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 go 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.”
When I exit the car, Albert Camus barks and claws at the window with his paws, because he has separation anxiety. I’d bring him inside, but he’s growled at Mrs. Harper on several previous occasions, intentionally trying to sabotage my love life. He doesn’t want to share me. Leaning my weight on my wooden cane, I place my left palm on the glass where Albert Camus is scratching and say, “It’s okay, mon petit frère. I won’t be long.”