We are still best friends—best friends forever, he says, and then licks me furiously all over my face as I close my eyes and laugh. Now stop being such a pussy! Let the girl help you.
“Did you just call me a ‘pussy’?” I say, making the stupid air quotes with my fingers.
Yes, I did, and it is the absolute worst thing a dog can call another dog. A pussycat. And you are acting like one. Snide. Selfish. Self-absorbed. An untrustworthy, taciturn pussycat. Be a dog, Master Nate. A true and good dog is affable and loving and kind and ready for adventure. Ready to piss on the entire world, marking every inch with his many drops of urine, which he believes to be inexhaustible!
“This is getting a little weird, Albert Camus. Even for me. I must admit.”
Use this new life. Mark it with the urine of your essence.
“What did you just say?” Portia says a bit loudly.
I open my eyes and look at her behind the wheel of the rental car, blinking several times as my mind wakes up and my eyes focus.
“Did you just say something about ‘the urine of your essence’?” she says.
“What?”
“I think you may have been dreaming, but that’s disgusting. I’m stopping for coffee. Maybe you’d like some too.” She pulls into a rest stop off the highway, where we get some overpriced java and sip it quietly at a little plastic table as scores of faceless background people swarm about.
“You’re almost done,” she says. “Almost free of me.”
I nod at her, suddenly exhausted.
This is the longest I’ve been around another human being in many years, I suddenly realize. No wonder I’m so depleted of energy.
There’s an endless slow-moving snake of traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, which makes me think of that old song by Simon and Garfunkel about counting cars on this very road, but as the hours creep by in interims of standstill and five-miles-per-hour, Portia’s knee starts to move up and down, and her bottom lip gets chewed fiercely.
“Why are you so agitated?” I ask.
“We’re meeting my mother at seven,” she says. “I don’t want to be late.”
I look at the clock on the dash: 5:30.
We take Exit 4 around 6:40, and Portia seems even more agitated. I can feel her nervousness filling up the car like some sort of poisonous gas; it’s stifling.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that I only have to eat dinner with a crazy old lady before I’ll be returned to my home in Vermont, where I can finally be done with everything and enjoy eternal rest.
Portia navigates through and mostly around the South Jersey rush-hour traffic, taking less-traveled residential roads through Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, Westmont, and then we are on Cuthbert Boulevard and she is pointing out the row home in which she grew up across the street from the Acme, and then she’s pulling over and pointing at the Haddon Township High School public announcement board and football field.
“Why did you stop here?” I say.
“Thought you might like to reminisce,” Portia says, and it’s like all of my bones are being broken again.
“Keep driving!” I yell, and now it’s me who is feeling anxious. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Don’t you want to take a second to—”
“Drive!”
She pulls away and heads toward Oaklyn.
“I’m sorry stopping by the high school upset you so much,” she says, after my breathing returns to normal.
I don’t respond, mostly because it upset me more than even I thought it would, and now I’m sweating and my heart is banging.
“You’re really shaken,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be okay. Let’s have dinner with your mother, and then I’ll be happiest if you return me right where you found me.”
“Okay,” she says, but there is a hint of music in her voice, like she knows something I don’t, and when I look over at her, I see it clearly in her eye—the spark.
We pull into a rather full parking lot across the street from a place called the Manor in the small town of Oaklyn, and alongside my former student I make my way to the entrance door, over which hangs a sign featuring a suspiciously young boy sitting on a barrel and drinking beer directly from a pitcher.
Before we go in, Portia stops and faces me. Then she kisses me on the cheek, which shocks me. “You were the best teacher I ever had. Thank you.”
Her eyes are watery, and I’m not quite sure what’s going on, so I say, “Let’s not keep your mother waiting.”
She nods and then opens the door for me.
I cane my way inside, looking down so I don’t trip over the step, and when I look up, I hear a few dozen people yell, “SURPRISE!!!!!!”
It scares the hell out of me, and I almost fall backward, but Portia is nudging me forward toward the mass of people who I quickly understand are my former students, because they are all holding up those stupid Official Member of the Human Race cards I used to make and distribute to my seniors on the last day of school. It feels like a dream at first—like something that can’t possibly be true—and as I scan the beaming, smiling faces in the room, I recognize several and can even name a few.
My entire body is instantly slicked with sweat.
Everyone is looking at me.
Edmond Atherton’s face pops out in the crowd dozens of times, peeking up from behind shoulders and around heads in rapid succession, so I know I am hallucinating, seeing my attacker everywhere I look, and all of these former students are waiting for me to say something. It’s so deadly quiet, I can hear them breathing.