A. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life

IT IS ONLY when he pulls up to the house, when he turns off the ignition, when he is safe, that he realizes what happened. It was so strange, like something you'd see on a TV movie, only worse. The trunk smelled. When the trunk was opened, an incredible smell — dark-vinegary, urine — came up out of the car, and the girl, looking beyond scared, made eye contact with him, and Richard put out his hand to help her. He put out his hand and she took it.

Richard gets out of his car and vomits, spills everything onto the edge of the road, into oncoming traffic. He throws up and feels even worse. He knocks on the door to the homeless man's house. "Go away."

"Do you have some Advil?" he yells, knowing the medicine cabinet in the white cube is empty.

The guy opens the door. Richard sees his arm, sees plastic tubing — he's hooked up to an IV.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were sick."

"I'm not sick, it's vitamins. What happened to you? You look" — he pauses — "shocked."

"Have you got any Advil?"

He shakes his head. "Hard on the liver. But I can help you. Come in."

The guy pours Richard a drink. "Scotch, better for you." He motions to a chair. Richard sits. The guy rummages through a drawer and then goes to the refrigerator, comes back with a few small bottles. "I'm a certified homeopath," the guy says, "along with being a psychopath." He laughs. "Open your mouth."

Richard obeys, and he squirts a few drops from each bottle into Richard's mouth.

Richard gags. "What is that?"

"A remedy. I make it myself."

The man hands him the scotch. "It helps."

Richard drinks. He could have been killed. The asshole in the car was certainly going to do something to the girl, and he could have done the same to Richard. Did he really do a good thing? Did he save someone's life, does that make a difference, did he interrupt history, fate? What came over him?

"More scotch?"

Richard nods. The guy's house is rustic, a bachelor beach cottage, exposed wooden ceiling beams, a big desk overlooking the ocean, crooked pictures, a huge bottled-water dispenser.

"Why do you take the vitamins like that?" Richard asks.

"Because I'm nuts. I want to live forever and I've got this sagging ass, this gut. Aging is the one thing that terrifies me. I can't imagine myself old." The guy lights a cigarette. He is rugged, weathered; his hair is like a lion's mane; his eyes are the bluest of blue; his features are hard and strong.

"Are you an actor?"

"No — worse."

"A producer?"

"Further down the food chain."

Richard shrugs.

"A writer, just another shitty Hollywood writer, a hack job waiting to happen."

"Oh yeah, that sounds like fun."

The man squeezes the IV bag, squirting what's left through the tubing and into his arm. "All gone," he says, like a little kid, and then pulls the needle out.

"Isn't a nurse supposed to do that?"

There is a knock on the door.

"Is he in here?" It's Cynthia.

"Good, your wife is back; you can go home now."

"Not his wife," she says, coming in.

"Girlfriend, sorry."

"Not his girlfriend."

"Secretary."

She shakes her head. "Friend," she says. "I'm his friend."

"Whatever."

"And your name is?" she says, extending her hand.

"Nic," he says.

And Richard realizes that they haven't officially met. "Richard," he says.

"Cynthia," she says. "I was out and I heard this incredible story on the radio; was that you?"

He nods. "I don't know what came over me."

"You didn't rob a bank or shoot someone in the post office or anything like that, did you?"

"Quite to the contrary," Cynthia says, proudly.

"I don't know what I was thinking," he says, and starts to tell the story: meeting the contractor at the house, the peculiarity of how one person could think it's a small job while the other thinks he should tear it down, and how he got on the highway in a bad mood, and how the car started talking to him and he knew he had to do something.

"They were interviewing people, witnesses — they said there were two men fighting, rolling down the hill like animals, they thought it was a road-rage attack. And then they announced your name: Richard Novak is the apparent hero. That's what they called you, the apparent hero."

"Are you injured?" Nic feels him head to toe, pats him up and down. "Any cuts or bites?"

"What kind of bites, snake by the highway?"

"No, human. Human bites are very dangerous. Dirtiest mouth there is."

"Who knows what he was going to do to her," Cynthia says.

"Who was this guy?"

"A TV repairman."

"Do you think that was the first time he'd done it?"

"It's never the first time."

OUTSIDE, there is a sound, like a cat crying. They ignore it, and when it continues, unrelenting, the three of them go outside.

Anhil is banging on the door of the white cube, holding a box of donuts. He turns towards them. "I am sorry to crush in on you, but I was so worried. I saw the car on television, I would know her anywhere," Anhil says.

They walk around the car — pretty banged up, more damage than Richard would have thought. They are on the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway, circling the Mercedes, circling the vomit next to the car, and across the way someone seems to be snapping pictures.

"Let's go inside," Nic says.

"My house," Richard says. "I need new clothes."

Cynthia unlocks the door.

"It's a vanilla fantasy," Anhil says.

"I've never been in here," Nic says. "All these years right next door and never inside, I was picturing some sort of sex den."

"Well, there was some equipment in one of the rooms, but the Realtor had them take it out," Richard says. "Something that hung from the ceiling,"

"You didn't tell me about that," Cynthia says.

"I didn't want to scare you."

Richard excuses himself and goes into the bedroom to change. He takes a hot shower.

"Better?" Cynthia asks when he comes back.

"Cleaner," he says.

"My wife is making her chicken stew tonight — I can call her and she will bring her stew," Anhil says.

"How long will it take?" Nic asks.

"Maybe forty minutes, maybe two hours. I would like you to meet her, even though this is sudden," he tells Richard. "She makes very good chicken stew; I could eat a gallon of it."

"Call her," Nic says, "I'm starving."

Nic opens a bottle of wine, Cynthia finds some snacks in the fridge; they are sitting around, waiting. The phone rings.

"Is this Richard Novak?"

"Yes," he says. And the man hangs up.

The sun is starting to go down. "Do you have wood?" Nic asks. "I'll build a fire; it's my specialty, fires. My oven broke two years ago and I haven't looked back."

"You cook in the fireplace?" Cynthia asks.

"No, actually in a Weber kettle."

"I bought wood today," Richard says. "It's in packages just outside the front door."

"You bought wood? You're not supposed to buy wood — you find it on the beach."

Anhil's brother and wife arrive with an industrial-size pot of chicken stew, a big bag of ingredients to be added, and various containers of sauce.

When Nic offers Anhil's wife some wine, she politely declines, takes out a bottle of apricot juice, and pours some for Anhil and herself.

"What is your name?" Nic asks.

"Lipi," she says.

"That is 'Manuscript of the Gods,' " Anhil tells them.

Cynthia finds a dozen white votives in one of the drawers and they sit looking out on the ocean, with only the candlelight guiding them into the night.

Richard closes his eyes and sees bits and pieces of the afternoon all over again, his car brushing against the guy's car, the steely sound of it scraping like something in a machine shop.

"Everybody OK with coconut?" Lipi asks before she adds coconut milk to her stew.