They called it a full life, a life of pleasure and money. I had friends when I needed them, women when I wanted them, and good health while it lasted.
Still, nothing stays forever. I began to cough, my chest burning and my throat always dry. My head aches, and soon I am bedridden. The four walls of my room and the house I once treasured and flaunted become my prison. My wealthy friends have disappeared, and the only faces I see are my maid and my doctor. He tells me that it over.
And so I lay on my back in my bed, staring at the ceiling and waiting for everything to end. I am weaker every day, and every morning the sun is a little dimmer.
I always expected to go out with a flare, one last explosion after a life full of fire and light. My mind cannot handle the idea that my life is ended, and that this bed is the last surface I will feel; the doctor's hand is the last that will touch me.
The door opens, and I hear my maid enter the room with a bowl of soup, the only food I can handle anymore. I hear my breath rasping, and I see the paleness of my hands against the white sheets. I know that I am hardly more than a corpse, but an idea comes to me that I cannot shake. It will not be an explosion, but it will at least be a little flare.
"Anything I can get you, m'sieur?" she asks. I open my mouth to answer, and allow only a tiny rasp to escape. She moves closer, as I knew she would. "What, m'sieur?"
I try to sit up, feigning a show of pain and exhaustion. She puts her hands out to help me, and I seize her wrists and pull her onto the bed.
This is my plan. However, to move so much and so quickly is exhausting, and she easily breaks my grip. The door slams behind her, and in the silence of the house I hear her footsteps as she dashes down the stairs. The crash of my front door as she hurls it closed is the last sound I expect to hear.
Again I am alone with this room. The silence remains.
Time passes.
I am alone with my memories and my coughs.
My chest hurts.
The colors of my curtains are almost indiscernible through the haze.
I can no longer tell whether it is day or night outside my window.
It is difficult to breathe.
And then I hear a sound I never thought to hear again. I hear footsteps at the side of my bed. I turn slowly, the movement painful and exhausting.
A woman is standing at my side. She smiles at me. I do not understand.
"Monsieur," she says softly, "perhaps you do not remember me, but we met once, in the past. You wronged me, monsieur."
I can not think of anything to say. She moves closer. I would say she took a step closer, but I did not detect a movement of legs beneath her white gown: she seemed to glide.
"In a sense, monsieur," she continues, "you saved my life. You turned me away from the road I was taking, the road to prostitution, starvation, and death. Your selfishness and cruelty saved my life, and the life of my daughter."
I squint at her through the white film that I am so accustomed to seeing now.
"Remember," she breathes, and I do.
Instead of this glowing maiden, I see a hag, a whore, coughing on a street corner. Her hair is shorn and her teeth are missing. I see myself, young as I once was, and I remember mocking her, throwing snow down her back despite her obvious illness.
The vision fades, and I am back in this bed.
"Monsieur," she says, "I have come to offer you forgiveness. Come with me," and she extends a hand.
I look at her carefully. My vision is clear again, and I scrutinize her face. The woman's eyes are large, offering me pity.
Pity?
She pities me! All those years ago I did not pity her! Now, here she is in my room, pitying me! A whore, a whore who feels bad for my situation as I lie here, having lived my full life and now I die in my estate, in my soft sheets, when she died on a street corner or in a jail somewhere! I saved her life? I saved her daughter?
I want to scoff at her, to sneer, but all I can manage to do is spit.
I spit at her, but she does not flinch. It does not hit her as I hoped, but seems to fall right through her outstretched hand.
She drops her arms to her side. "Very well," she says. I look at her face again, and her eyes are wet. A tear rolls down her cheek, and she fades away.