I Smell Death on You

I WAS AT MY DOCTOR’S OFFICE FOR MY YEARLY CHECKUP. My doctor wore a salt and pepper beard, a stainless steel stethoscope, and a shimmering red tie that glinted like a stick of rock candy. His name was Tom Collins, like the drink. When Dr. Collins looked at my health report on the computer, his porcelain-white smile melted into a frown. He said my most recent labs showed a very high level of glucose in the blood. He said I was sixty pounds overweight. He said my body was already in a prediabetic state. Then he stared at me with a grave look on his handsome face and said I was on a bad path. As I looked down in shame at my aching, prediabetic toes that might not be here next year, I promised Dr. Collins I would start exercising tomorrow morning. I promised him things would be different around here. The here I was referring to was my body. To make this clear I gestured at my body when I said this. Neck to feet. Here. This was a stupid thing to say, but I savored the shame I felt from saying it. In my head I vowed to use that shame as fuel for me to change my ways. But then I remembered I had made this very same promise in this very same room at my last checkup a year ago. And that promise had obviously produced no results. That was okay though, because this time I meant it.

The next morning, I woke up before dawn and went for a walk. The only other person awake was a forty year-old guy walking a white and gray Maine coon cat around the development. The guy had a pair of black-wired headphones jammed into his ears; his Maine coon wore a yellow harness connected to a dogleash. Just before we crossed paths, the guy stopped walking and let his cat sniff my ankles. I nodded at the guy and studied the yellow harness strapped around the cat’s shoulders. After a while the cat looked up at me with his heterochromatic eyes (left eye: blue; right eye: green-gold) and said, in flawless English, “I smell death on you.”

I looked up at the guy to see if he had heard what his cat had said to me. He hadn’t. His headphones were connected to his phone, and he was staring at the screen and making sticky smacking sounds with his lips, as if he was very thirsty. When I caught a glimpse of his phone’s screen, I saw writhing limbs and jerking bodies. It took me a few seconds to realize he was watching porn. I glanced down at his cat again.

“This is the only period of time he has to himself each day, what with work, and the wife and kids and such,” the cat said, shaking his head and scratching his ear with his back claw. “So I let him do his thing. It’s gross, I know, but we all have our needs.”

“That makes sense,” I said, nodding.

A short silence passed. I cleared my throat and looked up at the guy, but his gaze was still fixed on his phone. I turned my attention back to his cat.

“So about what you said before,” I said.

“Yes that,” the cat said. “You’re wondering about life and death. About your legacy and purpose. The dissipating scent of your ephemeral existence on this earth. You’re curious about what it all means.”

“I guess so. I’m just really worried because I had a check-up at my doctor’s yesterday, and he said all these scary things about my health. He said I’m on a bad path. And then you, with what you said just now. It’s a lot to take in,” I said with a sigh. “And I know my life isn’t anything special. I’ll admit that in a second. I really just go to work, check on my fantasy baseball team, and see if any new players are available on the waiver-wire. Then I come home and stuff my face full of whatever’s left in the fridge while I sit on the couch and click between the baseball games. On my TV I have the premium package of channels that lets me watch all the MLB games, even the ones on the west coast that start at ten. So I watch those and then I usually fall asleep around one or two and get up at seven and do the same thing the next day. If I’m being honest, my fantasy sports teams are the only things in my life that really matter anymore. But for some reason I’m still really scared of dying. I know this all sounds ridiculous. I’m sorry for babbling on for so long, but I have to know. Am I going to die soon?”

The cat licked his long, luxurious whiskers and yawned. He stretched his right paw forward and spread his bony cat fingers, showing me his hooked claws.

“We all die eventually,” the cat said, walking to the strip of soft brown dirt at the edge of the lawn on my left. “Some of us sooner than others.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, as fear and shame swirled in my head.

The cat scratched in the dirt for a while, squatted over the disturbed earth, and started to take a dump. The sharp, skunky smells of shit, cat urine, and scorched engine oil filled my nose. My face crunched into a grossed out scowl. The cat looked up at me and let out a shrill, angry meow.

