The Last Tomorrow (10 page)

She picks up her coffee and takes a sip.

She glances over to Vivian sitting in the booth beside her, looking out a dirty window to the street. Families in their Sunday best heading to church, or maybe to breakfast before service
begins.

Without turning away from the window she says, ‘He’ll be here.’

‘Do you think he’ll be able to do anything?’

‘He’s the district attorney. He can do something.’

‘Do you think he will?’

‘If he wants to keep his wife. If he wants to keep his career.’

‘How could I have let this happen?’

Vivian looks toward Candice. She remains silent for a long time. Then she says, ‘You didn’t let anything happen. It happened, that’s all.’

‘Neil’s gone. My son’s gone. They were everything, everything I had.’

‘Sandy isn’t gone.’

‘How could he do something like this? My sweet little boy.’

Vivian shakes her head. Her eyes tell Candice the only answer she has. I don’t know.

Candice doesn’t know either.

‘Drink your coffee.’

She does.

After a long time Vivian says, ‘I think there’s a place inside everybody where it’s always nighttime. A place we keep locked up. But if the latch breaks and lets the night out
. . . maybe shadows fall on everything.’

‘What time is it?’ Candice says.

‘He’s late.’

3

Seymour parks his car on the street and steps out into the bright morning, all blue sky and white sun and not a cloud in sight. He slams his door shut, glancing once at his
reflection in the driver’s-side window and dusting a bit of lint off his sleeve before stepping up onto the sidewalk and, two arm-swings later, into the diner. He’s wearing a somber
blue suit and a hand-painted tie from George’s Haberdashery out on Ventura. He wants these women to understand that he’s a man of importance and will not be pushed around. Which is also
why he’s walking through the door ten minutes late. He’s a man who sets his own schedule.

His list of campaign contributors during his last run for DA was a veritable
Who’s Who in Los Angeles
. He’s taken on gangsters and state senators. He’s considering a run
for Mayor against Fletcher Bowron. He’ll not be pushed around by a couple whores. He intends to make that clear; he intends to make that
very
clear.

He will not be pushed around.

The diner smells of burnt cooking grease and breakfast foods – eggs, sausage, fried potatoes. You can feel the airborne grease particles on your skin as soon as you step into the place. A
thin layer of it coats everything in here, including the windows, making the world outside look smudged.

He scans the room and sees the women sitting at a booth, a cup of coffee on the table in front of the one he doesn’t know. A fat-calved waitress with her hair in a pony-tail walks over and
refills her cup.

Seymour walks to the table and slides into the booth across from the two women.

‘Can I get you something, hon?’

‘Two poached eggs, a side of fruit, and a glass of orange juice.’

Seymour isn’t hungry but he wants to give the impression that he’s not been affected by this morning’s threats, that he isn’t worried about a thing in the world.
He’s far too important to be worried about such piddling affairs as these, inconvenient to his day though they may be.

‘All right.’ She sets down the coffee pot and scribbles down the order on her pad. ‘Either of you ladies gonna get any food?’

Vivian shakes her head. ‘No, thanks.’

The other woman only stares down at her coffee.

‘Ma’am?’

She looks up. ‘What? Oh. No, thank you.’

‘All right,’ the waitress says, picking up the coffee pot.

Once she’s gone Seymour looks to Vivian and says, ‘I’m here only to eat. Your threats will get you nowhere.’

Vivian licks her lips, pauses, then finally says, ‘Okay. We’ll leave you to your food. You can see the pictures in tomorrow’s paper.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

Vivian raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

‘If you actually have pictures, which I doubt, you won’t make them public. If you do, your husband will find out you do more than merely flirt for money. Are you really willing to
ruin your marriage simply to ruin mine? I don’t think so.’

She looks down at the wedding band on her left hand. He noticed it this morning. She might take it off for work, but it was there when she knocked on his door. She spins it around with her thumb
until the stone is centered on the back of her finger. She smiles.

‘I won’t be ruining my marriage,’ she says, looking up at him with amusement twinkling in her eyes. ‘Who do you think took the pictures?’

