincarner en chien!—and be rescued from a shelter days before he is to be euthanized just because no one wants to adopt a one-eyed dog.
“Maybe when you were in that tiny cage, you were hoping to be killed so that you could move on to your next incarnation,” I say to the present-day Albert Camus. “But that was before you knew the joys of living with me, Nate Vernon, your master.”
His right eye was cauterized shut by some monster of a man whom Albert Camus cannot name, because he is now a dog and no longer has the power of speech.
When I saw him in the shelter, I knew I had to rescue him. They opened the small crate, I knelt down, and he jumped up into my arms like a fool, still trusting after the horrors that he must have endured.
“I told you he was an absolute sweetheart,” the young girl volunteering at the shelter said before she realized I was crying. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll take him,” I said. “Today. Right now. Whatever he costs, I’ll pay. I’ll sign anything.”
At first I tried to get him to wear an eye patch, just so he might have some dignity, but he wasn’t having it. He’d paw at the patch until it descended to his chin like a beard, and then he’d cock his head to one side, look up at me with his one good eye, and bark once, as if to say, “Really?”
The eye patch was a ridiculous idea.
His scarred eye socket is mostly covered by fur, when the groomer trims him properly, and he’s not a vain dog.
He’s accepted his fate in life, as we all should.
Albert Camus pretends he is no longer interested in cigarette smoke, now that he has been reincarnated as a dog, but I can tell my smoking makes him nostalgic for his days playing goalie for the University of Algiers, exploring anarchy and communism, having affairs with María Casares, getting involved with revolutions, winning the Nobel Prize even, only to end up a cripple’s dog in the next life.
“The absurdity! It’s like we’re in one of your books, Albert Camus! Or maybe more like Kafka.”
I ash my cigarette into the remaining cereal milk and then study the smoke leaving my mouth.
I don’t even inhale all that much of it, but I enjoy seeing the smoke exit my body, maybe because it reminds me that I’m really still here. Sometimes I even smoke in front of the mirror. I prefer this activity to television.
Smell is a powerful trigger of memories, as you probably know, and Albert Camus was a smoker in his last incarnation as a French rebel novelist.
Another one of my heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, was also a smoker novelist who used to quip about suing the cigarette companies for false advertising, since the warning label promised that the damn things would kill him, but they didn’t. He died of a traumatic brain injury. Kurt joked that he didn’t want to set a bad example for his grandchildren, and that’s why he didn’t commit suicide. That’s how he answered the first question, basically saying that we were put on this planet to bumble around. But the truth is that Vonnegut attempted suicide at least once. Pills and alcohol, if I remember correctly. That’s the problem with being a high school English teacher. Too many of the writers you hold up to teenagers as heroes ultimately failed to answer the first question.
“Do dogs ever commit suicide, Albert Camus? What would it take for your kind to commit self-slaughter?” I ask, but his eye is closed now. The earth has moved enough through space so that a cube of sun has crept across the floor to land on my absurdist dog, and he is simply enjoying the warmth sent down from that huge sphere of burning gas our planet orbits from just the right distance. “Why is ours the only inhabitable planet in our solar system? How did we get so lucky, Albert Camus?” I say, trying to stay positive, and then take another drag, wondering if I will eventually get lung cancer and die. Vonnegut also used to say smoking was a classy way to commit suicide. Kurt was quite quotable. Many times I held up Vonnegut to teenagers and said, “Admire this man.”
I read the warning label on the azure Parliament box. It says something about pregnant women and harming fetuses.
These are old cigarettes.
I bought several cartons a few years ago, even though I don’t smoke all that often. I wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having to ask Mrs. Harper for something so out of fashion and dirty as cigarettes.
One cigarette a day, right after breakfast. How can you explain that habit to anyone? It’s as absurd as the rest of my life.
I drop my half-smoked butt into the remaining milk of my cereal bowl. It hisses as it dies.
My mother hated cigarette smoking, and as I hate my mother, each smoke is also a middle finger held high for good old Mom.
I pick up Albert Camus, and he quickly settles into my lap. He licks my hand. I repetitively stroke the length of his spine and tail. We sit at our small kitchen table in silence for maybe an hour. Neither of us has anything else to do.
I think about Mrs. Harper and other impossible things.
The best and worst aspect of our day is that we have all the time in the world, Albert Camus and I. All the time in the world may sound nice in theory, but in practice it can become a swift kick to the balls.
CHAPTER 7
Harper’s is the local convenience store around here, only it’s nothing like the Wawas and 7-Elevens I frequented when I lived in the Philadelphia area. Perhaps its most defining characteristic is the wooden-shingle sign outside:
WHISKEY, GUNS, AMMO
Even though I only have a need for the first of those three things, Albert Camus and I go to Harper’s just about every day to buy sundry more mundane items not advertised outside on wooden shingles.
In the parking lot today, just in front of the hole where, in the spring and summertime, bees come and g
o from a hive that is on full display behind glass, buzzing in warmer months with a frenetic and intimidating work ethic, I say, “Do you think she’ll still be wearing black today, Albert Camus?”
He sighs, but does not rise. He’s in his harness, which keeps him strapped to the seat belt, because we wouldn’t want history repeating itself here in icy Vermont. He never protests when I belt him in for car rides, but he doesn’t particularly enjoy being buckled in either, which makes me wonder if he can still answer the first question now that he is a canine.
(I give him a good life—top-of-the-line dog food, he’s with me twenty-four hours a day, and I’ve never loved anyone more—but that’s beside the point. There are times when I wonder if Albert Camus really wants to be here in this world, even though I realize the work he did in his last incarnation challenges us to find meaning—hope and beauty even—amid the absurd. But the fictional worlds he created were often bleak, and so is our current life together, truth be told.)
“You don’t like Mrs. Harper, do you?” I ask as I reach over and scratch his head. “Don’t worry, nothing comes between us, Albert Camus. Not even a woman. Never. You and me. It’s what we’ll always have.”
He lifts his head and begins to whine a little, so I undo his belt buckle and transfer him to my lap.
He climbs my torso, rests his front paws on my chest, and licks my face, because he is a lover.
“Okay, Albert Camus, renowned ladies’ man. French Nobel Laureate. And courageous explorer of the human condition. Let’s go over the old game plan.”
He continues to lick my face.
“If she’s still in all black, we buy our daily supplies and leave as usual. But if she is wearing any color at all, we will try to make small talk, as they say, and see if it leads anywhere.”
My dog’s face is centimeters away from my own—I can feel his warm, pungent breath and his cold, wet nose on my cheek.
“Maybe she will have a lady dog for you,” I say, but I can tell he isn’t buying it—or maybe he’s worried that having only one eye makes him unworthy of a mate. It’s hard to tell. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”