Suddenly, I realize that I am very thirsty—also my throat is screaming from so many cigarettes—and so I gulp the water down until the glass is empty.
“Good,” she says. “Let’s do one more.”
I watch her fill the glass a second time, and when she approaches me, I say, “Who are you?”
She doesn’t answer, but pours water down my throat again, and I do my best to consume it, but immediately feel as though I might vomit again. The woman must have read my face. “Try to keep it down,” she says, and then she’s in the kitchen again, rifling through my supplies.
“Heavily buttered toast,” she says as she sticks two slices of rye bread into the toaster. “That’s what you need now. Get some grease in you.”
Before long she’s sitting next to me on the floor, holding warm bread up to my lips.
Even though I just vowed to starve myself to death, I take small bites—hearing the crunch of my teeth breaking through crispy nooks and crannies—and feel the warm velvety melted butter on my tongue. My nausea dissipates with every swallow, which seems miraculous.
Once the toast has been consumed, she cleans my face and neck with towels soaked in warm water, and it feels so good that I close my eyes and try to forget that I have a strange woman in my home, making me do things against my will.
Maybe because I’m drunk, I pretend I am an infant again, and my mother is taking care of me.
You are a baby.
You have no control.
You also have no responsibilities.
Nothing can be your fault.
Then I’m on the couch, she’s covering me with blankets, and I’m mumbling, “I didn’t mean to kill Albert Camus. I really didn’t. I’m so sorry. Won’t you kill me in my sleep? Please. Just kill me. End this.”
“Sleep it off,” she says. “We start saving you tomorrow.”
“You already saved me—whoever you are. Even though I didn’t want to be saved.”
“No,” she says. “We’ve only just begun.”
I hear anger in her voice, but—even though the warm butter is working its way through my system—I still feel drunk and tell myself that four bottles of wine is enough to make anyone hallucinate.
“I wish you were real,” I say. “I’m sorry you’re not real.”
“Go to sleep, Mr. Vernon.”
“Why do you call me by my last name?”
“Shhh,” she says. “It’s okay. Just sleep.”
My eyelids are too heavy to open, even when I hear her crying.
Why is this woman crying?
Why is she here?
Who is she?
“You’re an angel,” I mumble. “A prayer answered. There’s no other explanation. Simply none. Maybe a curse too. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. May . . .”
And then I’m gone again, dreaming of Edmond Atherton.
In my dream he’s chasing Albert Camus with the aluminum baseball bat, and I’m looking down at the scene from a high tower that doesn’t seem to have stairs or an elevator or any way down at all, except jumping out the window.
Albert Camus is running in circles below, and every time Edmond Atherton swings his bat, he gets closer and closer to killing my dog—so, even though it makes no sense at all, I jump out the window, feel my stomach drop. But just when I’m about to hit the earth and splatter to death, the entire world disappears and Albert Camus and I are in my living room again, sitting on the couch.
Edmond Atherton has vanished, along with his bat.
“I’m sorry, Albert Camus,” I say.
He jumps into my arms and licks my face.
“Why did you jump?” I ask.
You were the one who jumped in this dream! he says, although his lips do not move.
“Why did you jump in real life? From the bedroom window. Were you acting on the suicide pact?”
Remember in It’s a Wonderful Life, when Clarence the angel jumps off the bridge to trick George Bailey into saving him? He says something like, “I knew if I jumped in, you’d save me. And that’s how I saved you.” We watched that movie together the past two Christmases. You sobbed both times. Remember? That’s where I got the idea—figured out how to save you.
“You jumped to save me?”
Albert Camus licks me once right on the lips, as if to say yes.
“But I didn’t save you back.”
You didn’t kill yourself either.
I hold Albert Camus close to my chest, smell the familiar slightly metallic scent of his fur, and feel the beating of his little heart against my ribs as his tail repetitively taps my stomach.
“Regardless of whether this is real or not, I love you, Albert Camus. You were the best dog in the world. You were a wildly gifted emotional support animal.”
This is just a thought—but if you ever get another dog, please name him something a bit less intense, less absurd. Something happier—maybe something uplifting like Yo-Yo Ma. You name a dog Albert Camus, and you yoke him to a certain fate. That’s just the way it is. No offense.
“There’s only one dog for me,” I say as I scratch Albert Camus behind the ears and kiss the hard spot between his eyes. “I could never get another to replace you.”
Beautiful sentiment, Master Nate. I appreciate it. But you have to move on.
“Do you think the woman on my couch could really be an answer to prayer—could she be a wingless angel like Clarence? Sent by God?”
Dogs don’t really believe in God, Master Nate. We believe in regular feeding times, car rides with the windows down, a good scratch behind the ears, a walk in the woods, and chasing small mammals, shaking them to death in our teeth. Our brains are no bigger than peaches, so we keep it simple. No God or anything heady like that. Give us a car ride with the windows down over a deity any day. Tell you what, let’s just snuggle this one last time and simply enjoy the sun streaming through the window in all of its full frontal nudity.