And with those words the courage he spent the last three hours building up, building up like a dam against the flood of worry, is gone. Visions of newspaper headlines fill his mind. The end of
his career. His wife walking out the door. His wife whom he loves. His wife to whom he is good but for these occasional betrayals. Betrayals that hurt her not at all so long as she doesn’t
know about them.

He stares at the women sitting across from him. He remains silent.

The waitress brings out his breakfast.

He glances down at the food, pushes the plate away.

After a while he says, ‘Do you have the pictures here?’

‘I have one of them.’

She removes a small rectangle from her purse and slides it across the table. An instant photograph from a Polaroid Land Camera. His face is visible in the shot, as is the length of his body, his
pants unbuttoned, his erect penis jutting from the fabric. And Vivian as she kneels before him. He remembers what her breath felt like against his skin in that moment, warm and moist and very, very
close. He remembers how quickly his heart was beating. The numbness in his fingertips.

His cheeks feel hot and his head throbs with pain. He closes his eyes. He thinks of the Polaroid Land Camera they have at home. He gave it to Margaret last year for her birthday. They took it
with them on vacation to the Grand Canyon last summer. They had a stranger take their picture. A minute later they stripped off the negative and there they were. That picture even now is on the
mirror above the dresser. There are a dozen others littered throughout the house.

He will never again be able to look at any them without thinking of this. All of those captured moments ruined.

He opens his eyes.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to do?’

1

Eugene Dahl pulls his milk truck to a stop in front of the Galt Hotel on Wilshire and kills the engine with the turn of a key. He steps from the truck and walks into the
hotel’s bar, which opens onto the street. All daylight is cut off as the door swings shut behind him. A few dim bulbs overhead and a couple neon tubes on the walls provide what little
illumination remains. Every direction you turn the dim room feels like looking through a window screen.

Outside it was a Thursday evening. Outside it was the tenth of April. But none of that matters in here. In here it is forever midnight at the end of the world.

He looks around the room for Trish but doesn’t see her, and when he doesn’t see her he feels relief at her absence. He took her to dinner a few times last summer, took her on a few
motorcycle rides along the Pacific Coast Highway, took her to a Negro bar for dancing and drinks, but after a few dates she became possessive and angry when he so much as glanced at another woman.
Yet when he wasn’t around she was spreading her legs for anybody willing to buy her a few martinis. First they had fights, then they stopped talking. But neither of them was willing to give
up this spot. When you find a good bar, you tend to be loyal. Instead, and without discussing it, they developed shifts. Sometimes there’s overlap, but not today.

He walks across the room to a barstool and sits down on cushioned red leather.

The barkeep, Jerry, a balding fellow with a gut that hangs over his belt, white shirt stretched over it like a tarp, dries his hands on a liquor-and mixer-stained towel, grabs a tumbler, and
pours a double shot of bourbon into it. He pushes the drink across the counter to Eugene, who lifts it, puts it to his nose, and inhales its fine harsh scent.

He takes a mouthful, closes his eyes, and lets it sit on his tongue. He likes the tingling sensation it brings. He swallows. It goes down warm, feeling acidic, like heartburn in reverse.

He grew up during prohibition, so most of what he drank back home was bathtub moonshine. Occasionally, though, someone’s dad would get a prescription and bring home a bottle of Old
Grand-Dad, which everyone would nip from for the next day or two. The bottle claimed the whiskey was

UNEXCELLED FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES

and while Eugene still isn’t sure what medicinal purposes the whiskey might serve – sometimes it was prescribed for gout, sometimes for the very headaches it caused
– he believed then and believes still that Old Grand-Dad is unexcelled for drinking purposes. There’s nothing finer than a good bourbon. He thinks he’ll have another three of
these at least before he even considers letting his stool cool off.

He finishes work midday, eats lunch, and still has hours to kill. He loves the way they stretch out before him. He doesn’t understand boredom. Sitting on a barstool, sipping a drink,
thinking about the book you will soon start writing – soon, but not today – is more than enough to fill the hours.

One need not actually
do
anything.

Thinking is enough. Dreaming is enough. Dreaming is the best. As soon as you
do
, the dream is dead, usurped by reality. It’s best to hold onto that bittersweet hope and the
knowledge that there’s still time, even if it is slowly bleeding down the drain of the world. For now there’s time. There’s the future.

