Love May Fail (11 page)

“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.”

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.

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.”

Mrs. Harper is at the register, checking out a customer, a man in a flannel jacket who is buying a shocking amount of canned baked beans.

She’s wearing a navy blue shirt.

All the blood drains from my face, and I feel lightheaded.

This is the first time I have seen her wearing any color but black since her husband died of a heart attack more than a year ago.

And yet navy blue is very close in nature to black. In certain lights, navy can be confused with black, which creates a rather unfortunate dilemma for me.

As I make my way under the various deer, moose, and even bear heads mounted on the walls, I wonder if Mrs. Harper has worn navy by mistake. Could it have looked like black in the early-morning light? Or might she be slowly transitioning her way to brighter colors, and if so, what would that mean? Have I been given the proverbial green light or not?

I dare to glance back over my shoulder, seeing that her silver hair is down. It rises like a wave over her forehead before it dives along the left side of her beautiful face.

Mrs. Harper has what I can only describe as a gorgeous Jewish nose, and for some unknown reason, the noses of Jewish women always stir up the dormant lust within me.

Behind the bread aisle I quickly adjust myself, because I am embarrassingly aroused.

Ridiculous.

All of this.

I started imagining a life together with Mrs. Harper long before her husband died. It was never sexual so much as it was intellectu
ally stimulating. She never really says much when she scans groceries, hardly ever smiles, and so it was easy to graft stories onto her and her beautiful angular nose. I imagined her trapped in a sexless cold marriage with a man who named a store after himself and loved it more than the wife he also named after himself. I imagined meeting Mrs. Harper accidentally on one of the walking trails Albert Camus and I often stroll in the summer, the three of us falling into stride—in my fantasy I am cane- and limp-free—perhaps even talking about the novels we are reading at the time. Before long she is sneaking away from her husband to have dinner at my home in the woods, confiding in me, telling me all of her secrets over the meat her husband cut and weighed himself earlier in the day. Turns out, Mr. Harper is a woefully inadequate lover who finishes much too early and is snoring less than thirty seconds after he rolls off his wife. “The shame,” she says through tears. “He’s never once given me an orgasm. Not once in thirty years.” And I pat her hand sympathetically. “It’s like I’m an object. Just a warm mitten for his dick,” she says after one too many glasses of wine. “Are other men any different?” In my fantasy I tell her that I would make her buzz in the bedroom until her heart was content, and she places her hand on her chest and blushes. And then one snowy night I see two lights glowing like God’s eyes through the blizzard, winding their way up my driveway, and I open the door and she comes bounding out of her truck without even putting it in park. I wrap my arms around her as her husband’s vehicle continues slowly into the snowbank. “I’ve left him,” she says, and I say, “Welcome home.”

In real life, Mr. Harper was a curmudgeonly cheap hairy WASP of a little ape in a white butcher’s apron, always pressing his thumb to the scale when he was weighing your meat.

He killed things for fun, forever hanging carcasses up outside his shop and selling his freshly murdered cuts inside. He had an arsenal
behind glass and sold his guns freely to all of the local yokels and rich yuppie skiers who also seasonally purchased his overpriced bottles of wine, local microbrewed beers, cheeses made from the milk of Vermont goats and cows, and whatever else they didn’t feel like driving forty-five minutes to get at the nearest chain grocery store. These sales made Mr. Harper a wealthy man. A beautiful wife and a cash machine of a store. One of the biggest houses around these parts, nestled at the center of an ocean of land, overlooking a private pond. You’d think the old bastard would have known happiness, but he was meaner than a bee in your mouth.

I’ve overheard patrons whispering that Mr. Harper died in the store while marking up the high-end whiskey and scotch, just before ski season.

Dead before his head hit the floor, they say, but somehow managing not to break a single bottle, because he was a frugal bastard to the very end.

And that’s when Mrs. Harper started wearing all black.

“Two rib eye steaks—one big, one small,” I tell the middle-aged butcher behind the counter, and he pulls two cuts from the window and begins to wrap them in wax paper.

“Your little dog eats better than most people,” Brian says.

I know his name is Brian, because he wears a name tag. He started working here shortly after Mr. Harper died. I think he runs the place for Mrs. Harper, who has remained a silent and beautiful fixture behind the cash register.

I nod and smile.

“Why don’t you bring the little guy in here anymore? I miss seeing him,” he says as he weighs the steaks. He doesn’t leave his thumb on the scale, I notice.

“He gets a little anxious lately,” I say.

“What’s his name again?”

“Albert.”

“I heard you use a last name too when you were talking to him. What was it again?”

“Camus. Albert Camus.”

Brian itches his goatee with his wrist and says, “How’d you ever come up with a crazy name like that? Albert
Cah-mooooo
?”

“I named him after the French writer.”

“That explains it. I don’t even read
American
writers.”

“Maybe you should read Albert Camus.”

