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The last thing Noreen sees before she passes out is a man with a meat cleaver in his skull.
If the smoke wasn’t already enough to make her faint, that would surely do the trick. As it is, she feels her breath getting shallower and shallower, her vision darker and darker.
The heat from the fire presses down on her, until it doesn’t.
Noreen only has her eyes closed for a second before she’s opening them again. The first thing she notices is how much cooler it is. The sweat has vanished from her face, and the floor feels chilly under her palm.
She sits up and quickly realizes that not only is the fire gone, but so is everyone else. No Ed, no man with the meat cleaver, no boy with the gun. Noreen wonders if maybe she dreamed it.
Without the smoke in the air, it takes no effort at all for her to stand up. The backroom looks exactly like it always does — dead animals on tables, dead animals on hooks. Just another day at Bud’s Meats.
Noreen pushes through the door to the shop, and for a moment she’s blinded by the light pouring in through the front windows. She blinks a few times before she’s able to see that there’s a customer at the counter.
He’s an older fella, with silvery hair and a plain gray suit. In his hand is one of those paper tickets that people take when it’s busy. Which, at the moment, it isn’t — he’s the only one here.
Better go help him, Noreen decides.
“Sorry,” she says by way of greeting as she steps behind the counter. “Been waiting long?”
“It’s difficult to say,” the man replies cordially. “Time is a funny thing in this place.”
Noreen has no earthly idea what he means by that, but she figures she shouldn’t keep him waiting any longer regardless.
“What kinda meat you want?”
“Meat?” the man says, as if he doesn’t know he’s in a butcher shop.
One of the weird ones, Noreen deduces. It’s just as well. She’s always been better at dealing with them than Ed and Bud ever were. Probably because she’s a weird one herself, according to some people.
“Pig meat, cow meat, chicken meat,” Noreen recites. “Pretty much any kind except fish. Bud doesn’t…”
She trails off, because she’s just noticed another customer coming through the front door. It’s the boy in the blue jacket, looking just as lost as he did the first time he showed up asking after Ed.
So it was real. Or part of it was, maybe. Hopefully the part where they talked about their favorite holidays, and not the part where he scared the bejesus out of her with a gun.
Noreen stares at him. He doesn’t seem to see her there, or at least he’s not looking at her. She watches with curiosity as he reaches for the ticket dispenser and tears one off. Even from across the shop, she can see that it has the number thirteen on it.
She glances at the board sitting on top of the meat case. NOW SERVING, it reads. And below that, the number twelve.
“Looks like he’s next,” says the man in the suit.
Noreen doesn’t understand what’s happening. Maybe this is the dream. She did pass out, didn’t she?
“Hey,” she says to the boy. “Weren’t you in here earlier?”
The boy doesn’t answer. He just stands there with one hand in his pocket, ignoring her. She hopes this isn’t some sort of practical joke. He seemed so nice before.
“Some think he should stay behind,” says the man in the suit. “What do you think?”
Noreen blinks. “Stay behind?”
It hits her then — there was another bullet. Not the one that started the fire, but the one that ricocheted off the wall. It hit the boy in the head and knocked him flat on his back. She remembers thinking he was surely dead.
Dead.
“Is this…?” Noreen flounders. “Am I…?”
She did breathe in a heck of a lot of smoke. And the fire was burning out of control. Ed couldn’t put it out, and she couldn’t move. Just a few more minutes and it all would have been over.
“Don’t worry,” the man reassures her. “It’s only temporary.”
Noreen knows she shouldn’t care either way. Death comes for everyone, after all. But still, she’s relieved to hear it.
“What about him?” she asks, nodding at the boy in blue.
“I tried to convince them,” the man says apologetically. “But some of them won’t budge. Half of them, in fact. So it seems we have a tie. That’s why we called you as a witness.”
“A witness?”
“Someone who’s seen both sides of him. The good and the bad. But also a stranger — someone who can be impartial. And you fit the bill.”
Out of all the weird ones Noreen has dealt with, this fella takes the cake. Still, she thinks she understands now.
“So it’s up to me, you’re saying. Whether he… comes back?”
The man nods. “I’m afraid so.”
Needing a minute to process this, Noreen sits down on the stool behind the counter. That’s when she realizes that her book is still in the back pocket of her jeans.
She pulls it out and looks at the cover, at that big craggy boulder.
The answer should be obvious. Life’s a joke, Camus says. What does it matter if his is over now or later? It would be hypocritical of Noreen to say otherwise.
So then why does she still want to save him?
Like the man said, they’re strangers. Noreen doesn’t even know his name. She knows next to nothing about him, in fact — except that he likes Easter and tried to kill Ed.
One should probably outweigh the other, but it’s not so simple.
“Can I ask a question?” she wonders. “About him, I mean. To understand him better.”
“I’m afraid not,” says the man in the suit. “That would defeat the purpose.”
Noreen looks at the boy, who’s still ignoring her. He stares intently at the bottles of pop on the shelf behind her while he waits. Somewhere in the distance, a clock is ticking.
Time might be funny here, but she still feels like she’s running out of it.
She can’t just let him die, can she? That would be like killing him, and Noreen’s no killer. But then again, wouldn’t letting him live be a little bit like cheating death? That’s how Sisyphus ended up where he was.
“Ah, yes. Sisyphus,” says the man in the suit.
For a second, Noreen thinks he must be able to read her mind. Then she realizes that he’s looking at her book.
“You’ve read it?” she asks.
“I have,” he says, before quoting from it by heart: “‘What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.’”
Thus her dilemma.
“A very interesting gentleman, Camus,” the man says, as if he knew him personally. “Sadly misunderstood to this day by many who read his work.”
Noreen perks up. Finally someone who gets it.
“Exactly,” she says. “People say it’s depressing, but I think it’s beautiful.”
“Indeed,” the man agrees. “It’s quite optimistic, really. Because, if you think about it, Camus is saying that it’s an act of revolt to continue living, as pointless as life may seem. Knowing death is inevitable doesn’t mean one should make it come any quicker.”
Noreen’s face falls, because that’s not what she meant. She had thought it was beautiful in its hopelessness. Maybe she needs to read it again.
Still, she can’t say she’s too bothered by the man’s interpretation, considering the choice she has to make. If living is revolt, maybe she wouldn’t be going against Camus by choosing to send the boy back.
Better to ask, just in case.
“So you’re saying we should always choose living over dying?”
“Well,” the man replies, “according to Camus.”
Noreen looks down at the book again. She supposes it makes sense. Sisyphus knows the rock will roll back down the hill once he makes it to the top. He knows it’s pointless to keep trying, but he still doesn’t give up.
It makes her think of Rocky. The comeback. Even if he loses in the end, and even if you know he will, you still root for him to get back up and keep fighting. Over and over.
Knowing the end doesn’t ruin it. She was just kidding about that.
Noreen looks at the man in the suit, who’s still waiting patiently for her answer.
“Send us back,” she tells him decisively. “Both of us.”
The man smiles.
Noreen opens her eyes. She’s in the backroom again, on the floor. The air is heavy. Ed is kneeling over her, asking if she’s okay. There’s smoke in her throat, and her head feels fuzzy.
He helps her up, and she stands there coughing for a second before it all comes back to her — the man in the suit, her decision. She hurries to where she saw the boy fall when the bullet hit him. He’s passed out, bleeding from the side of his head.
“He’s still alive,” she says.
Noreen knows it without even checking his pulse. Because she made it so.