He again sips his drink.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘How are the twins?’

‘Short and stupid.’

‘I’m not sure those were the wisest names for your children, Jerry.’

‘You ain’t met em.’

‘How old are they now?’

‘Ten months. I don’t know why they can’t be born twelve years old. What good are kids when they’re too goddamn small to take out the garbage?’

Eugene shrugs, thinks of his own childhood.

He grew up in poverty, but hardly knew it. He could spend entire days alone, playing, building fantasy worlds around himself as he went on great adventures, hunting nonexistent beasts and
discovering imaginary treasures. There was an innocent magic to it that even now makes his chest ache with nostalgia when he thinks about it, though he knows there was ugliness there he’s
since forgotten, or pushed from his mind. He could remember, but chooses not to. He’s simply glad he still has some small magic within him. He’s protective of it, never wants to lose
it. Maybe this is why he doesn’t spend it, why he only dreams. He’s afraid if he uses it, the magic will be gone. He’s afraid he will use it up completely. Then what will he have
left?

The door behind him lets out a high-pitched squeak as someone pushes through. He looks over his shoulder to see a slender woman with wavy red hair slither into the dim bar. She’s pale,
with fine features, and manages somehow to be both beautiful and ugly simultaneously. There’s something oddly, disquietingly, reptilian about her. She sways silently toward the counter, in a
brief dress, and sits down, leaving an empty stool between herself and Eugene.

She reaches into a clutch, finds an etched gold cigarette-ase, unlatches it with the push of a button, and flips it open. She removes a filtered Kent cigarette with slender fingers, puts it
between her lipsticked lips. She glances toward Eugene, her eyes pale blue.

‘Have a light?’

Eugene flips open his lighter, a pre-war Zippo, gets a flame going with some effort – he needs to replace the flint – and holds it to the end of her cigarette. She inhales deeply,
removes the cigarette from her mouth, the end of the filter now smeared red, and exhales a thin stream of smoke through sensually puckered lips. A smile touches them.

‘Thanks.’

‘You bet.’

‘How’d you like to buy me a drink?’

‘That depends.’

‘Oh, yeah? On what does it depend?’

‘What are you drinking?’

‘Is this a test?’

‘I guess you could call it that.’

‘A man who’s particular, I like it. But I’m afraid I’m about to disappoint you. Old Grand-Dad, neat.’

‘Old Grand-Dad.’ He smiles.

‘Did I pass after all?’

‘Pass? What say we skip to the end and get married?’

‘Ouch, that is the end. Let’s just start with the drink.’

‘Bourbon for the lady, Jerry. And I’ll have another myself.’

Jerry nods.

The woman holds out her hand. ‘Evelyn.’

He takes her hand lightly in his own. ‘Eugene.’

‘You don’t look like a Eugene.’

‘No?’

She shakes her head.

‘What do I look like?’

‘A Kurt. That chin belongs on somebody with a hard-edged consonant in his name. I’d even settle for Frank. Eugene, though, I’m not sure it works for you.’

‘I’ve managed to live with it so far.’

‘Then I suppose I can too.’

‘That’s awful generous of you, I appreciate it.’

‘I thought you would.’

‘You from out of town?’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Your accent.’

‘I have an accent?’

He nods.

‘I’m in from New York.’

‘I’d hate to call you a liar.’

A blush touches her cheeks.

‘I grew up in New Jersey.’

‘What brings you to town?’

‘Business.’

‘Business?’

Evelyn nods.

‘What kind of business?’

‘You a private dick?’

‘Just making conversation.’

‘I work for my dad.’

‘Well, what kind of business is your dad in?’ Evelyn downs her whiskey.

‘Stop asking questions and buy me another drink,’ she says. ‘Quick, before you ruin your chances.’

‘Another drink for the lady, Jerry.’

2

Evelyn takes a drag from her cigarette and watches Jerry pour her drink from an orange-labeled bottle. She says thanks and takes a sip. It’s harsh and unpleasant, but at
least it’s the real thing. She respects a man who takes his liquor straight. Means he’s serious about it. She’s serious about it too. She just wishes Eugene had better taste.