And then—once again—everything goes black.
CHAPTER 9
“Mr. Vernon?”
I blink, and a woman is slapping my face.
“Mr. Vernon? Wake up. Are you okay?”
I close my eyes and try to disappear again into sleep.
I’m spinning.
I’m being rolled over onto my side.
“You’re going to choke to death on your own vomit,” the woman’s voice says, and I wonder if she is an angel.
I remember angels coming to save people in the biblical stories my mother told me when I was a child—and I also vaguely remember praying before I passed out.
I’m still drunk enough to believe in such things.
But then I’m vomiting onto my deck—all wine and bile tinged with cigarette tar.
“You have a little party?” she says. “What happened here?”
“Albert Camus,” I whisper. “He’s dead.”
“Um, yeah. For half a century now.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, feeling the damage I’ve done to my throat. It burns like someone sandpapered my entire respiratory system. “I killed him.”
“What the hell have you been drinking?”
I blink and try to look at her face.
The floodlight is right behind her head now, so all I see is her silhouette outlined in white.
“Are you an angel?” I say. “Did God send you?”
She laughs. “Um, I’m not really religious, Mr. Vernon.”
“So you’re not an angel?”
“I believe you may be intoxicated.”
“I’m Zagreus, the old cripple. You have to kill me. Like in the book A Happy Death. By Camus.”
“I don’t want to brag, but I may have just saved your life. Never pass out on your back, Mr. Vernon. They teach you this in health class. You can choke and suffocate on your own vomit when you’re passed out, which was what you were doing when I found you here.”
“I was supposed to die. I made a suicide pact with Albert Camus.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s get you inside. Maybe put on some coffee. Get some water in you. Change your shirt.”
“You won’t kill me? What if I give you my money—all I have? Would you be my Patrice Mersault? Like in A Happy Death.”
“Isn’t Meursault the protagonist of The Stranger?”
“There are two u’s in Meursault from The Stranger,” I whisper. “Only one u in Patrice Mersault. Just let me die out here. Because I killed Albert Camus. I’m sorry, but I have to pay with my life.”
“Okay, drunk man. Let’s sit up.”
She’s behind me now, forcing me to do a sit-up, pushing my shoulder blades with her palms.
“Here’s your cane. Use it, because I don’t think I can carry you. Let’s just make it inside. Three feet, we have to travel. Just thirty-six tiny inches.”
“I can’t stand,” I say. “Too drunk. Legs won’t work.”
“Then you’ll crawl, because it’s too cold out here.”
“No,” I say. “Let me freeze to death. I don’t deserve to live.”
“Get your ass inside that house now,” she says and then kicks my thigh.
“Ouch!”
“Move!”
Mostly because I am now terrified of this woman angel, I fall forward and crawl toward the sliding door, which is open. My head is pounding, and it takes a long time, but I manage to drag my body inside. She slides the door shut behind us and locks it.
“What happened to you?” she says. “My god. You’re a mess.”
“I killed Albert Camus.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” she says, and then she starts to cry, which alarms me.
Do angels cry?
She seems vaguely familiar. I wonder if I have run into her, shopping at Harper’s. Maybe she frequents my favorite pizza shop, Wicked Good Pie, or perhaps the local gas station—but I can’t place her in my drunken state, let alone figure out why she would come to my home. She’s beautiful though, in her late thirties, I would guess. Long brown hair. Slim figure. Although she seems to be wearing outdated clothes—a white jean jacket with rock-star pins on it. I haven’t seen people wearing rock-star pins on jean jackets for decades.
“Why are you crying?” I say.
“I didn’t think you’d be this fucked up.”
I feel guilty for disappointing her, even though I didn’t even know she was coming, let alone who she might be. It all adds to the sense of responsibility I feel for Albert Camus’s death, and I instantly remember why I have sequestered myself.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“I came to save you.”
“How did you know I needed saving?” I say, uncomfortably remembering my prayer.
She covers her eyes with her hand and sighs deeply.
“Are you really an angel?” I say.
“Would you stop fucking saying that please?”
“Angels don’t use profanity, do they?”
“You need to hydrate,” she says, and then she’s opening cabinets and turning on the tap and thrusting the rim of a glass at my teeth.
I sip just to be nice.
I wonder if I might be hallucinating, or maybe I have died and gone to some sort of hell or purgatory where attractive women force you to crawl and drink excessive amounts of water.
“What’s going on here?” I say, still sitting on the floor just inside the sliding glass door.
“Drink.” She lifts the bottom of the glass up, so that water fills my mouth.