“Why?” Brian says as he passes the meat over the counter. He’s smiling at me, and there’s a twinkle in his eye. He’s just making small talk as he takes off his disposable gloves.

“Well, for starters, he’s one of the best and most influential authors of the twentieth century.”

“Hey, listen up, friend. I’m a butcher here in Hicksville, Vermont.” He points at his face. “You see this guy here? Does he read French writers? No, he does not. He reads
Field & Stream
on the hopper sometimes when he’s feeling really intellectual.” Brian smiles proudly at his joke. “When I get to feeling like Johnny College, I sometimes read
TV Guide
.”

“To each his own,” I say, and start to turn away.

“Hey, don’t take it that way. I’m just having a little fun today. You have me curious now. Why should I read some French writer? Why would you say that to me? Were you serious? Come on now. Tell me.”

“Old habit, I guess. I’m a former high school English teacher. Maybe it’s in my genes.”

He laughs in a friendly way. “I got a library card because you can check out DVDs for free down there, but I bet my card would work for books too. Imagine that. Me reading a book. That would be something. I’m telling you. What’s the name of this writer
again? I wanna read this Frenchy who made you wanna name a dog after him. I mean—you love that dog. So what the hell, right? What the hell! You friggin’
love
that dog. I’ve seen you with him.”

“I do love Albert Camus.”

“I never really talk this much.”

“I’ve noticed,” I say, lifting my eyebrows. He seems like a kind man, albeit a little simple. I like Brian. I do. He’s bagged and tagged my meat many dozens of times before, and yet this is the first time we’ve spoken this freely.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but I don’t have any family around here—except valued shoppers like you. And today’s sort of a big day for me. So I’m a regular Chatty Cathy this afternoon. This store—it’s changed my entire life for the better.”

“Oh, really? I love this store,” I say, although I am not sure why. This is getting a little too friendly, and my instincts are screaming,
Get the hell out of here!

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Brian smiles, puffs out his chest a little, and lifts his chin ever so slightly. “Did you notice anything different when you walked in today? Did you?
Anything?
”

Instantly, I know he’s referring to Mrs. Harper’s navy shirt, and yet I say, “No, I didn’t. What’s different?”

“Mrs. Harper?” Brian raises his gray eyebrows, cocks his head, nods, and smiles.

“I’m not sure I—”

“She’s wearing a blue shirt. For the first time since—
you know.
”

I glance over my shoulder at Mrs. Harper. “Is she? I thought it was black like always.”

“Guess what? Take a wild guess.”

“Um.”

“Give up?”

“I have no—”

“Did you happen to see what’s on her ring finger?” he says.

Please, no.

God, no.

“She and I are getting married. Married! How about that, Mr. High School English Teacher? Mr. Albert
Cah-moooo
dog owner. Popped the question last night after we locked up Harper’s. Got down on one knee while we were restocking cereal, offered her a ring, and she said yes. Can you believe it? Me, Brian Foley, getting married after all these years of being a bachelor! And to the best woman in the entire universe.”

The world stops spinning for a second, and I lose myself in the black space between Brian’s grinning two front teeth.

“Did you hear what I said, friend? We’re getting married! Hitched. Yoked. United! Making it legal and legit and beautiful! Go tell it on the mountain, Teach: Brian Foley is in love! Reborn even. Today’s the best day of my entire life.”

“Um . . .” I’m sweating now. I place the steaks on the counter and pat my pockets. “Oh, shoot! I think I forgot my wallet. Let me run to my truck. Just give me a second. I’ll be right back.”

“You’re not even gonna say congratulations?”

I move as quickly as my limp and cane will allow toward the exit.

“Are you even serious?” Brian says. “You gotta root for love, man.”

I can’t resist sneaking a peek at Mrs. Harper’s beautiful nose as I leave, knowing that I will never again set foot in Harper’s, even if I desperately need
GUNS, AMMO, WHISKEY.

Mrs. Harper is glowing.

She looks radiant.

Happy.

And her nose arouses me like never before.

Cruel temptress!

I don’t bother to buckle in Albert Camus. The truck fishtails back so quickly he falls off the seat and onto the floor mat. When he jumps back up, Albert Camus makes a mad dash for my lap, and I feel him trembling against my jeans.

On a little-used dirt back road, I pull over, rest my head on the wheel, and sob.

Maybe you think it ridiculous, my weeping over the unavailability of a woman with whom I haven’t even exchanged more than a hundred or so words. But I did love her, or the fantasy of being with her, which has pulled me through a very hard lonely period, the way the hope of seeing a single green bud pulls many Vermonters through the coldest and darkest Marches.

Albert Camus continues to comfort me the only way he knows how—by licking my chin, neck, and hands.

Maybe I am also mourning the way my emotional and mental decline mirrors the crippled state of my body. I’m getting worse, all alone in the woods. The shadows are overtaking my mind with useless thoughts that fester and ache like the metal pins in my legs and arms.