We snuggle cheek-to-cheek and belly-to-belly.
“I love you, my furry little buddy.”
Yeah, you too, Master Nate.
CHAPTER 10
“Albert Camus,” I say when I wake up. “I had the strangest dream.”
When I realize I’m on the couch, I search my memory. I’m pretty sure I was not in a high tower looking down on Edmond Atherton trying to kill Albert Camus with a baseball bat, but is my dog really dead? And was there actually a wingless angel woman here last night?
“Good morning, Mr. Vernon,” a woman says from the kitchen, and I jump.
“Who are you?” I say as I turn around. “What do you want from me?”
She hands me a cup of black coffee. “Perhaps you’d like to see some ID?”
The woman hands me a small rectangle of plastic. It looks like a driver’s license at first, but on second glance, when my bloodshot eyes focus, I realize it’s one of those ridiculous Official Member of the Human Race cards I used to give to my students on the last day of school. What a colossal waste of energy it was to make those things—it took me days of my own personal at-home free time. Why the hell I ever made those, I couldn’t tell you. I used to find half of them on the hallway floors, discarded thoughtlessly like candy wrappers.
“Do you remember me now?” she says.
I read the name on the card.
Study the photo.
Look up at Portia Kane—she’s just standing there in my living room, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
She has long brown hair and is dressed casually, in the same jean jacket she’s wearing in the photo, which seems downright bizarre. Her face has aged, but she’s still remarkably pretty. She sits down next to me on the couch.
“You’re the girl who used to talk to me about her mother? The hoarder, right?”
“So you do remember me. I hoped you might, but it’s been twenty years and—”
“What the hell are you doing here in my home?” The coffee cup warms my hands.
“I told you last night—I’ve come to save you.”
“How did you know I was going to kill myself?”
“Were you really going to kill yourself?” she says.
“Albert Camus, he jumped out the window and died. I had to burn him in the chimenea. We made a suicide pact, and—it sounds ridiculous now. I can’t explain it to you, and I don’t particularly feel like doing so anyway.”
“Is that your truck outside, smashed into the tree? I hope you’re not concussed, because you aren’t making any sense, Mr. Vernon. And I don’t think people are supposed to sleep when concussed. Shit, I hope that—”
“I’m making perfect sense!”
“Okay.”
“What do you want from me?” I say.
“To save you and—”
“You students always want something. You never come without ulterior motives. Never once in my entire tenure of teaching did I encounter an altruistic student. Students by their very nature are designed to take and take before they disappear, never to be heard from again, unless they need something—like a letter of recommendation, or some sort of free advice, or a shoulder to cry on. So what do you need? Tell me, because I’m very busy trying to drink and smoke myself to death at the present moment, if you haven’t noticed. So let’s get this over with.”
Portia looks at her hands. When I subtract a few wrinkles and poof up her bangs, I remember a sweet girl who hung on my every word and used up every free minute of every single one of my prep periods. She was so wounded—father issues, if I remember correctly. Used to drop by my apartment uninvited too, now that I think about it. Was there something about a pregnancy scare? Young foolish heart-on-his-sleeve I-will-make-a-difference me gave her free therapy, allowed her to squeeze me like a sponge, all the emotional energy I had to give for an entire year, before she graduated and vanished without so much as a good-bye, let alone a thank-you.
“What do you want?” I say with a little less cynicism, because she looks sad now, and I am tired—too exhausted to fight.
“You were the best teacher I ever had,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “But I’m not a teacher anymore. Did you not hear about my last day in the classroom? It made the news—pretty much every market.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says.
“Yeah, well. I got this very fashionable cane out of the deal.” I reach down to pick it up. “See? Top quality. Makes me look almost old money—and on a teacher’s pension too.”
She gives me a look like I just admitted to something heinous, like drop-kicking infants for fun. “My life didn’t turn out the way I dreamed it would either. I’ve met some truly awful men in the last twenty years—was married to one, actually. But when I needed to believe there was better out there—at least one good man in the world—do you know who I thought about every single time?”
I have a strong feeling she is going to say me, which means she is delusional and maybe even psychotic, so I say, “How did you get my address?”
“I thought of you and your class,” she says, quite passionately, completely ignoring my question.
“How did you find me?”
“Don’t you even care about what I’m telling you? That your teaching had an impact that affected me for two decades, that forced me to seek you out twenty years after—”
“Sounds like you sought me out when it was convenient for you, because your marriage fell apart and you needed something to take your mind off your own problems. I have some experience with this—all veteran teachers do. Trust me. We exist as public servants who are expected to uphold the morals of an entire community and drop everything just as soon as anyone has a problem.”