How Schizophrenia Brought Me Happiness
an excerpt

When it was finally time for him to leave, he made his way through the hallways, out of the building, across the bridge, and down the stairs. When he arrived on the third floor, he was taken aback at what he saw. A shabby old silver grey Honda sat in the third spot to the left of the stairs, two spots away from his. Atop the car, on the hood, a woman sat cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.
After taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, he walked over to the woman, and said, “Excuse me, are you all right?” Her bright red hair, in a bun at the back of her head shook from side to side, which he assumed was a negative response.
“What is the matter?” he inquired.
“This piece of shit Honda is the matter.” Her harsh words seemed to be at odds with her calm tone of voice.
“May I take a look at it for you? Do you have any idea as to what the problem might be?” he offered.
“No offense, but you just don’t look like the kind of guy who knows about cars.”
He found this response very curious, as the woman had yet to remove her face from her hands.
“I’ve read many books about cars. Surely it couldn’t hurt to allow me to have a look?”
She jumped nimbly from the hood of the car and nodded towards it, giving him permission to check it out.
She looked to be about twenty-seven by his best guess, though her eyes were quite youthful. She sported a remarkably eccentric garb that was obviously home made. She wore a poncho made of a red and gold silk scarf atop a white tank top, with unattached purple sleeves covering her arms and hands, and a flowing multi-layered turquoise skirt. Her feet were bare, with chipped pale pink paint on her toenails. Her appearance reminded him vaguely of a fairy. She studied him skeptically as he struggled to open the hood.
After opening the hood, he examined the engine, and finding nothing, he checked the oil, which was shockingly low. He looked under the car, where he saw a large puddle of what appeared to be oil.
“It would appear that you have a severe oil leak. My guess is you cracked your oil pan somehow. Have you run over anything lately?”
“Oh, just a few pedestrians, nothing out of the norm.” she replied with a smile. For the first time in a long time, he laughed. She smiled more broadly, and told him that she may or may not have tried to jump a curb earlier. They both laughed for a moment, and then he sobered suddenly, as if he remembered that he should be afraid. She does not look so scary, he thought, but he was still going to be careful.
“So, what do I do about a cracked oil pan? I suppose I’ll have to buy a new one. Where might they sell oil pans?”
“Well, you’re not going to be able to fix it yourself. You’ll have to take it in somewhere. Unfortunately, the nearest place is several miles from here, and you’ll have to drive it there somehow. I guess you should buy some oil, and we need something to patch up the crack in the oil pan…”
“Duct tape! We can use duct tape!”
“I’m not sure that will do the trick…”
“Of course it will! Duct tape can fix anything, anything! And I have some in my car!”
“You have any towels?”
“Why yes, I do. I have five white beach towels. What will we need towels for?”
“We will need two to remove the oil from the ground, and two to lay on the ground in order for me to apply the duct tape to the cracked oil pan.”
“Ha. I see. Can not have you dirtying your fancy suit now can we?”
He shivered, and she chuckled.
“So, where do we get oil? Aren’t most places closed right now?
“I think there’s a twenty four hour convenience store down the street that should sell oil. I drive past it twice a day, but I’ve never actually been inside of it.” He was unsure why he was sharing this detail with her, and was alarmed at his verboseness.
“Shall we walk? It is so nice outside this evening!”
He felt very confused. How can she be in this good of a mood? Her car is broken and she has just sat in this garage for who knows how long, he thought.
“Okay, let’s walk. It is only a few blocks.” He didn’t like to walk in the dark, but he felt strangely safe in her company.
Together, they walked down the stairs, and out onto the sidewalk. While walking next to her on the sidewalk, he noticed vivid green patches of grass growing up between the cracks in the cement. He noted how much brighter everything looked when he was actually walking on the street, instead of observing from his car. It was slightly surreal.
On their way to the convenience store, he asked her why she had tried to jump a curb in her car. It seemed such a silly thing to do, he thought, since her car has such low ground clearance. She explained to him that she had jumped curbs in her car before, and was in a hurry at the time, and she had been sure that Vesuvius could make it. She followed this with a brief explanation of why she the vehicle was called Vesuvius.
“Well, there’s the engine smoking thing before it rains. Did you know that before Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii that it used to smoke before it rained, and they used it to predict the weather? Plus, he just has such a temper! When he gets upset, he gets extremely upset. Mount Vesuvius upset. And he is about the color of volcanic ash, and if you’re going to be named after a volcano, why shouldn’t you be named after the coolest and most famous one?”
“Why don’t you sell him and get something else?”
She looked down at her feet and became melancholic “I can’t. He was a…gift.”
“From whom?” he inquired, trying not to sound prying.
“From the love of my life, to be cliché.” She glanced up briefly, then back at the ground.
“I see, what is his name?”
“Her name was Atra. She contracted necrotizing fasciitis after cutting her shoulder while snorkeling in an underwater cave. She died six years ago. He belonged to her. She named him Vesuvius.”