“A little privacy?” he said.

#

A week later, I got a call from Dr. Collins’s secretary. In a voice thick with emotion, she said that Dr. Collins had died of a ruptured brain aneurysm three days ago and that the practice was shutting down. The line went silent as she waited for me to say something, but I stayed quiet. I didn’t want her to hear the relief in my voice.

The next morning I went for a walk before dawn again. I wanted to talk to the Maine coon about the Dr. Collins situation.

I circled the neighborhood four times, but I didn’t see the porn guy or the Maine coon anywhere. An hour later, as I was pulling out of my driveway on the way to work, I saw the porn guy walking on the side of the street by himself. Pressing my foot to the brake, I lowered my window and waved him over.

“Hey man,” I said. “Where’s your cat? Is he too tired for a walk today?”

The guy looked up from his porn and stared at me with raw red eyes and a depressed frown.

“Roger slipped out the back door three days ago and a bear got him. It was fucking horrible. Me and Cindy and the kids have been bawling our eyes out ever since.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m so sorry. That’s really fucked up. He was a cool cat.”

The guy nodded, stared at the ground for a moment, and then turned back to his porn.

“Yeah,” the guy said. “We didn’t understand what he was talking about most of the time with all that philosophical stuff about life and death, but he was one of my best friends. It really hurts. I miss him.”

“That sounds awful, I’m really sorry,” I said, shifting my car into park. I squeezed the steering wheel as guilt and fear crashed over me. I didn’t want to die. But at the same time, I didn’t want Dr. Collins and Roger the cat to be dead instead of me, if it had been my time to go when Roger had sniffed my ankles last week.

I turned my attention back to the guy. Glancing in the side-view mirror, I saw that he had a full erection. Before I could avert my gaze, I caught him staring at me helplessly, like a lost child. Fat tears quivered in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” the guy said, shaking his head in shame. “My life is just so fucked right now. Work is a nightmare, and things are going to shit between me and the wife. Roger was the best thing in my life, and now he’s gone.”

“Don’t worry about it, I understand,” I said. Sick with guilt and pity, I leaned across the center column and clicked open the passenger door. “Do you want a ride back to your house?”

The guy looked at me and then down at the passenger seat and then back up at me. He drew a deep breath and shook his head.

“Thanks,” he said, closing the door, “but no thanks. I’ve got to find a way to get through this on my own. That’s the only way I’ll make it.”

“Okay,” I said. I held his gaze for a long moment and nodded. “Good luck.”

The guy gave me a weak smile and leaned his head through the open window of my car.

“Thanks,” he said. “And by the way, you should probably get this thing checked out. Something in here smells like shit. Not like actual poop as in feces, but just bad. It’s got a bad smell. You can smell it all the way out here in the street.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” I said. “I’ll look in to it.”

“Okay. See you around I guess,” the guy said, knocking on the roof of my car. He folded his hands over his prominent erection and waddled away down the road.

Once the guy was gone, I shifted the car into drive, eased back into my driveway, and slipped the key from the ignition. Sniffing around the dashboard, I imagined Rodger talking philosophy with Dr. Collins in heaven. I imagined Dr. Collins’s perfect teeth shining like gemstones behind his lips. Then I imagined myself sitting next to them, checking my fantasy baseball team on my phone.

A faint smell of scorched engine oil seeped from the heating vent near the center column of the car. Not wanting to take any chances, I clicked off my seatbelt and decided to call out of work. This wouldn’t be a problem. Since I never went anywhere or did anything, I had plenty of vacation days saved up.

I slid my phone out of my pocket and called up my boss. My eyes slipped closed as I requested my day off. The smell of scorched engine oil grew stronger. On the phone, my boss’s tiny voice complained about the lack of notice, but he agreed. When I opened my eyes moments later, I saw thick black smoke churning from the engine of my car.